The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Outside of animation, there has never been a decent genre film about cute dogs. This film about a robot dog is no exception. The surprise is that this is produced by the normally respectable David S. Goyer
There have been a host of works about artificial intelligence in recent years. This is a worthwhile entry in the field about the relationship between a man and an android on a space mission
Sequel to the hit Korean film Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds about a journey of redemption through the afterlife. This is a much better polished effort than its predecessor
The prehistoric film seems a bit dated and hoary on screen these days. Albert Hughes solves the problem of revitalising the genre a series of jaw-droppingly kinetic action moves and stunning hyper-real landscapes
Film based on a full-length Swedish SF poem that concerns the despair, emptiness and strange societies that emerge among those aboard a spaceship that is thrown off course
Alex Garland’s second directorial effort after Ex Machina. Clearly influenced by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, this features a group venturing into an alien-affected zone where Garland does a fine job of creating a sense of the otherworldly
Andrew Niccol is one of the consistently intelligent and original directors out there. This, set in a world where mass surveillance has erased the concept of anonymity, is the most fascinating and original depiction of a future in some time
A film where a man encounters an instant messenger contact that knows his darkest secrets and suggests he can have godlike powers. This soon heads into some fairly disturbed headspace
Ant-Man was a lightweight but perfectly enjoyable entry in the horde of Marvel Comics adaptations. This sequel has amplified the comedy element, seemingly with the intent of being the joker among the MCU pack
Gareth Evans, the director of The Raid films, makes a film about the search for a missing sister among a cult. The film borrows from The Wicker Man, before a climactic dive into full-on gore and sadism
A few years ago Aquaman was regarded as a joke among superheroes. James Wan dispels any notion of Aquaman’s wimpiness in a series of jaw-dropping effects sequences that propel this ahead of anything the MCU is doing at the moment
A CGI animated film based on the popular comic-book character Asterix. After numerous other adaptations, this was the first of the Asterix films to be written directly for the screen
A film about alien visitors, transcendental states of mind and sinister government agencies. This boggles the mind in terms of laughable writing and all-round bad filmmaking
A crew of reality tv paranormal investigators are hired to investigate a haunted abandoned asylum. This sort of film has been done numerous time before.
When Guillermo Del Toro made Pacific Rim, The Asylum switched US seaboards to make Atlantic Rim. With the release of the Pacific Rim sequel, The Asylum followed in kind
Released at the same time as Avengers: Infinity War, this was a mockbuster from The Asylum involving a team-up between fairytale characters. The third in their Avengers Grimm series
Marvel’s third Avengers film, uniting almost every superhero under their roof, resulting in some thirty characters on screen and a plot that becomes a blur of changing locations and superheroic punch-ups
Fine and underrated film in which a family find themselves imprisoned in their home and then start receiving instructions through the tv pushing them to further and further extremes
This is one of the most twisted films I have ever come across in recent years in which a couple have their home invaded by a clown who makes them into his sexual playthings
Roland Emmerich’s former writer Dean Devlin makes a film where a burglar discovers that David Tennant is a serial killer holding a girl prisoner and sets out to rescue her. Tennant does an entertaining turn as a bad guy
The 1956 The Bad Seed is the original evil child film. All other psycho children films draw themselves from here. This is a remake directed by actor Rob Lowe who also plays the father. McKenna Grace gives a superbly chill performance as the child
Adaptation of a classic graphic novel that imagines Batman back in the late 19th Century as he fights Jack the Ripper. This works rather well – in fact, better than the graphic novel it is based on
This gets full marks for a WTF set-up, an anime that imagines Batman and most of the villains transplanted back to feudal Japan. There is fun to seeing the familiar characters reinterpreted in terms of Japanese imagery
Prolific bad movie director Mark Polonia offers his own no-budget take on the Transformers films where the Transformers are two men in bulky costume who wrestle one another
Nicolas Cage career from the mid-2010s gives all impression he has chosen projects for the full-on dementia value. Here he lets all stops go as the spirit of his late wife possesses the body of the teenage daughter of the woman he is seeing
Very similar to A Quiet Place from several months earlier where here people cannot look outdoors and must remain blindfolded. Hindered by a frustrating lack of any explanations as to what is happening
The most successful Marvel Comics adaptation of all-time up to that point. Enjoyable if I fall short of calling it the best Marvel film ever and its receiving a nomination for a Best Picture Academy Award
Quite a decent little low-budget film about a top secret government agency set up to despatch Lovecraftian Elder Gods.
The live-action adaptation of a manga about a teenager who inherits the powers of Soul Reaper and is thrust into a battle against monstrous supernatural entities
Spinoff from the Transformers films. As though all it took was a change of director, this is a small sweet film that has more in common with E.T. as opposed to Michael Bay’s mass destruction spectaculars
This comes with the intriguingly original premise where Madeline Brewer is a camgirl performer on an adult site who finds that her life has been hijacked by a doppelganger
Mary Harron directs a film about Charles Manson and his Family, taking the perspective of the Manson Girls. The best of several films about the Manson Killings. Former Doctor Who Matt Smith makes a hypnotically fascinating Manson
A film about a scientist trying to perfect a genetic engineering process. This turns into a strange SF reworking of the classic ghost story The Turn of the Screw
A live-action adaptation of the Winnie the Pooh characters. This is a mix of Hook with Christopher grown up and having forgotten about the animals and the Paddington films with the animals conducting slapstick chaos in London
The first of China Mieville’s works to be adapted to the screen, a detective story set in two cities that exist in the same geographic space but where each act as their own country. This misses as much as it succeeds
A documentary made about Clark Ashton Smith, a largely unknown but greatly acclaimed author of weird fiction. Smith was a contemporary of and influence on H.P. Lovecraft
Director Jon Knautz and actress Alexis Kendra made the quite impressive Goddess of Love and reteam for this film where Alexis befriends the disturbed, disfigured cleaning lady of the title
Excellent, superbly written thriller loosely based on the B.T.K. killer story where a teen believes his father (Dylan McDermott in a great performance) might be a serial killer
The third of J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield films. This is set on a space station thing and has an alternate timeline plot but seems disinterested in little more than creating a bizarre effect every few minutes
The Dc Comics character John Constantine was made into an animated web series that was compiled as this film. One is quite taken aback at how much more edgy and adult this is than most of DC’s animated offerings
Film about a tough guy detective settling into the destined role of a monster hunter. With lots of dark streetwise urgency and Corey Feldman proving unexpectedly entertaining in drag as the lead vampire
Gripping German forensic psychology thriller that starts with one of the most memorable hooks in recent years where a pathologist autopsies a body only to find his daughter’s name and cellphone number embedded in its head
This is a British-made fantasy film in the vein of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones but conducted on a B-budget where it does seem to be making an effort
Film where a woman in an asylum insists that her baby has been stolen from her womb and that she has psychic powers. Or equally possibly she is delusional. This sits on an ambiguous fence with some subtlety
Adapted from a series of Young Adult books concerning a group of children with psychic powers on the run in a dystopian future, this failed to find the audience it sought
A low-budget film about a group of soldiers crashed on another planet where they find themselves hunted by an alien. This channels the basics of Predator
One of a growing industry of zombie films that leech off the George Romero name. This remakes Romero’s Day of the Dead, which means it cherry picks key elements and rearranges them in a different way but lacks everything else that Romero offered
Deadpool was an hilarious breath of fresh air amid the Marvel Comics adaptations. This sequel is even better, with the self-deflating, fourth-wall breaking humour even funnier and more slickly polished action
The Maze Runner was a solid Young Adult effort that built out an effective Conceptual Breakthrough story; this, the second of two sequels, feeld like a series of canned action scenes in search of a purpose
A mockbuster copy of Death Wish that gains its novelty from the casting of Robert Kovacs, an actor who could be a dead ringer for the late Charles Bronson, who is naturally cast as a lone man with a gun cleaning up the streets of scumbags
The Death of Superman is still is the top-selling comic-book title of all-time after 25 years. This was the first half of a two-part animated adaptation of the storyline, which brings it to life with a fair and reasonable telling
The third sequel to Death Race and the most interesting of the series. This sets up an Escape from New York scenario and has fun with bad-ass posturing in depicting the interior of the prison as a open air biker bar
Eli Roth’s remake of the classic Charles Bronson vigilante film is an ugly affair. In an era where school shooting are a weekly scourge in the US, do we really need another fantasy about one man becoming empowered and sorting things out with a gun?
For some reason, nineteen years years later, someone has decided to produce a sequel to Renny Harlin’s unintentionally funny killer shark film only to give it a pitiful budget that causes it to sink well into bad movie stakes
Blumhouse film that stars Topher Grace as an asylum detainee who is released to home detention and may or may not be hallucinating seeing figures inside the house
The third of Tsui Hark’s films based on the historical figure of De Renjie/Detective Dee. While the other films were rooted in a relative realism, Tsui lets all restraints loose here and goes way over the top
Irish made Found Footage film where the investigation into a seeming miracle at a Catholic orphanage uncovers a case of possession and assorted deviltry taking place
Michel Ocelot is one of the great underrated animators of the world. Here he makes an exquisite tribute to the Belle Epoque featuring appearances from names of the era and decked out in Steampunk inventions
Solidly effective work of post-holocaust survivalism with a couple on a 400 mile journey where they have to pass through territories held by various gangs
Rodrigo Cortes, who made the fine Buried, directs a Young Adult horror, which is produced by no less than Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, concerning supernatural happenings at a girl’s boarding school.
Claymation film from Aardman Animations that is in effect a prehistoric comedy like The Flintstones or The Croods mixed up with a sports film, but is Aardman’s slightest work so far
A novel take on the story of Bluebeard who forbids his wives to enter a room and kills them when they do. Here Bluebeard is a scientist who keeps cloning the same wife over. A sophisticated and intelligent film full of sharp and intriguing twists
Don’t be put off by the Young Adult label. Look past this and you will end up with one of the most original premises and one of the most beautifully written films seen in some time.
A film where four girls on a weekend getaway undergo a home invasion. It soon becomes apparent that this is a film homaging I Spit on Your Grave
At first glance, this seems a routine alien invasion film. However, this becomes a whole lot more watchable with a mid-film twist that turns what is going on on its head
Horror film from the rising name of Anthony DiBlasi set around an extreme haunt, a Halloween horror show that pushes everything beyond people’s limits
This had one simple job – adapt a book by one of the great SF writers. Instead, we go from a work set in a book-burning future to The Firemen on reality tv shows competing for Likes on social media
A modern day vampire film that comes with the amusing idea of James Ransone as a vampire who lurks around AA meetings to find his prey
The first Fantastic Beasts was a welcome opening up of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe and offered something fresh in the series. This is a more mixed bag where it feels like it is back to business as usual for Rowling
A superpowers rather than a superhero film with Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a woman with abilities on the run who is forced to seek refuge with her estranged family
From the producers of the ABCs of Death films, a further horror anthology where nine directors from around the world deliver eight episodes based on the folklore of their region
Blumhouse have handed the reigns of The Purge series to African-American filmmaker Gerard McMurray who takes the opportunity to get political and drag the series into the era of Black Lives Matter
A halfway reasonable film from The Asylum where passengers in the midst of a plane trip realise part way through that their flight is haunted
Not to be confused with Tod Browning’s shock classic, this starts with a mind-bending quality that leaves you wondering WTF is going on, before logically and ingeniously unfolding as a psychic powers film
The fourth film version of the Disney comedy about a mother and daughter who swap bodies for one day. This was made for the Disney Channel and comes as a grating teen musical
James Franco co-directed effort about an android on a quest across a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Franco draws on cliches established by the Mad Max films and only makes an Albert Pyun film with pretensions
The parallel worlds/alternate timelines theme is one rich in possibilities but this Australian film is one of the least imaginative treatments, serving up only tired good/bad double plots
Apparently the first in a projected trilogy. The ambitiousness of this aside, the film only trades in unoriginal cliches of post-apocalyptic survival and android self-awareness
Pascal Laugier emerged as a most promising director with Martyrs. All of his films hang on improbably contrived twists. This starts out as a home invasion film not unakin to The Strangers but nothing is as it seems
The second of the anime Godzilla films and much more successful than its predecessor. The reconceptions of some of the classic monsters has a dazzling ambitiousness while Godzilla has all the ferocity it should have had in the first film
The concluding chapter in the trilogy of Godzilla anime films. This reintroduces two familiar monsters but takes a long time to build to the monster bash we have come to see
From the Paz Brothers who previously made Jeruzalem, a new take on the legend of the golem that offers an interpretation of the idea very different to any previous film version
The second film spun off from R.L. Stine’s popular horror stories promotes the wonderfully evil ventriloquist’s dummy Slappy to principal nemesis. The rest of the film is predictable but Slappy deserves his own series
Director Neil Jordan delves into the psycho-thriller with Chloe Grace Mortez being stalked by over-friendly senior Isabelle Huppert. Jordan makes an often contrived script into a gripping ride
After Ron Howard’s over-produced version of the Dr Seuss story, one looked to Illumination Entertainment, the animation company behind the Despicable Me films, to do the story right
A tomb raiding adventure about the venture into a tomb filled with deadly spiders in search of an immortality serum. A Chinese-Australian-co-production.
40 years later, Jamie Lee Curtis returns to pay homage to Halloween in what is a direct sequel to the original, erasing the continuity of every other sequel. This fails to conjure what made the original a classic
Documentary about UK’s Hammer Films that focuses on the handful of films that were produced in collaboration with Warner Brothers. Each is discussed in thoughtful detail
Jim Henson’s son Brian trashes his father’s legacy, showing puppets getting up to very adult things we never saw on The Muppet Show. Peter Jackson did it even more outrageously in Meet the Feebles
This feels like one of the numerous copies of Saw with eight people locked in a warehouse with video cameras implanted in their foreheads and told to that only one of them can leave alive
We have had several horror films set around Halloween haunts in recent years. This effort produced by Gale Anne Hurd is well above average and generates quite a degree of tension
The ninth Hellraiser sequel. Most of the others are a far call from Clive Barker’s original. This demonstrates that all hope is not lost in a wild and imaginative opening sequence
Word of mouth hit that has in its fingertips the capacity to be a great horror film. Moments of intense spookiness and an awards-worthy performance from Toni Colette but Ari Aster has an unfocused script
Cabin in the Woods drama with Yvonne Strahovski and her children terrorised by a hulking masked maniac. Tension and suspense that feels served by a conveyor belt
The title suggests a film about stoners more than about a space mission. From acclaimed director Claire Denis, this is less the space realism of Gravity and more akin to Solaris and its mission crew falling apart
A screw-up finds he has an implant in his head threatening dire things if he does not follow instructions, resulting in his gaining godlike powers
An Asylum mockbuster aimed to exploit the release of the Transformers spinoff BumbleBee. This has the unique distinction of being a Transformers-type film shot as Found Footage
This comes with the promising set-up of the setting of a socially collapsing near-future L.A. where Jodie Foster is a disgraced medic who runs an off-the books hospital that treats the criminal underworld.
Lars von Trier, who I would argue is the best director at work in the world, makes a film about a serial killer. The results, as you might expect from von Trier, are outrageous, blackly funny and challengingly provocative
Eli Roth is a director associated with the Torture Porn cycle and one does a double-take at him making a family-friendly film. The results emerge somewhere between Harry Potter and a Goosebumps film