The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
A ghost is a person whose spirit continues to live on following death in non-corporeal and insubstantial form (as opposed to other more physical forms of undead such as vampires and zombies). Hauntings refers to ghostly phenomena – films featuring ghosts and/or haunted houses and other places.
A common plot in a many ghosts stories is of the living investigating a haunted place to find who the ghost was and achieving a form of exorcism by aiding them in complete their Unfinished Business and depart.
The haunted house is a long-standing tradition and concerns the investigation of a large old gloomy mansions. More modern variants have tried numerous other form of dwelling from suburban houses to hotels, supermarkets, ships and submarines.
There is the misconception that the ghost story and haunted house film originated in the 1930s. The first Hollywood effort was not until well into the 1940s and the genre did not fully develop until the 1950s/60s, reaching a peak in the 1970s.
The 1980s brought the introduction of visual and makeup effects. The 1990s/2000s introduced the Found Footage investigation of the haunted house. In the 2000s onwards, the ghost story has become so prolific that it is rare to find efforts that stand out from the formula and cliches.
There is also the Asian ghost story – see Asian Horror – where hauntings tend to be less centred around dwellings and more about personal vengeance and the grievances.
The depiction of ghost stories is so numerous that this topic has been split between actual ghost stories (here) and those that depict ghosts in a comedic or other vein – for which see Ghosts in Light Fantasy
This is the finest haunted house film of all. In Robert Wise’s hands, the ghosts are unseen and only ever psychological and suggested – the results are terrifying. Adapted from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House
A ghost story in which the ghost is played by someone beneath a sheet with two eyeholes. It’s an idea that seems too goofy to work outside of an episode of Scooby Doo. I do like being proved wrong and this ended up my Best Film of 2017
Adapted from an award-winning Toni Morrison novel, this is an African-American ghost story that comes with Serious Drama written all over it. Produced by/starring Oprah Winfrey, the film was overlooked at the major award but is a stunning, emotionally raw work
My introduction to Wu Xia – imagine some vision of Kwaidan as directed by Sam Raimi, filled with sensationally beautiful and out of this world imagery and completely nutsoid fantastical battles with ghosts and demons
An incredibly spooky film about two woman on an Australian outback farm that believe they are haunted by a dead body in the well
It is some surprise that Akira Kurosawa’s only full venture into fantastic cinema was with his penultimate film here. A beautifully filmed anthology of eight tales, including several ghost stories and two anti-nuclear parables
Called the Russian 2001. Andrei Tarkovsky makes one of the great SF films, a haunting ghost story set on a space station as an alien planet below drives the crew mad with recreated doppelgangers of their loved ones
Classic film that has gained a cult reputation, this creates a superbly eerie and haunted atmosphere as a woman moves to a new town and finds herself surrounded by mysterious figures
Debate will always rage as to whether this was directed by Tobe Hooper or executive producer Steven Spielberg. It doesn’t alter the fact that it is a superlative rollercoaster of a ghost story that doesn’t always make sense but pulls its effects off flawlessly
The film that made the name of M. Night Shyamalan and still a strong and spooky story despite the variability of Shyamalan’s offerings since then. What made the film a classic was its twist ending, something that has been relentlessly copied by numerous genre films since
Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw is a classic ghost story that hovers in a state of ambiguity as to whether the ghosts are real or in the heroine’s imagination. Of the multiple film versions, this is the best and most authentic to the story
John McTiernan directs Pierce Brosnan is a film about phantom street gangs that creates an incredibly haunted mood
This is the English-language version of the Japanese horror Ring and actually a much better and far spookier film, where the new script gives the story more depth
Excellent and overlooked film with Kathryn Harrold as a psychiatrist trying to deal with the fact that one of the patients in an asylum has vast psychic powers
Classic, exquisitely made weepie romantic fantasy about an artist obsessed with a woman who appears to travel through time
Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel throws much of the book out but has duly become a classic. Jack Nicholson goes grandly mad amid Kubrick’s stupendous production and unsettling set-pieces
Celebrated British horror anthology, which tells five ghost stories and tales of the supernatural. All are strong stories with The Ventriloquist’s Dummy segment in particular having become regarded as a classic
Mike Flanagan follows up the hit of The Haunting of Hill House with a mini-series that adapts another classic work The Turn of the Screw out into a similar kind of cross-generational ghost story. The results are extraordinary
No-budget film that became a word of mouth hit, spawned a series of sequels and sparked off the Found Footage fascination that took over the 2010s. Unlike most of the films that followed, Oren Peli creates a creepingly chill atmosphere and some undeniable jumps
Alejandro Amenabar directed ghost story made not longer after The Sixth Sense that works with nicely subtle effect and arrives at an unexpected twist ending that turn the standard haunted house tale on its head
A film of electrifying tensions set just after World War II where a group of friends gather in an apartment and hold a séance that in turn brings out what they did during the War
One of the classic horror films from producer Val Lewton. The studio gave Lewton orders to make a sequel to his first hit Cat People but he confounded this by making an entirely different film about invisible playmates that has no cat people
Thailand’s Pang Brothers proved themselves some of the best horror directors in the world with this eerie film in which a woman starts to see the dead after receiving corneal implants. Several sequels and an English-language remake followed
A Japanese ghost story in the neo-realist style where a wife and her lover conspire to kill her husband and then dump his body down a well only for him to return to them as a ghost
This is a beautifully made Coming of Age ghost story from the greatly underrated Frank LaLoggia wherein a bullied Lukas Haas is led by a ghost to uncover a murderer
A ghost story from Ti West that gains its effect from a quiet, mundanely understated approach and existing in an ambiguous place where we cannot be sure whether manifestations are real or in the imagination
Unsettlingly spooky Japanese ghost story from Takashi Shimizu that spawned a number of sequels, reboots and English-language remakes. This was the third of the films and superior to all that came after
Classic BBC live broadcast tv special where a camera crew investigate a haunted house. Cited as one of the first Found Footage films, this does some ingenious things blending fact and fiction and messing with its audience
The best film that Blumhouse have produced to date. A ghost story as much as it becomes a relationship drama of incredibly authentic emotion that is beautifully made
An exquisitely haunted Japanese ghost story from the muchly overlooked Kaneto Shindo that conjures some moments of genuinely otherworldly atmosphere as two ghost women take vengeance against samurai
The greatest of all Japanese ghost stories. This is an anthology that tells four stories. Each is made with an extraordinary visual flair and great attention to colour, lighting and design
A popular hit in which Patrick Swayze is killed and becomes a ghost. Bruce Joel Rubin’s script has enormous fun in interpreting aspects of the ghost story from the ghost’s point-of-view.
Hong Kong hopping vampire film that produced a string of sequels. The original is the best, a clever, fast-paced blend of comedy, supernatural and traditional Eastern beliefs
While holding many similarities to The Haunting, this is a strong, intelligent film about parapsychologists investigating a haunted house. Filled with eerie scares and a standout script from Richard Matheson
Part post Night of the Living Dead zombie film, part flower child ghost story, part Body Snatchers and lacking in much explanatory logic, this is nevertheless a film of unnerving and eerie effect
The last great film from Mario Bava, an exquisitely dreamy giallo/haunted house film that had the ignomity of being butchered and made into an Exorcist copy when it came out
Very spooky Stephen King adaptation about a haunted hotel room. In contrast to other haunted house films, this is a one-man show that keeps itself minimally contained inside the room with considerable effect
One of the best and most original ghost stories in some time, a mini-series for the BBC set in the 1890s, this does remarkable things in entirely turning the genre on its head
An underrated mini-series – sort of the anti-Supernatural. This creates a highly original afterlife mythology and some great characters arcs, while overspilling with wry nerdish in-humour
The Pang Brothers are in this author’s opinion some of the finest genre directors in the world. This sequel to their breakout hit The Eye is an even better film that achieves some genuinely haunted moments
Enormously underrated directorial effort from screenwriter David Koepp in which Kevin Bacon gains the ability to see the dead. A film filled with some genuinely spooky moments
Danish tv mini-series co-directed by Lars von Trier set in a haunted hospital. This comes with a blacker-than-black sense of humour in its interwoven character strands plus moments that are genuinely eerie
Pål Sletaune is a Norwegian director who deserves more attention for his reality-bending surrealism. Here mother Noomi Rapace moves into new apartment where ghostly screams come through the baby monitor and she soon finds that she cannot be sure what is real
Classic Japanese kaidan eiga (or ghost story). Made not long after Akira Kurosawa’s new realism in Japanese cinema, this comes with a superb formalism as it slowly moves over into the supernatural
Standout horror anthology designed to highlight episodes from three Asian directors – Hong Kong’s Fruit Chan, South Korea’s Park Chan-wook and Japan’s Takashi Miike – all of whom are on top form
Fascinating and original Taiwanese film about scientists investigating a haunted house and employing various methods to trap the ghosts
An absolutely hilarious parody of the Found Footage film about a film crew trying to conduct a shoot in a haunted house. This comes with mind-spinning levels of meta-fiction
A classic British ghost story that produces an exceedingly haunted atmosphere at times, although falls apart in a highly contrived M. Night Shyamalan twist ending
John Carpenter’s immediate successor to Halloween is a suspenseful and scary ghost story about undead sailors descending on a small town in a fog bank, even if the narrative logic holding everything together is thin
A visually striking compilation of five animated French horror tales. Each varies widely in style but the result is far more extraordinary than many live-action counterparts
Mario Bava essentially created the giallo film. Here he returns to the genre with an entry about an man obsessed with killing brides that comes filled with exquisitely stylish surroundings and directorial set-pieces
The second of the Japanese Ring/Ringu films where director Hideo Nakata improves over the original with a series of eerie scares if a frequently incomprehensible mishmash of story ideas
Kiyoshi Kurosawa attempts to give the J-horrors of Ring and The Grudge a run for their money and creates an intensely haunted film. As with much of Kurosawa’s films, this also comes with a deeply unfathomable plot
Unexpectedly excellent film where an elderly Satanist couple abduct a pregnant woman in order to incarnate their grandson in her unborn child. This deflates the cliches in a series of alternately funny and wild twists
A considerable word of mouth hit, this generates a very spooky atmosphere with highly unusual shooting techniques
Hideo Nakata made the highly influential Ringu but his other films have been uneven. This ghost story is one of his few follow-ups that comes near recapturing the same uncanny mood
Resembling a supernatural version of I Know What You Did Last Summer, this South Korean ghost story delivers considerable spookiness
An incredibly spooky film set at a hospital during a power cut as a nurse on night duty finds ghostly things stirring in the building
Winner of this year Cannes Palme d’Or, this is a Thai ghost story .where director Apichatpong Weerasethaku creates an intensely haunted atmosphere at times, although the film itself remains vague and elusive in terms of plot
I was intrigued a few years ago about whether such a thing as the Islamic horror film existed and shortly after we had A Girl Walks Alone at Night. This could be considered an Iranian version of The Babadook and is a spooky and well made show about a woman slowly descending into fear and superstition
This was where the world took notice of Tim Burton in his second film. This throws the standard ghost story on its head with the dead trying to exorcise the living. The show is dominated by Burton’s wild set-pieces and Michael Keaton’s OTT title performance
A Spanish ghost story that effectively eschews modern jumpshock tactics in favour of subtle old-fashioned scares
From Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, an incredibly spooky film, almost all of which is shot underwater, about two divers discovering a haunted house at the bottom of a lake
A standout adaptation of the oft-filmed kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story) Yotsuya Kaidan/The Yotsuya Ghost Story. A beautifully filmed classic version of the story
The Enfield Haunting is a supposedly true-life haunting that most audiences are familiar with from The Conjuring 2; this is an earlier tv mini-series treatment that offers a more realistically grounded telling
A tv mini-series that offers a dark, adult and definitely not family friendly version of the oft-filmed Charles Dickens tale that reinvents the original in quite astonishing ways
A solid revival of the horror anthology, this tells three stories that all work well. The film also features several before-they-were-known faces
Martin Scorsese returns to the vision of urban hell he gave us in Taxi Driver with Nicolas Cage as an ambulance driver haunted the dead he sees. Powerful, blackly funny at times, if not quite up there as another Taxi Driver
Edgar Wright creates a dazzlingly stylish recreation of 1960s London in a work with Thomasine McKenzie as a modern girl haunted by ghosts of the era’s dark underside
David Twohy, director of Pitch Black, makes a fine subtle, ghost story set aboard a submarine during WWII. At times, this achieves a genuinely haunted atmosphere
One of the psycho-thrillers made by he great and underrated Curtis Harrington during the 60s/70s. The film draws much from Les Diaboliques, right down to casting its leading lady. Harrington delivers suspense with an expert hand
A beautifully subtle and ambiguous film about a pioneer woman alone in a cabin on the American Frontier where she is haunted by demons of the prairies that may all be in her mind
Robert Zemeckis takes on the ghost story with uncommon effectiveness. While this is average on a story level, Zemeckis’s directorial approach pushes it to the unnervingly spooky, with the last fifteen minutes being one of the most suspense-filled sequences in recent memory
This shot-on-video film that became a word of mouth sensation with many people believing they were watching real video footage of a trio lost in haunted woods by a witch. Of course, what nobody knew at the time was this was creating the Found Footage film
Not to be confused with the Twilight sequel, this is a quiet, modestly made Irish ghost story set around a literary festival where the strongest parts are the characters and performances
A modestly effective Iranian horror film where a married couple become trapped in a hotel of shifting realities. One of the few films that favourably compares to the mood of The Shining
Fascinating film about a woman isolated on an island off the Cornish coast who is haunted by cryptic mystery figures, who are possibly all in her imagination, possibly not. A film that creates a fascinating enigma
Film that is supposedly based on a true story which Barbara Hershey are her family are harassed by a poltergeist. This contains the notorious scene where Hershey is raped by the entity
Ghost story about so-called Electronic Voice Phenomenon with Michael Keaton as a widower being contacted from beyond by his late wife. A film that achieves some quite reasonable spooky effect
It is said that animals like dogs can perceive the supernatural. This runs with that idea and is a ghost story told entirely from the point of view of the dog. The results are unexpectedly effective
Ghost story effectively relocated to Glasgow apartment building with a solo mother terrorised by something supernatural. Filled with social realism
Cult Italian directer Mario Bava returns to the Gothic of his highly influential Black Sunday in this atmosphere-laden film about a ghost child haunting a small village
The second and better of the films spun off from tv’s Dark Shadows. At last the show gets production values and atmosphere that do it justice, although the series cult figure of Barnabas Collins does not appear
A film that creates a genuinely haunted mood, something that is aided immensely by an amazing location and some fine, well developed characterisation between the two principals
The novelty of a ghost story that all takes place within the confines of a car stalled on the roadside – all with modestly effective results
Lars von Trier returns to finish off his haunted hospital saga The Kingdom after a 25 years absence, despite the death of several principals, and again milks the same darkly hilarious vein
Mike Flanagan, one of the most exciting genre names in recent years, takes on Stephen King’s book sequel to The Shining, managing the daunting balancing act of both adapting the book and turning it into a sequel to the Stanley Kubrick film
At contrast to the forgettable James Wan produced version around the same time, this Guatemalan film spins the Latin America folktale as a parable about those behind historic atrocities being haunted
Modest and well-made low-budget anthology of Christmas horror tales from three Canadian filmmakers
Fine spooky Thai film about two doctors who set out to scientifically prove the existence of ghosts in a series of experiments that venture waaay over ethical boundaries
Modestly effective film about a haunted suburban house. Debuting director Nicholas McCarthy produces a number of accomplished and eerie scares that stand him as a promising new name. The film weakens in the last act when trying to tie everything together with an improbable rationale
Grave Encounters was an unremarkable Found Footage film. This much smarter sequel takes its lead from Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 in being a meta-fiction that investigates the phenomenon of the first film
A ghost story from Studio Ghibli – although rather than any Western equivalent that sets out to scare the pants off us, this is a sweetly tender story of friendship between two girls. The result more than capably approaches some of Hayao Miyazaki’s best
The most sustained film Takashi Miike has made in some time. In this case, he adapts Yotsuya Kaidan, the most famous of all Japanese ghost stories, which has been filmed multiple times, but rather than offer a straight telling also adds a layer where the story comes to replay itself among the actors in the play
Another multi-director horror anthology – in this case a quartet of horror stories from Bollywood directors that comes with one standout episode in particular
From Johannes Roberts, the director of 47 Meters Down and other works, an undeniably spooky variant on Pet Sematary set in Mumbai as a mother unwittingly resurrects her late son’s spirit
Comedy about a man with ghosts in his home who invites in a so-called ‘ghost assassin’ before it becomes increasingly apparent he is completely nuts. Less a horror comedy than an eccentric bromance gone wrong
Filipino ghost story inspired by The Ring and Ju-on films that generates a reasonable haunted atmosphere in its story about mysterious happenings in an apartment building. This later underwent an English-language remake
The Ghost Story is a genre has felt overused and its clichés churned to a point of exhaustion. All of that said, this Swedish film delivers the goods and conjures an extremely spooky mood
Beautifully made Thai film about a husband whose wife dies in childbirth but where he refuses to let go of her ghost