The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Ridley Scott makes a further Alien prequel that is an improvement on Prometheus. While the first half gives us the stuff of aliens hunting humans, the second less interestingly doglegs off into the story of a mad android
A film about a former alien abductee pottering endlessly about a cabin in order to lure the aliens who took her and take revenge. A film that is about as close to total amateurism as possible to get
An enigmatic film set in a future where aliens have invaded the Earth as a lone soldier is sent to crew a remote post and imagines he is seeing things
Full marks for the title. Rather than any spacegoing version of Titanic, we have a spaceship named Titan1-C, which is soon abandoned and thereafter a cheesily ridiculous film about alien chestbusters
A French variant on The Quiet Earth adapted from a comic-book about a group of young people who wake up to find themselves alone in a deserted city
A massive hit in South Korea about a firefighter’s journey through the afterlife and the trials he must undergo. On the other hand, the director seems to be trying to turn a moral redemption story into a superhero film
The theme of Mind Upload is waiting for the one film to come along and define its theme. This, in which a comatose wife’s body is loaded into an android body, is not that film and only reaches for cliches
A variant on the Pact with the Devil story as a rock group conduct a Faustian deal with Malcolm McDowell’s Devil, leading to their meteoric rise to fame and debauchery
Prolific Z-budget director Mark Polonia makes something like the 18th film with Amityville in its title. This one concerns possessed lumber (!) from the Amityville house
No less than the twentieth film spun out around The Amityville Horror. This Blumhouse revival emerges as marginally better than most films with Amityville in the name
This claims to be the first zombie musical. Surprisingly enough, it isn’t. A cute idea but you have the sense the only musical the filmmakers had seen beforehand was High School Musical
Audiences and critics alike hated the first Annabelle – I went into this prequel with little enthusiasm but ended up pleasantly surprised. All it takes is a change of director to David F. Sandberg who provides a series of genuinely eerie jumps
WolfCop found an appeal with its amusing title premise. Here the principal talents involved have reunited for a sequel, although the feeling is more that they have done so solely because the first film was a success
Behind the generic action movie title, this is an SF about a unit of soldiers led by Wesley Snipes venturing into an automated prison to investigate the death of personnel by an unknown force
While the title suggests some lost 1950s atomic monster film, this is a rather dull film that concerns mysterious happenings at a near future nuclear waste reprocessing plant
A heist film that ends up in a mansion filled with grown-men who have diaper fetishes. And then things get really bizarre. Some films are so wild and insane they attain cult status. And then there are the wannabes
Seemingly another ridiculously titled zombie movie but in actuality this is no more than a regular zombie film played straight that has been slapped with a gonzo title as a selling point
This comes with a great hook – a couple buy up the contents of a defaulted storage locker only to find film reels taken by The Zodiac Killer, leading them on a pursuit of his identity
McG has now become the new inheritor of the title of worst director currently at work in Hollywood, as amply evidenced in this ridiculous film starring Samara Weaving as a Satanist babysitter
Sequel to the sarcastically amusing Bad Kids Go to Hell, which is set at the same school a few years later as someone starts eliminating people in detention
Spain’s Alex de la Iglesia has become a specialist in comedies with a dark bite. This centres around a crosscut of characters trapped inside a bar during the outbreak of a deadly infection
While the world knows of Bob Kane as the creator of Batman, few of heard of Bill Finger who created many of the core aspects but had his contributions claimed by Kane. This is a documentary that sets out to find the truth
Building on the popularity of the character in Suicide Squad, an animated film that gives to Harley Quinn, and lets loose with a sense of humour far more adult than the other animated Batman films
Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, an animated homage to the 1960s Batman tv series reuniting Adam West and Burt Ward, was a quirky delight. This is a sequel in the same vein, although more a case of a joke that tires in the retelling
When Rodney Ascher’s incredibly uncanny documentary The Nightmare came out, I predicted sleep paralysis would become a new theme for horror. This starts as a sleep paralysis film but veers off to become something else
This live-action remake of the Disney animated film is mounted with a lavishness. On the other hand, the romance at the centre never fully warms up, while the human characters have the show stolen from under by the cutlery and furnishings
Documentary about George Lazenby, the former male model who scored the role of James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and then abruptly quit. Lazenby proves a highly entertaining raconteur and his life story is eye-opening to say the very least
Essentially Groundhog Day for teenage girls as Zoey Deutch finds herself trapped in a timeloop living the same day at high school over and over. The film finds a reasonable emotional depth but some of Zoey’s concerns do seem just a little trivial
Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa is known for his intensely uncanny and bafflingly cryptic horror films. Here he makes an alien invasion film, although a minimalist and very different one that proves quite fascinating
Sofia Coppola’s remake of the 1971 Clint Eastwood film. The original was a work of brooding Southern Gothic of repressed sexual tensions; Sofia seems more interested in making a costume drama that is a stretch to call a horror story any longer
A strong and worthwhile variant on the imprisonment thriller with Teresa Palmer as a tourist in Berlin who hooks up with a guy who proceeds to make her a prisoner in his apartment
Low-budget film where a couple move into her family home and she is haunted by childhood imaginary companion that may or not be real
A highly ambitious film about a mysterious alien portal that appears in Earth orbit and the attempts to explore what is on the other side
Skyline was a modest alien invasion film; this is a long-planned sequel. The new director has simply turned it into an action film and tediously deals with every alien encounter with gunfire, stunts and explosions
Antonio Banderas is a writer with a block, Jonathan Rhys Meyers a sinister stranger who moves in. Lots of tense psychological games between the two begin only for the film to almost immediately blow the premise
Cryptic Spanish film that eventually coalesces into a unique time travel story, like a more enigmatic version of Timecrimes as we watch pieces of a beautifully wrought temporal jigsaw puzzle slot into place
Takashi Miike’s 100th film, the adaptation of a manga about an immortal samurai. Miike bookends the film with awesome sequences with his hero battling hundreds of opponents but the film in between drags
Blade Runner is a landmark classic but this is well worthwhile sequel from Denis Villeneuve that recreates the fascinating Cyberpunk world in more detail and expands out on the themes laid down in the original. Made with impeccably beautiful detail
Jackie Chan starring action film that reads like an earthbound Star Wars with he up against a villain in black and his army of super-soldiers
The idea of a vampire set in the Prohibition era among the speakeasies and bootlegging rackets sounds intriguing. This is weakened by a low-budget and the simple fact that the vampire has become de-fanged post-Twilight
A rehash of the The Quiet Earth with two American tourists waking up to find themselves in a deserted Iceland. There seem few more prettily photographed places for the End of the World to take place
Tyler Perry is an accomplished impressionist but his two Halloween comedies appropriate elements of the horror film while having no interest in the genre. Here all the horror elements only serve to deliver a lecture on child rearing
This has one of the most original nemeses created for an animated film – a baby in business suit and briefcase and with the demeanour of a ruthless corporate CEO – only for the film to then go and soften the character
Indie film that channels a Lost Highway vibe in which Douglas Smith searches for a missing girlfriend Jena Malone and then wakes up in an entirely different life where he cannot be certain which life is real and which a dream
Set in an alternate version of the present where fantasy creatures – orcs, elves, fairies – live alongside humans, this comes with a cleverness, while being played as a buddy cop drama that anchors it with a realism
A film with a great set-up where three criminals on the run (which include Adrien Brody and John Malkovich) take refuge in a warehouse only to find they are trapped with a maddened killer dog
Film based on an urban legend film about a boogeyman that kills everybody that speaks its name. Director Stacy Title creates one or two haunting and unusual scenes but in every other aspect this emerges as exceedingly generic
A true crime film based on an unsolved home invasion in California in 1981 that left four for dead. From prolific British director Andrew Jones
Modest horror film in which a photographer obtains a camera that predicts deaths before they happen – only to then find it predicts his wife’s death
An Australian effort that feels like a zombie movie version of Walkabout with an infected Martin Freeman wandering the Outback searching for someone to care for his infant daughter before he succumbs
A mockbuster from The Asylum released to take advantage of Pixar’s Cars 3, this is actually a much better film that you expect it to be
Another of the weaker sequels that Pixar seem determined to churn out. This lacks the fun among the anthropomorphic vehicles that its predecessors had with a hardly inspiring story about its hero feeling old and over-the-hill
Low-budget psycho film where Cat who lives in the Catskills decides she wants to hunt tourists from the big city
Adaptation of a book by NZ author Margaret Mahy. Mahy has a sublimely poetic turn of phrase in the writing but the film strips the book down to the point we get no more than a by-the-numbers Young Adult work
Hollywood tries to make a big message film about online mass surveillance but renders anodyne straw arguments. Meanwhile, back in the real world you cannot help but think things the film depicts things might happen very different
There is a heap of crappy low-budget killer clown films. However, I couldn’t quite bring myself to entirely dislike this entry about a supernatural killer clown, which does produce a number of jumps
Pixar’s 19th film. Set on the Mexican Day of the Dead and then venturing into the afterlife, this is a celebration of all things Mexican, which Pixar conduct without any wrong steps. A film made in vibrant colours
While The Shape of Water took attention, there was 2017’s other film about sex between human and fish people. From Xavier Gens, a a Lovecraftian tale about men in a lighthouse engaged in a fierce battle against amphibians
Creep was a wonderfully creepy film with Mark Duplass as someone who invites a videographer to make a film but proves over-friendly to the point of highly disturbed. This is a sequel where Duplass returns for more
Cross was a low-budget attempt to copy The Expendables, featuring a C-list team of action stars (plus some fantasy elements). This is a sequel you doubt many people were burning to see
Xavier Gens film from the screenwriters of The Conjuring films based on a supposedly true-life exorcism. One was hoping that Gens would do amazing things with the exorcism genre but he only rehashes the same cliches
The seventh of the Child’s Play films with the killer doll Chucky. I never much cared for the original series but the modern films – those with Chucky’s name in the title – have become a lot wittier and playful, constantly making jokes back to the rest of the series
One of the most original takes yet on the creatively exhausted zombie film that asks what would happen if a cure were found but the zombies returned to life with full memory of everything they had done
Film about an expedition through the jungles of the Yucatan to investigate a Mayan pyramid that is revealed to contain alien artefacts. This ventures well inside wacky fringe science theories
Low-budget horror film in which a novice actress signs on to star in a low-budget slasher film only to find the director appears to be killing off people for real
Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman gives us an utterly mangled version of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series that has little resemblance to the books, yet makes little sense if you haven’t read them
A film that comes with an interesting sounding premise where a woman ventures through a doorway into a labyrinth world of interconnected rooms and ends up in a fight against the ruling theocracy
A man builds a cardboard maze in his living room only for he and others to become lost in it. This has a wonderfully inventive scrappy handmade eccentricity. Imagine Cube remade as one of Michel Gondry’s sweded films
The zombie film is feeling very played out these days. This is a no expectation entry (even the title seems utterly generic) that proves an unexpected delight, filled with endearing characterisations
This comes with the winning idea of being conceived as a horror version of The Expendables bringing back an amazing line-up of horror actors from principally the 80s. Alas, the film itself as an incoherent mess
The English-language remake of the popular Japanese franchise from Adam Wingard. This essentially remakes the first film and is adequate in its own right but no patch on either of the original Japanese films
Dementia 13 was a routine psycho-thriller elevated by the hand of a young Francis Ford Coppola. This remake adds ghosts and a home invasion to the mundane original, but fails to come anywhere near Coppola’s style
Miles Doleac is better known as an actor but also has a number of credits as a director. Here he both directs and stars as a former priest haunted by an exorcism gone wrong
Sequel to the painfully bad Disney Channel film that copied the success of High School Musical and featured the teenage children of classic Disney animated villains. This is just as empty-headed and unwatchable
Despicable Me was a delightful debut for Illumination Entertainment but has come close to making the studio a one-hit wonder they have milked that one hit for all they can
This comes with a great initial set-up as it becomes apparent that law enforcement investigating a missing woman are dealing with alien abductions
Robert Redford plays a scientist who finds proof of the existence of the afterlife only to then face a worldwide rash of suicides. From the director of the fascinatingly weird The One I Love
Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura creates a gripping survival thriller about a group of friends driving home who become trapped on a small stretch of road by a sniper
Matt Damon gets shrunken to five inches tall in this effort from Alexander Payne, an award-winning director who usually makes films about men undergoing mid-life crises. The film has a cleverness but Payne often misses the possibilities raised
The fourth film in the Dragonheart franchise. Is there truly anybody out there who was begging for this? Cheaply made in Romania where it seems to be straining to drag the original premise out for another film
A vampire film directed by actor Jason Flemyng set around a group of vampires at siege in a farmhouse from a unit of vampire hunters. The vampire film is looking a little tepid post-Twilight era and this does little to turn the genre around
An animated film that bizarrely speculates that the emojis in your text messages are actually living entities that have lives inside the phone. A not-too-well-thought out concept that leaves you with strange questions about its world
Another killer shark film from The Asylum, the people behind the Sharknado. This is a sequel to their earlier Planet of the Sharks and takes placed in a Waterworld-styled drowned future
Nominally a sequel to Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s first film Resolution, this concerns a strange cult but expands outwards to involve a mind-boggling array of backwoods timeloops and reality blurrings
British director Charlie Steeds delivers a well tuned homage to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that gets it right in ways that most of the Texas Chainsaw sequels don’t
One of at least three identically titled films coming out around the same time based around the popularity of escape rooms. This has a group trapped in a room with an unleashed demonic force
This was debatably the first of three films that came out around the same time with the same title. Here a group find themselves in an escape room facing nasty deaths in each room
An indie film about a man, a woman and a robot head who meet and conduct a journey together across a desert at some point after it seems that civilisation has collapsed
The story of the drug-addicted heir Andrew Getty determined to be a filmmaker is almost as fascinating as the one film he made before his death. The film is an extraordinary work, filled with jaw-dropping surrealistic imagery
This makes a generic plot – friends trapped at a cabin in the woods by creatures outside – work by stripping things to the basics and generating a reasonable rollercoaster of suspense
Eccentric and unclassifiable British film that takes place in some kind of gonzo alternate reality aboard a submarine converted into a hotel. The nearest equivalent one can think of in comparison is Delicatessen
The Asylum, the company behind the Sharknado phenomenon, made 2 Headed Shark Attack. Figuring the only way to top that was to keep adding more heads we had 3 and now 5 Headed Shark Attack
Reality bending film where an amnesiac Sean Patrick Flanery wakes up in a warehouse and learns he is a scientist who holds the antidote to a pandemic. But all is not it seems.
Another remake we never asked for. Considering that this had the entire CGI revolution to conceive of the afterlife journey and merely has to top Joel Schumacher, it is amazing how dull and uninteresting this emerges as
Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a director who specialises in cryptic spooky horror films. This is a sequel to his earlier alien invasion film Before We Vanish about aliens come to steal concepts from people’s minds
This has an incredibly claustrophobic premise – two girls trapped on the ocean floor in a cage surrounded by sharks as their air supplies run out – that leaves the hairs rising on the back of your neck
Western based around the idea of Jack the Ripper having relocated out West whereupon he becomes a standard slasher-styled maniac. Featuring Charles Bronson ringer Robert Kovacs as the hero
Live-action adaptation of the popular manga and anime series. Despite having a reasonable budget thrown at it and treating the source material with fathfulness, this looks awkward on the screen
Gore-drenched French-Canadian film where teens play a board game that forces them to kill a select number of people lest their heads explode
An extraordinary anime adapted from Project Itoh, a conceptually challenging work concerning a villain who can manipulate language to drive populations to genocide