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
Australian-made adaptation of a James Herbert novel with Robert Powell as a airline pilot who is haunted following a crash. In the director’s chair, actor David Hemmings kills all atmosphere
Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa has developed a reputation for his intensely uncanny and deeply unfathomable horror films. This is one of his earlier works, a much more straightforward haunted house film that in its more bizarre moments attains the whacked-out dementia of the cult Japanese film House
A South Korean ghost story that achieves quite a degree of spookiness, albeit influenced by the Japanese Ring phenomenon, although things fall apart at a confusing twist ending
An anthology of Halloween-themed horror tales, all from different genre directors, including some interesting high-profile names. The results are uneven with the film providing a couple of amusing segments but nothing truly standout
The fourth of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films. This mixes it up slightly and adapts four Poe stories into three episodes, each of which stars Vincent Price
The director of the I Spit on Your Grave remake makes a low-budget film about a haunted Western ghost town
The kaidan eiga or Japanese ghost story has a fine tradition on screen and there are some excellent films. The Western-made Japanese ghost story is a far less successful prospect. This is one effort concerning three tourists who travel to a haunted Japanese temple
Influential if possibly overrated work in the Italian Gothic cycle of the 1960s. There’s the haunted figure of Barbara Steele and rich atmosphere, even if the plot doesn’t make much sense
Ghost story that seems to be intended to play to a more literary level than most of its contemporaries
After the success of their remake of House on Haunted Hill, Dark Castle Entertainment remade another William Castle film here, expanding it with a full arsenal of visual and makeup effects
A low-budget ingenue effort by three friends about a tenant who discovers that the third floor of his apartment building contains the ghosts of dead asylum inmates
Softcore version of Thir13en Ghosts with ghosts hunters wandering through a house and seeing various girls making out. The various encounters seem to lack even the basic conviction from those involved
One of the films from gimmick master William Castle, a more routine ghost story that eventually opts for a mundane ending and was sold with the gimmick of Ghost Viewer glasses. Later remade as Thir13en Ghosts
Another crude and witless genre parody in the vein of Jason Friedberg-Aaron Seltzer of Epic Movie, Disaster Movie et al notoriety. I there is anything worse than that it is surely a failed attempt to imitate them
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
The Three Investigators books were an essential part of my youth. This does a fair job of remaining faithful to the stories, albeit with the addition of some grating modernisations, and creates reasonable atmosphere as they investigate a seemingly spooky mansion
An offering from The Asylum where a replica of the Titanic sets sail only to be beset by the ghosts of those who sank aboard the original ship
Czech-made haunted house story that does not vary far from the traditional basics but generates a sparse but modest atmosphere
The eighth and last of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. Some claim this tale of possession by a late wife is the best but it feels an uninspired rehash of the plot elements from Corman’s other Poe films.
Another Japanese horror film that stands heavily in the shadow of Ringu. Directed without much style and often uninteresting to the point of being dull, it is hard to tell from this that you are watching a film that inspired eight sequels
Bert I. Gordon, a director known for his cheapo 1950s giant bug film, here ventures into the ghost story but delivers it in terms crude and absurdly heavy-handed pop-up effects
I was very impressed with director Marcel Sarmiento on the basis of the perversely twisted Deadgirl. Here Sarminento turns his hand to making a ghost story
Disappointing Bryan Singer produced horror anthology set around Halloween where its potential is frequently dragged down by over-emphatic direction
An early film from Apichatpong Weerasethakul, two tales – the first a gay love story, the second about a ghost tiger
Another version of Henry James’ classic psychological ghost story updated to the 1960s where the subtleties of the original are rendered in terms of crude effects
A BBC adaptation of the classic oft-filmed Henry James ghost story in which we cannot be sure whether the ghosts are real or exist inside the heroine’s imagination. This treats some aspects of the story liberally but gets the essence of the story right
Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw is considered one of the greatest of all ghost stories. This new film version has been placed in the hands of Floria Sigismondi, considered one of top contemporary music video directors. What could possibly go wrong?
An 80s horror film that suffers a bizarre identity crisis and doesn’t seem to know whether it wants to be a haunted house film, a home invasion film or a makeup effects vehicle
Francis Ford Coppola makes what may be a ghost story or a vampire film but things are so confused you are never sure what. Less like the mature work of one of the great American filmmakers than an ingenue effort from director straight out of film school with a head full of muddled pretensions
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
Undeniably effective ghost story where Sandra Oh plays a woman who is haunted by the ghost of her abusive traditional mother
Scriptwriter David S. Goyer takes the director’s choice to make a possession film. The one distinction here is that Goyer draws from Jewish mythology, otherwise this feels like another canned teen horror film
Film about a woman who moves into a new apartment and is haunted by a little ghost boy. Follows the plotting for the ghost story genre to a completely tried and true formula and with wholly unremarkable results
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
A really quite spooky film about a series of audio recordings send to a podcast that seem to contain evidence of a possession. A film that almost entirely has its effect relayed by sound
Modest and well-made low-budget anthology of Christmas horror tales from three Canadian filmmakers
A couple on a getaway to an uninhabited island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef find the island may be haunted
One of the earliest ghost stories made by Hollywood, a slow and old-fashioned effort where the scares are psychological
One of the spate of South Korean ghost stories that came out in 2000s. While made with undeniable directorial style, the two hour running time drags and the plot is often unclear what is happening
The Hollywood remake of the South Korean ghost story A Tale of Two Sisters that waters down and reduces the effectiveness of the original to generic shocks
There is a certain potential to the concept of two rival teams, parapsychological debunkers and a tabloid tv crew, researching a reputedly haunted prison. Only a couple of years later, this would have been mandatorily made as a Found Footage film but suffers from a director with no aptitude for atmosphere
Ghost story effectively relocated to Glasgow apartment building with a solo mother terrorised by something supernatural. Filled with social realism
The third of the Urban Legend films, unconnected to any of the previous two. This lamely tries to stretch the thin premise out to a story of high school supernatural vengeance
A film with a captivatingly original idea – bank robbers break into a bank vault, only to find they have stirred something supernatural imprisoned there. A film that builds a more than reasonable head of tension before losing it with a weak payoff
This has a great premise – a camera crew revisiting the site of a cult mass suicide stir up the ghosts of the cult members – and a director who I always maintained had much untapped potential. Alas, the finished result seems to slip by his hands
One of the better films from exploitation director Jess Franco that develops a haunted atmosphere that while crude is hard to shake
Paco Plaza has become one of the premiere names in Spanish horror due to the [Rec] films. Here he attempts to follow in the footsteps of The Conjuring with a film based on a supposedly true supernatural incident in 90s Madrid but fails to make a terribly interesting work
An anthology of five short Found Footage horror films each from a different director. As with any anthology these are variable in tone but are on the whole mostly effective and contain a number of alternately unearthly and spooky moments
Sequel to the modest success of V/H/S, an anthology of short Found Footage horror films featuring a different line-up of genre directors. The episodes are competent at best, none standout and mostly forgettable
The fifth film of the Found Footage horror anthology series, including one episode that is among the best of the series so far
The second film from Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz is an intensely haunted albeit enigmatic journey into Southeast Asian jungles in search of a missing child
One of the films from cult director Jesus Franco, one effort among Franco’s mostly cheap output where his mix of softcore erotica and pretensions towards artiness were at their most inspired. On the other hand, the film is written with a randomness that makes it impossible to understand anything that is happening
Strong return to genre material for Australian director Richard Franklin with Radha Mitchell as a yachtswoman in a round the world race facing ghosts on board that may well all be in her imagination
Strongly reminiscent of The Innocents, Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones plays a nanny arriving at an estate to tend a boy who claims to hear his dead mother’s voice in the stone walls.
South Korean horror film that generates a more than effectively creepy atmosphere. The downside is that you reached the end of the show with no clear idea what is going on and why things are happening
John Carpenter returned to the director’s chair after more than a decade but failed to light the world on fire. Carpenter makes what you could call a ghost story version of Girl, Interrupted. The scares are tame and the film is hamstrung by an improbable M. Night Shyamalan twist ending
Problem ridden Disney ghost story with a science-fiction rationalisation that never quite comes together on screen
Sequel to Anthony Hickox’s Waxwork, which ups the number of horror homages but suffers a low budget
Solidly atmospheric effort concerning a middle-aged couple who buy a house with sinister forces lurking in the basement. This builds to an admirably gore-drenched climax
An incredibly spooky film about two woman on an Australian outback farm that believe they are haunted by a dead body in the well
Early film from Larry Fessenden about a family and a Native American spirit. Much brooding build-up but not much payoff (*)
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
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
Another South Korean copy of Ring with haunted pop songs instead of tv broadcasts. This offers interesting insight into the K-pop phenomenon but nothing particularly standout in the way of scares
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
Winchester House with its eccentric designs and strange history is reputedly one of America’s most haunted locales. From Australia’s Spierig Brothers who made the likes of Daybreakers and Predestination, this attempts to tell its story but emerges as far less than it could have been
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
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
Way back before Blumhouse’s Ouija and the subsequent cheap ouija-titled films, there was the 80s horror Witchboard, which proved popular enough that it produced two sequels starting with this
A passable 80s horror in which Tawny Kitaen summons an evil spirit via an ouija board. That was a sufficient hit on video shelves that two sequels followed and then a remake.
Italian horror film featuring David Hasselhoff and Linda Blair that has little going for it bar some imaginatively gruesome deaths
The revived Hammer Films had with the ghost story The Woman in Black. This is the original version of the story made as a movie for British tv with a script from Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale
The revived Hammer Films visit the classic British ghost story tradition. This is impeccably mounted but the film offers nothing more than a series of disappointingly superficial boo moments of zero impact
A sequel to the 2012 ghost story from the revived Hammer Films, this adds precisely nothing to the original, has nothing to say and nothing in its directorial arsenal that is not a tiresomely over-cliched jump – you just ask, why was this film even made?
Blumhouse film with Danielle Deadwyler and family having to deal with the ominous threat of a mystery woman in black veil who simply sits in their yard
After making the groundbreaking anime Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo then chose to direct this oddity – a live-action comedy about a frustrated Yakuza enforcer trying to evict an apartment of foreigners that turns into a horror film in its last third
B-budget Syfy Channel outing that attempts to answer the true-life Unsolved Mystery of the lost colony at Roanoke. Unfortunately, the film’s answers are no more interesting than a bunch of Viking spirits, while the film generates little atmosphere or anything beyond rudimentary historical conviction
Old Dark House comedy set around the antics of big band leader Kay Kyser. Starring several horror names of the day – Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre