The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
This conducts a perfect simulation of a 1970s tv talkshow with David Dastmalchian as a host who tries to expose/debunk a demonic possession before things go wrong live on air
A film about an agoraphobic videogamer confined to their apartment who is given a Virtual Reality headset to test that soon starts to warp their sense of reality
A strong and dramatic work about a sudden catastrophe that occurs when the world’s internet and cellular system are shut off. Produced by no less than former US President Barack Obama
A revival of the Kirk Cameron starring Biblical End of the World films and a sequel to the Nicolas Cage starring reboot. Directed by and starring your favourite internet troll Kevin Sorbo
Another of the DC Original Animated Movies. This deals with both the Legion of Super-Heroes and Supergirl, bringing them together in a mutual adventure
A thriller in which two brothers fleeing police take refuge at a farmhouse where it becomes increasingly apparent that there are secrets and sinister goings-on
Disney’s original The Little Mermaid was an enormously fresh film. This is the live-action remake that came out amid much controversy and is inevitably a lesser shadow of the original.
A low-budget Loch Ness Monster film, this does capably well for the most part but then bizarrely enough turns into an Alien-copy part way through
An exhaustive and very accurately detailed tv mini-series based around the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer who targeted prostitutes in the north of England between 1975 and 1981
William Brent Bell, director of The Devil Inside and The Boy, makes a Folk Horror film. This borrows much from The Wicker Man and only seems Folk Horror by cliche
Another low-budget H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, this abandons all but the bare bones of the story to create a work about abominable experiments lurking in the halls of an abandoned asylum
Anime that is a variant on Groundhog Day about a town that becomes caught in a time pocket following an industrial accident with the residents forced to live in the same day
A fake True Crime film. This is loosely to the point of almost non-existently based on a serial killer who stalked victims in a van in 1970s Florida. This is blown up into a Duel wannabe with the van prowling everywhere
A French animated film, SF noir set on a future Mars with detectives fighting against someone who is jailbreaking robots. This deploys a strong and confident use of Cyberpunk tropes
This ended up being the lowest rated of all MCU films. One wondered whether this was just fannish hyperbole but no what we end up with is the Batman & Robin of The MCU, the single worst film that franchise has produced
The people behind Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey deliver a horror version of the nursery rhyme. Here Mary becomes a middle-aged woman living in the woods with a hulking son who has a lamb’s head
The sequel to the Jason Statham starring killer shark film, bigger and more over the top than before. The surprise is seeing cult director Ben Wheatley turning to making a big, dumb film
The third of The Asylum’s trilogy of films about giant prehistoric sharks
A real head-scratching oddity, a Batman animated Christmas film
Cocaine Bear proved a reasonable success. The Asylum’s response was to give us Methgator about a drug-addicted giant alligator
A documentary focused on the unique and distinctive French director Michel Gondry, tracing his emergence through music video and to the success of films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
An ambitious film yet a;; contained within a single house, set on the eve of a space mission where the commander realises that the A.I. has started going wildly off-book
The seventh of Mission: Impossible films with Tom Cruise still on great form at age 61. He and the team raise the bar for the series to a new high
This tries to go one up on Sharknado and offers a tornado made up of assorted animals and prehistoric life. A completely ridiculous film from prolific British producer Scott Jeffrey
Solid South Korean attempt to copy Gravity and The Martian with the attempts to rescue an astronaut who becomes stranded on The Moon
Brit Marling is one of the most intelligent creative faces of the 2010s/20s. Here she co-writes, co-directs and stars in a fascinating murder mystery set in the tech world at a futuristic retreat
A Halloween horror from a director with a reasonable genre association, this establishes its genre bona fides but then shoots itself in the foot
A psychologist is sent in to interview a killer facing execution who makes the claim he is possessed by a demon. Despite being made by the people behind God’s Not Dead, this is actually a well-made and captivating film
A thriller about the hunt for the carrier of a deadly mutated form of Ebola. This is a not uninteresting film but it seems stuck in pre-Covid depictions of plague and pandemic
From an Alexandre Aja associate, a reasonably tight thriller about a woman taking shelter in a gas station from a psycho sniper outside
Nightwatch about the paranoia of a morgue attendant on the night shift was a festival hit. After 29 years, the principals reunite for a sequel
A new adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984. In this case, the film was shot in Russia and imagines the world as a full-on dystopian future quite unlike any of the previous film versions
A woman alone in a farmhouse fights off invading aliens. Undeniably, effective, this is an uncredited remake of the classic Twilight Zone episode The Invaders
More from James Wan’s The Conjuring Universe, this places more focus on mood and atmosphere than The Nun’s ludicrous jump effects
An original work that conjures a fantastic sense of ominous Lovecraftian cosmic horror as a man is haunted by a cult whose purpose is to wake a slumbering deity that is dreaming all of reality
A very strange Japanese-made blend of fairytale and detective story that takes place in the realm of fairytale where Little Red Riding Hood turns detective to solve a murder at Cinderella’s ball
Guy Ricthie makes a spy action film that doesn’t take itself too seriously and is far more absurdly entertaining than anything you expect it to be. Hugh Grant steals the day as the super-villain of the show
A sequel, or more correctly, prequel to the recent remake of the Stephen King novel. This has some legitimacy in that it is adapted from a story recounted in the book
Disney conduct a live-action remake of their Peter Pan and promisingly place it in the hands of David Lowery, director of A Ghost Story and The Green Knight
In the same vein as The Conjuring films, a film about a true-life Spanish team of paranormal investigators
A True Crime film where the story of a woman who killed two men and fed their remains to her pigs is essentially turned into a slasher movie
A well made tribute to the 1980s slasher film with characterisations and performances that make much rounded characters than usual
One of the last films made by Julian Sands before his death, this concerns a cursed musical score that ties back to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Sands plays an autocratic orchestra conductor
SF film that plays out like it should be an episode of Black Mirror where Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor play a couple who sign up for a process where a baby can be gestated and born externally inside an egg
Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone conduct a revisionist take on the Frankenstein film. This ended up a critical favourite at most of the 2023 awards with Emma winning the show in an hilarious performance
A film based on the true-life figure of the Vatican’s official exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth this could have been great but descends into tedious hokum
A story about an apprentice at a mysterious company that deals with magic, this could well serve as a fix for those wanting something more of the Harry Potter franchise
A fascinating lost world/alien lizard people stop-motion animated film that has been in production for a record 56 years, eventually pieced together and released by Charles Band several years after its creator’s death
Zack Snyder returns with a work that is all but a Star Wars film in name where he draws heavily on the basics of The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven
Twilight fairly much killed the vampire film. This is the first of two big-budget offerings of 2023 that aims to turn that around
This has a fascinating premise where the Catholic Church develops a resurrection process, before one priest starts to see a darker conspiracy beneath. Shot in the Screenlife process where the film screen becomes a computer screen
A film that stands much in the shadow of Se7en and the serial killer thriller with Morgan Freeman tracking a ritual African killer
An utterly charming film, all told without dialogue, about a dog living in 1980s New York who purchases a robot as its new best friend
A comedy variant on android/A.I. themes where two people use robot doubles for romantic subterfuge only for the two androids to elope together
Sarah Snook stars in an Australian ghost story in which her daughter seems to become possessed by the sister who went missing years ago
Jenn Wexler directs a film about thugs taking over a girls’ boarding school that pleasingly subverts your expectations of everything it is going to be at every turn
A comedy about a guy who obtains a time travel device and uses it to go back and try to prevent his girlfriend breaking up with him
The Saw series is back and this has been getting some of the best reviews of any entries in the series
The sixth entry in a series that began as a smart and clever parody/deconstruction of the slasher film. Now this has become just another teen franchise film that has forgotten all the meta margin notes.
A documentary about the shark film phenomenon, covering all the way from Jaws to the deliberately ridiculous killer shark film with illuminating insight
Shazam! was one of the more enjoyable DCEU superhero offerings, placing a light-hearted spin on the superheroics. This is the sequel
A reboot of the classic Japanese tv series about a superhero who goes into action on a motorcycle using a suit to transform into a grasshopper being
Another in the spate of recent A.I. films of the 2010s/20s. Here one can buy android replacements for one’s late spouse but someone is hacking and causing them to go rogue
Paco Plaza, co-director of the [Rec] films, shows James Wan how to do a nun horror film properly. This is a prequel to Plaza’s earlier Veronica, telling an origin story for Sister Death
This seemed to have a lot of promise in its set-up of Adam Driver crashlanded in Earth’s prehistoric past fighting off dinosaurs
A sloth is adopted as the mascot of a sorority house and proceeds to go on a killing spree. This emerges as entertainingly tongue-in-cheek
The animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse proved an unexpected success. This sequel builds on that ups the artistic quality of the original to something quite extraordinary
Robert Rodriguez revisits his juvenile spy capers franchise after a twelve year absence. Not perfect but it improves over the last couple of sequels
The late Stan Lee needs no introduction as the most influential figure over the comic-book in the 20th Century. This is a documentary about his life
Another entry in the popular Folk Horror revival of the 2020s, this is a superb slow burn film that operates essentially as a British Pet Sematary
A film about a stop-motion animation filmmaker who descends into a dark and obsessive state of mind
An incredibly refreshing and original psycho film, made with a furious energy. Every bit of the way it is constantly messing with us and turning everything we think is going on on its head
Fascinating film set during Puritan witchery as men travel into the woods to confront a witch, this has many similarities to Robert Eggers’ The Witch: A New-England Folktale. Made by an historian who makes everything authentic to the era
An H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, this is a venture into bodyswap horror that proves immensely entertaining ride
Illumination Entertainment, the company behind the Despicable Me films, make an animated film based on the popular videogame franchise. The result was the second highest grossing film of the year
We have had a spate of films in the last few years about androids and A.I. This has to count as the first film about an android stalker
A New Zealand-made monster movie where a venture down into an old water tank succeeds in disturbing an amphibian creature
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the pop culture phenomenon of the 1980s. They have not fared so well in the 2000s but this new animated film written by Seth Rogen is a promising start
Eli Roth’s homage to the slasher film that comes with a dark sense of humour and a series of novelty deaths that rival the best of the 80s slasher heyday
This is a Norwegian film based on the Scandinavian folklore figure of the barn elf, a household spirit that can turn malevolent if upset. The film becomes in essence a Nordic version of Gremlins
Quite decent Blumhouse film in which children suddenly go bad and begin playing malicious, murderous games with adults
A wonderfully paranoid film where drug dealer John Boyega discovers illicit mind control experiments are being conducted on a ghetto neighbourhood and that he is one in a series of clones
This is an Australian film where two crystal meth addicts find a drug that transports them through time. While keeping itself contained to a single location, this emerges out into a cleverly constructed time paradox
A Blumhouse production that ends up being a smart conceptual mash-up between Back to the Future and Halloween
A remake of the work that launched Troma films. The original The Toxic Avenger was a gungily nasty film that readily trod way over all lines of good taste. In being cast with name stars, this has been cleaned up considerably
The seventh of the live-action Transformers films, the second made after Michael Bay stepped down from the director’s chair
Gripping German thriller with a woman abducted and imprisoned in a car trunk. Like Buried, this takes place entirely inside the trunk with her using her phone to try to get help
A film with an ingenious premise where a nearly blind woman must rely on a total stranger to guide her by her phone through the woods while avoiding a pursuer
The sixth entry among the popular multi-director anthology series, this includes episodes from Scott Derrickson among others but is also one of the weaker of the V/H/S films overall
Adaptation of a classic Aleksei Tolstoy story set in Eastern Europe as a family awaits the return of the patriarch who has been turned into a vampire
Prequel to the Chinese spectacular about the construction of an engineering project to move the Earth, this comes with some epic-sized effects sequences
The idea of H.G. Wells’ classic alien invasion novel rewritten with a Young Adult focus makes you cringe but the idea works in its own way
A zombie comedy from the Quebecois trio who were responsible for Turbo Kid, this takes place in a world where zombies are less a horde than an annoyance who have been relegated to the fringes of society
Christopher Landon, director of Happy Death Day and Freaky, makes a comedy about a family who turn the ghost in their house into a viral sensation
The Adams Family have made a series of striking horror films in recent years. This is an impressive work set around a circus, a cross-country murder spree and dark magic
Yes, someone made a horror version of the much loved children’s character. Imagine The Texas Chain Saw Massacre where Leatherface has been replaced by Winnie-the-Pooh
This may be or may not be a werewolf film. What we have is a work that is long on mood and much ambiguity as a man hides in the English countryside from a crime he has conducted
Actress Anna Kendrick directs a film based on a true-life serial killer Rodney Alcala who appeared on tv’s The Dating Game
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has become a cult classic. This offers a Willy Wonka origin story but seems to be far too nice a work that is missing the dark bite of the original
Becky was a modest effort with Lulu Wilson as a thirteen year-old violently fighting off home invaders. This is a sequel with her up against white supremacists