The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Steven Spielberg produced film about an adolescent Sherlock Holmes often feels like it is Holmes being pitched as an Indiana Jones adventure but comes with some beautifully made touches
The biggest box-office hit six weeks in a row in 2020, albeit during Corona lockdown. This gets some extremely creepy effects in that managed to work on a jaded viewer
Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia makes what is essentially a comedy version of From Dusk Till Dawn albeit with witches instead of vampires. This has one of the funniest openings I’ve seen in some time but thereafter dissipates into broadly farcical and overlong runnings around
A horror film premised around Nicolas Cage beating the crap out of a series of possessed animatronic robots, a fairly blatant copy of the Five Nights at Freddy’s videogame
Sold as a sequel to The Wicker Man, although works as more of an update and expansion of its themes. Received a muted reception but is a not entirely uninteresting film, if nowhere near the league of the original
The 1973 version of The Wicker Man is a cult classic; this is one of the worst remakes of all time that gets nothing about the original right, blunts its themes about religion and tosses in crude shocks and killings
Classic horror film that imagines a secret world of pagan rites existing into the modern day. As much a classic for its colourful creation of a folk culture as it is for an unforgettable ending
Director Charlie Steeds creates a modest film set in 19th Century England about people at an inn as it comes under attack by werewolves
From Makoto Shinkai who made Your Name., a lovely anime about a girl who can control the weather. An odd premise about orphans that soon develops unusual and unexpected depths
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 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
Set in a British boarding school/military academy, this starts out seeming like a ghost story but does a mid-film flip to reveal something else altogether is going on. I held out promise but between a low budget and a contrived end explanation this fails to work
The second-to-last Hammer film, an adaptation of one of Dennis Wheatley’s occult novels, shows them trying to catch up with The Exorcist and its ilk
A UK TV mini-series that borrow much from The Wicker Man in a complex and fascinating story about the discovery of folk religion on a small island and becoming caught up in pending rituals
A serial based on Chandu the Magician, a popular radio superhero who wielded magical and mystical powers. Featuring Bela Lugosi in the title role
Occasionally amusing comedy where a group of fans set out to rescue the heroine’s unrequited crush from a house of vampires
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
Modest 1980s video release that builds with some unnerving effect as Timothy Daly grants shelter to Kelly Preston only to earn the wrath of a pursuing Satanic cult
The original had some undeniably effective jumps but suffered from a lack of explanatory rationale but this makes for a shaky house of cards when the same arbitrary happenings are extended for a sequel
Scott Derrickson film that is badly underwritten in terms of proper explanatory rationale. That said, you cannot deny that Derrickson manages to produce the scary goods on a number of occasions
Z-budget filmmaker Mark Polonia makes another of his entries into the gonzo killer shark film. This is a companion piece to his Sharkenstein – yes, a work about a vampire shark!
A horror film that was the biggest box-office hit ever in Indonesia as a family tragedy stirs up hauntings and the occult. A follow-up to an earlier 1970s film that has become a cult hit.
Rather funny comedy about Satanists and a virginal pizza girl who is chased as their intended victim. This comes with a bizarrely akilter sense of humour that reminds of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours
Folk Horror is a term that has emerged as a distinct genre of its own in recent years; this is a B-budgeted attempt to join the bandwagon
A film that stands much in the shadow of Se7en and the serial killer thriller with Morgan Freeman tracking a ritual African killer
Spinoff of characters featured in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart and a greatly underrated film for Alex de la Iglesia. this pushes into even darker and more anarchic places than Lynch did, featuring outlaw lovers who are black sorcerers on a trail of murder and kidmap
A party bus is stranded in the desert and surrounded by Satanists. At least this is a film that you cannot complain delivers exactly what it promises – plentiful toplessness, gore and cheesy creature effects
Weird Western where a group of outlaws on the run end up in a town of witches
A Syfy Channel film about the present-day discovery of a lost, still extant 19th Century village that has conducted a deal to preserve themselves by annually sacrificing someone to an ogre
A horror film produced by Slash of Guns’n’ Roses fame about a family moving to a new town only to find they have been brought there for a sinister purpose
This creates quite reasonable atmosphere as an undocumented Mexican girl takes a room at a boarding house that has sinister secrets
Visually stunning Russian film with a clairvoyant and a police inspector teaming up to solve a series of occult murders in 19th Century St Petersburg
The fourth of the Blind Dead films from Spanish director Amando de Ossorio. The film, concerning Knights Templars who were blinded and have returned as zombies, have gained a modest cult
German low-budget film about a resurrected sorcerer, this goes out on a wild edge, winds everything up to 15 on the dial and positively wades in blood, gore and torture scenes
Anthology of three H.P. Lovecraft tales from directors Christophe Gans, Brian Yuzna and Shusuke Kaneko. For claiming such a quintessentially Lovecraftian title as this, you feel that it should have been more than it is
The first film from Spanish director Jaume Balaguero, an adaptation of a Ramsey Campbell novel about a mother trying to rescue her daughter from a child sacrifice cult
Ari Aster made a big word of mouth splash with his debut film Hereditary, which had him acclaimed a major new name. This was his follow-up, a fascinating dive into Folk Horror territory in the depiction of a pagan cult
Manos: The Hands of Fate is considered one of the worst films of all time. 42 years later some of those involved in the original decided to make a sequel that manages to be just as bad a film
Considered a lost classic of silent cinema for many years, this is a film loosely based on occultist Alesiter Crowley and was considered a daring work that delved into taboo areas
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
The Leprechaun films were a cheap ripoff of the Freddy Krueger films. This supposed revival bears nothing whatsoever to do with the originals and doesn’t even seem the same type of film anymore
Sam Qualiana is a director who has made some incredibly bad films elsewhere. Here he takes on making a Found Footage film about the hunt for a Bigfoot-like creature
The second of the films based on Dolores Redondo’s police procedurals, this heads into an admirably dark and perverse place with plenty of jolt twists
A crazed Evil Dead-styled film directed by sf/horror writer S.P. Somtow about modern-day Aztec sacrifices, this makes a beeline for bizarrely over-the-top gore effects
Slasher film in which a group of unlikeable teens on Springbreak are slaughtered by backwoods hicks in the Everglades. Sold as a sequel to Lake Fear despite neither film being connected in any way
An M. Night Shayamalan film concerning strangers who conduct a home invasion to force Dave Bautista and family to make a horrible choice to prevent their vision of the end of the world
A passable B-budget film that came out in anticipation of Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. This is actually an Arthurian sequel, featuring Arthur’s son inheriting the sword.
Yorgos Lanthimos trains his a bizarrely deadpan black humour to make a horror film where surgeon Colin Farrell finds a strange malady has afflicted his family unless he kills one of them in sacrifice
An Osgood Perkins film where Tatiana Maslany joins her boyfriend at his cabin in the woods for the weekend as she starts to experience visions and see creatures
Karyn Kusama directs a black comedy from a wryly funny Diablo Cody script in which Megan Fox is a cheerleader who becomes possessed after a devil worship ceremony gone wrong
An perfect example of 1970s exploitation cinema – a regional film made with no budget, a no-name cast and with all emphasis on the luridly sensationalistic. A crappy, badly made film on all counts
From regular horror director Brian Yuzna, a sequel to the Christmas slasher films series. This is quite possibly not only the weirdest Christmas film ever made but the weirdest Christmas horror film ever made
Intriguing and well made film where two tourists seeking to patch up a troubled relationship volunteer at am Italian vineyard – only to find sinister things going on
Edgar Allan Poe would probably have difficulty recognising his short story, which has been turned into a work of softcore gay erotica in the hands of director David DeCoteau
Hong Kong horror/fantasy that appropriates the Evil Dead name for a wild plot about the manifestation of an ancient deity
One of the numerous Italian peplum films of the 1960s featuring assorted body builders as Hercules. This pits Hercules against invaders from the Moon
This Polish film starts out seeming like a possession film set in a monastery but rather pleasingly keeps turning all the expectations on their head with increasingly wilder effect
A ghost story that takes place between two eras set aboard the real-life cruise liner Queen Mary, this conducts a variant on the ghost ship story with some reasonable effect
An adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story produced by Roger Corman. Alas giving it to exploitation director Jim Wynorski, who likes to add really well stacked women to everything does, kills all of Poe’s atmosphere
Amid the early 2010s fad for adult fairytale reinterpretations, this has an anachronistic absurdity that invites you not to take it seriously. A series of action movie poses, CGI and splatter effects are transplanted into the fairytale.
William Friedkin film with Jenny Seagrove as a sinister nanny who is really a baby-snatching druidic tree spirit. Friedkin and all concerned play a B movie idea in remarkably straight face
Film spinoff from the popular anime tv series that seems caught between a film and a tv episode. While the film reaches for epic scale, the usual run of power blasts, there is nothing that we haven’t seen before
A film about a sinister small town with secrets and Bigfoot creatures lurking around in the background. Quite what is going on any more than that is unclear
The third of the Fear Street films, this takes the story back to a 17th Century filled with absurdly modern attitudes and offers an explanation that ties everything together
A low-budget 80s film about a town where the locals are in thrall to a Satanist who has demanded the souls of 103 children
David Seltzer, the screenwriter of The Omen, recycles himself here where Rachael Leigh Cook is caught up in the coming Biblical End of the World around the turn of the millennium
A new film based on the role-playing game. The first film several years ago is poorly regarded. This is an attempt to reboot a film series but suffers badly from being handed to two comedy directors and their flip treatment
Essentially a supernatural version of a 1970s car chase movie with Nicolas Cage as a motorist who has escaped from Hell to settle a score. This makes a play for the trashy and absurd and comes out all the more entertaining for it
An overlooked fantasy film. Although the spirit of Star Wars stands over it, it offers a dark and gritty vision of the Middle Ages and soars with a full flight of fantasy with some stunning dragon effects
Another of the ‘don’t __’- titled entries of the 1970s. This is a bizarre bad movie about teenage runaways in L.A.’s Griffith Park who fall prey to flesh-eating immortals
Forgotten Japanese film about a man searching for a friend finding a village where a bell must be struck to prevents creatures escaping from a pond. Beautiful, bizarre and quite unlike any fantasy film you have seen before
Darren Lynn Bousman is a director that leaves me wondering why he keeps attracting money to make films. Here he makes a work about a couple caught up in sinister rituals while tourists in Thailand
Horror anthology with the novelty where all of the stories are horror versions of fairytales. Particularly amusing is the second episode, a modernised version of Little Red Riding Hood
A really bad low-budget film jumping aboard the Folk Horror bandwagon where construction work at a summer camp stirs druidic rituals from the past
From Jaume Balaguero, a film that assembles a decent cast and broods with suggestions of a haunted house and occult conspiracies but never does much to let it pay off
David Slade seemed a promising directorial name several years ago with works like the charged Hard Candy, before making Twilight films and being lost in tv. Here he returns with a film set around a small town’s deadly Halloween rituals
This makes an interesting attempt to rewrite the basics of The Omen as an erotic film. The usual occult happenings but with an emphasis on bodies coupling
A revival of the popular 1970s Blind Dead series about Knights Templar zombies. In this era of zombie films homages and remakes, it is a surprise nobody has thought to do so before
This sequel to Conan the Barbarian makes the mistake of watering the primal brutalism down to a PG rating and what results ends up being a pedestrian comic-book adventure
This revival of Conan the Barbarian is a dismal effort that gets little of what made the character work, while Jason Momoa gives little impression he is taking proceedings seriously
The first film from Jon Watts, director of the Tom Holland Spider-Man films, and produced by Eli Roth, about a clown costume that possesses the wearer. You have to admire the film for the ballsiness with which it was made
The Stephen King short story only runs to 16 pages. This is the eleventh film spinoff to date (which runs at about one film per 1.4 pages of story). Unlike the other sequels, this claims to be an origin story
This remake of the Stephen King short story (this time with a script from King himself) is a much better film than the earlier 1984 version or any of its numerous sequels
A fifteen page Stephen King story about a patricidal child cult has spawned this film, nine sequels and a remake. Not a very good film, this is stuck with padding a very slight original out to a full-length film
Ostensibly about occultist Aleister Crowley reincarnating in the present, this overflows with mad ideas involving quantum physics, VR, alternate worlds and a heap of classic references – and moreover, is written by the lead singer of Iron Maiden
Probably the least satisfying of Terry Gilliam’s films that turns the real-life fairytale authors into scam ghost hunters in an adventure. Purportedly the subject of behind the scenes troubles, the film never quite comes to life on screen
A blatant copy of Hostel wherein a trio of students cross the Mexican border and fall prey to a Santeria cult. Despite its derivativeness in the plot department, this emerges as a brutal and fairly well made film
One of the films from Z-budget director Al Adamson, who should be a rival for Edward D. Wood Jr in the bad movies stakes. This resurrects Count Dracula in the present-day, living in a castle in the California desert
This feels like mostly a series of horror tropes – ghost hunters with cameras in an abandoned building, backwoods occultists wanting the heroine’s baby – shuffled without originality
Nobody knew it at the time but this was the beginning of the huge surge of Marvel Comics adaptations on screen in the 00s/10s. This distills the basics of the vampire hunter comic-book down into a smart, kinetic action film
John Carpenter film that was marketed as a Raiders of the Lost Ark copy but is more Carpenter trying to emulate Hong Kong’s Wu Xia cinema, which was largely unknown in the West at the time. All with highly enjoyable conic results.
Bollywood conducts a reasonable attempt to make its own equivalent of the zombie film in this mini-series about people at siege from undead British colonial soldiers awakened
Big serious film about Santeria religion that readily delves into the voodoo side of it as detective Martin Sheen and his family are targeted by cultists
Don Coscarelli, director of the culty Phantasm, made this as part of the early 1980s sword and sorcery fad with Marc Singer as a muscular hero who has the ability to communicate with animals
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
Horror film about a couple camping in the woods who are menaced by something lurking outside their tent. A solid film that develops some passable suspense and eventually enters Folk Horror territory
Someone had the bright idea to make a film centred around the creepy doll that appears in the wraparound scenes of The Conjuring. But without James Wan as director, everything disappears into formulaic scares
A cheap and tattily made film from regular genre director David DeCoteau concerning a revived Aztec mummy. This had nothing at all to add to the genre.
One out of some thirty odd films using the Amityville name. This concerns a girl who inherits a haunted theatre in the town of Amityville
Another of the unofficial sequels that bear slim to no resemblance to the Amityville Horror hoax. This is a cheaply made and not terribly scary British effort set in a asylum supposedly built on the site of the Amityville house