The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The Woods refers to the use of any forest, bush or large wooded wild area as a locale in fantastic cinema (although not a jungle). Usually the woods will be some distance from civilisation. It is a borderland world where those who come from civilisation, which represents the rational everyday world, are forced to confront forces that lie outside the safety of the world of reason.
In the fantasy film, in particular the Fairytale, the woods can be enchanted where unexpected and magical things can occur. There are also frequently darker elements present in the fantasy woods such as the Big Bad Wolf and Hansel and Gretel’s witch.
In the horror film, the woods can be a place where those who innocently stray are separated from civilised amenities and forced into a brutal survivalism as they come under attack by those that live there. In these cases, the woods can be inhabited with lurking psychos and slasher maniacs, in-bred hillbillies, witches, spirits, demonic forces and those engaged in folk ritual. The cabin in the woods is also a frequent locale where those who venture are forced to hold off at siege from the dwellers of the woods.
The woods is the principal locale of the Backwoods Brutality film and a number of Slasher Films. The Bigfoot Film also takes place in the woods where it is an elusive creature than can be seen as either monster or shy and an endangered species.
Made by Walden Media following the success of their The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, a well-made adaptation of a Christian children’s book even if it sits uncertainly between gentle realism and the push to make it a fantasy film
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
Not at all the film you’d expect for a film directed by stand-up comedian Bobcat Goldthwait – a Found Footage film about Bigfoot. Based on Goldthwait’s record as an actor, you expect this to get batshit crazy, but it instead heads into Blair Witch territory with rather effective results
An affectionate recreation of 80s-type kids-on-an-adventure films like The Goonies as kids come up against a creature that may be a werewolf or a Bigfoot. Made with humour and a liking for its characters while not forgetting to be scary
Disappointingly, this is not about the famous pioneer expedition that turned to cannibalism but a modern slasher film that takes place near where the incident occurred. Okay on its own terms.
An amusing parody of the Backwoods Brutality film where the hillbillies are likeable innocents and the college kids end up killing themselves in a series of bizarre accidents. Amusing, although in the end is only a one-joke film
One of the few remakes of the 00s/10s that delivers the goods. While messing around with the plot set-up with mixed results, this quickly goes for broke to create a satisfying show on most accounts
Fascinating Norwegian film about the discovery of a mysterious girl who it gradually becomes apparent is not human … The first 20 minutes are a superb piece of scene-setting but the rest of the film consists of not much more than people sitting around a cellar waiting for something to happen
On the slight side as a Disney theatrical film, nevertheless this keeps to the essence of the original tales and comes with some appealingly playful fourth-wall breaking visuals
A horror anthology featuring episodes from seven different directors. As with other anthologies, the episodes vary in quality, ranging between the so-so, the mostly quite good and one standout segment
The people behind Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey offer up a savage take on another childhood favourite with a horror version of Bambi where Bambi becomes a mutated deer with a murderous hatred of humans
British werewolf film that wittily uses being a werewolf as a metaphor for being gay
After reviving The Invisible Man, James Wan associate Leigh Whannell takes on a reworking of The Wolf Man
Obscure Australian film about people being hunted by a mythical creature known as The Yowie
Larry Buchanan is a director on a par with Edward D. Wood Jr. This, not to be confused with the 1974 killer baby film, is his best film. Buchanan creates a perverse obsessiveness that is fascinating to watch
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
This takes its title literally – it is made by a woman director and there are no men on screen. The result is somewhere between The Descent and The Blair Witch Project with an undeniably surprise twist ending
Ghost story that does an excellent job in creating an incredibly haunted and unusual atmosphere. On the other hand, the film falls apart during the second half where it heads in another direction altogether and leaves one entirely unclear what is going on
English-language remake of the Mexican film, this version made by Jim Mickle who made the fine Stake Land. This version is far less cryptic about what is happening but is more muted and takes far longer to ever arrive at being a horror film, although delivers an effectively brutal ending
One of the better video-released Disney sequels churned out during the 90s/00s, this finds some of the innocence of the original even if it never scales the same heights
The much lambasted but not entirely uninteresting sequel to The Blair Witch Project. Documentary director Joe Berlinger adds a fascinating layer of meta-fiction that winds in the real-world reaction to the first film
The amusing idea of a mimicry of a Bear Grylls-type wilderness survival reality show – but with the addition of a monster.
Charles B. Pierce, a director who gained a cult with his films for 1970s drive-in audiences, makes a sequel to his earlier pseudo-documentary The Legend of Boggy Creek about the hunt for a Bigfoot creature
Early film from Larry Fessenden about a family and a Native American spirit. Much brooding build-up but not much payoff (*)
Singaporean film about tourists experienced haunted spirits in the jungle, this owes much to The Blair Witch Project
One of Woody Allen’s slighter films, a sexual rondeau set at the turn of the 20th Century, although mostly riffing on Allen’s familiar sexual neuroses. Contains minor fantasy elements.
Adaptation of the Shakespeare play about fairy enchantments by Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies. Davies goes with a standard interpretation alongside radical reinvention – Athens as a fascist dictatorship
Amiable live-action adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s work made for the BBC with an all-star cast
Under the umbrella title ShakespeareRetold, Shakespeare’s tale of fairy enchantments and romantic mix-ups is reimagined in a modern day British holiday camp
Audiences were confused by a title and promotion that led them to expect a horror film. This isn’t a horror film but a plague outbreak/fallout shelter drama – at which it is an okay offering but nothing standout
Eduardo Sanchez, the co-director of The Blair Witch Project, makes a Found Footage Bigfoot film. He makes a solid entry but not one substantially different to the last 238 Found Footage films
The first film on the theme of zombies from the American Civil War. Not too badly made and with an unusual cast line-up including Nichelle Nichols as a drill sergeant
Rather amusing variant on the killer android theme where Kathryn Harrold buys a love robot as companion and causes it to become unstable when she overrides its safety protocols
This makes a generic plot – friends trapped at a cabin in the woods by creatures outside – work by stripping things to the basics and generating a reasonable rollercoaster of suspense
For a reasonable part of the runtime, this plays as a wilderness survival drama about a woman abandoned in the woods. Somewhat directionless before being redeemed by its twist ending
Film made without dialogue about haunted happenings at a cabin in the woods that attains quite a haunted atmosphere
This was Adam Green’s homage to the Friday the 13th series that comes with the virtue of a high level of gore and a sense of humour. This was subsequently spun out to several sequels
The directorial debut of Ryuhei Kitamura. A film premised on the idea of mashing the John Woo-styled gangster film up with the gore-drenched George Romero zombie film.
This gets the award for the ballsiest title of any horror film of recent While the slasher film of the 00s has become much more chaste, this doesn’t let down on the plentiful nudity. At the same time, it is also a smartly self-aware horror film
Outrageous Finnish splatter comedy about a giant rampaging bunny creature. A film that in its better moments captures something of the sensibilities of early Peter Jackson films
An oddity that seems to start as a film about IT espionage and then becomes a survival horror with a paintball team on a corporate retreat being hunted through the woods
French Backwoods Brutality film heads in some admirably weird and gross directions but falls apart at the end
Ben Wheatley has become a cult director in recent years with films like Kill List and High Rise. Here he conducts his own unique take on Folk Horror. A film shot during the Covid lockdown
Indie film that seems a mix of A Field in England and The Picnic at Hanging Rock. The first half contains some very realistic scenes of people getting wasted on drugs but the second as characters set out along a path in the woods that leads to Hell proves frustratingly elusive
A supernatural variant on Overlord where G.I.’s during WWII enter the Black Forest and encounter something supernatural
One of the first copies of Alien, this essentially acts as a slasher movie but with an alien instead of a hockey-masked killer. It also manages to predict the essentials of Predator in many ways. A B-movie but the cast list makes for eye-opening reading today
Not to be confused with the recent Predator sequel. this is a German survival horror where a group of trampers abruptly find themselves hunted in the woods
An Australian version of Red Dawn – prettily mounted but feels more like Dawson’s Creek Goes to War than it has does a realistic war film
The second in a trilogy of slasher films about people being staked by a maniac at a backwoods cabin while everything is secretly being filmed by tv cameras
By the numbers Backwoods Brutality where a woman is imprisoned by crazed backwoods fundamentalists in order to bear them a child
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey offered a horror version of the much loved children’s character. This is more of the same with a bigger budget
George Lucas’s venture into animation was critically pilloried. It’s not bad, just no different from a formula film like Rise of the Guardians or Epic. From the man who made Star Wars, you had higher expectations
Slasher film where a girl is hired as a housekeeper in a remote location only to find she is being stalked by a masked killer and forced to survive with her bare hands. Two sequels followed.
Passable effort that copies that basics of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with a group of stranded teens running afoul of an in-bred family
Another entrant in the fad for gonzo killer shark film. This gets some award for combining the killer shark film, the women’s prison film and the cabin in the woods horror standard
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
Makeup effects artist Stan Winston takes the director’s chair and creates one of the truly original monsters of the 1980s. Several sequels followed
Danish film about an immigrant agreeing to become a surrogate mother only to believe she is inhabited by something malevolent. This does well in the build-up but a crucial failure to put a finger on what is going on makes for a frustrating experience
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
The live-action remake of Disney’s Snow White comes surrounded by controversy on every side and served to make it a critical and box-office flop that left doubt over the future of the Disney remake industry
A group of friends travel to Ireland and go on a tour searching for magic mushrooms. In between assorted drug hallucinations, someone or thing begins slaughtering the group
Problem ridden Disney ghost story with a science-fiction rationalisation that never quite comes together on screen
A German-made copy of the Backwoods Brutality cycle that only rehashes clches and frequently verges on the amateurish in execution
Irish horror about a couple who inherit a house with faerie creatures at the end of the garden
For their third Smurfs film, Sony have dispensed with the live-action/CGi animation mix of the previous two films and made a wholly animated film. Its’ the Smurfs in their more natural element but the film is never more than 3D eye candy for the moppet audiences
One of the spate of H.P. Lovecraft adaptations that came out in the late 80s/early 90s. This feels like an effort by earnest amateurs but does take its Lovecraft seriously unlike most of the other films of this cycle.
From writers of several Saw films and The Collector, a film about teens under attack in the woods where it is unclear what is going on oe who they are facing for most of the film
With the sensation of the Gimlin-Patterson film that supposedly depicted a Bigfoot, the 1970s gave us a spate of Bigfoot films. This was the most high-profile, a mockumentary about an expedition that sets out to find Sasquatch
The second of 2012’s Snow White films after Mirror Mirror, this turns the fairytale into an epic fantasy. Well produced but ultimately a film that lacks anything unique nor pushes far enough into the dark fantasy it promises to be
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
A film filled with weird, constantly intriguing directorial effects, although you eventually have to accept that none of it makes any sense
Disney adaptation of a classic children’s novel about the discovery of a family in the woods who are immortal due to a magical spring
One of the cheap fairytale adaptations that Cannon Films made during the 1980s
A group of friends at a cabin in the woods are subject to alien abductions. Directed by a production illustrator on a number of high-profile films, this comes with some unique designs and effects
Disappointing Bryan Singer produced horror anthology set around Halloween where its potential is frequently dragged down by over-emphatic direction
The 2020s have seen a surprise upsurge in films about people being pursued by attackers. This is another about a teen girl flees pursued by a J.K. Simmons as a business professor who suddenly goes psycho
Another Disney remake that hardly resemble its source – the original was light slapstick with a big cartoon dragon, this is a sober wild child story where the dragon is now an endangered species
John Boorman film with Powers Boothe searching for his son who has been snatched by Indians in the Amazon. A mystical film, the first to bring issues of deforestation of the Amazon rainforest to public attention
This was made as a fairly blatant mockbuster copy of Jaws. This is basically Jaws on dry land with a bear instead of a shark and an assonant soundalike title Claws instead of Jaws
An enthusiastic B movie that takes its ridiculous premise of a group of friends encountering an alligator man lurking in the backwoods Louisiana swamps far too seriously for its own good
A horror film made by Canada’s indigenous Metis people that concerns a group of women on a therapeutic wilderness trek are stalked and attacked by a monster
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
Found Footage horror that unimaginatively rehashes The Blair Witch Project with a trio of people equipped with videocameras wandering around a supposedly haunted forest in Romania
Lawrence Kasdan directs an adaptation of the Stephen King novel about a group of men on a weekend get together in the woods who find themselves in the midst of an alien invasion
Found Footage film about various people in the woods in the aftermath of a UFO crash. Essentially The Blair Witch Project with UFOs instead of a backwoods haunting
The first in a surprisingly prolific series of slasher films, which has produced some fourteen sequels at current count. Made on a micro-budget, this vigorously homages the 1980s basics
The animated films of Blue Sky Studios (the people behind the Ice Age sequels) have become so formulaic they have been drained of any spark of originality or creativity. This feels more like a series of test-marketing cues than a film
A film about backwoods occult that comes with much H.P. Lovecraft influence. An inngenue film made by several unknowns who later became key figures at Industrial Light and Magic
Group of twentysomethings go to a cabin in the woods, are abducted and attacked by E.T.s. I wanted to like this but there is something generic and interchangeable about everything that is happening
The Bird Flu Epidemic was a brief panic over an influenza outbreak that infected humans; this seems to little concern the film that blows it up into a horde of large mutant birds that attack humans
A modernised version of the Goldilocks fairytale, which now comes with the addition of an environmentalist subplot and where the bears are made into an endangered species
Japanese horror film that only treads tepidly where the Ring and Ju-on/The Grudgefilms have gone before. Shot in a plain, ordinary manner that bleeds the J-horror film of atmosphere
A monster movie that takes place as a documentary crew are trying to study the wildlife displaced by the Australian bushfires
The second entry in a surprisingly prolific series of low-budget films – currently running to fifteen films – that homage the 1980s slasher film
Confusingly, despite the title, this is not an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairytale but a cryptic and often baffling South Korean horror film about people trapped by children at a sinister house in the forest
The public obsession with Bigfoot grew out of a piece of amateur film shot in 1967 purporting to show a Bigfoot in the world and led to a spate of films and throughout the 1970s. This has the distinction of being the first ever Bigfoot film
Film about a group of friends lost in the woods who take refuge in a cabin while being hunted by a creature. This is generic, produces some jumps but is dogged by unconvincing creature effects
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
A film that takes place with no dialogue set in a post-apocalyptic world where people have forsaken speech as Samara Weaving is pursued by a cult
The second film from The Duplass Brothers, Mark and Jay. Though labelled a slasher parody, it is more of an improvisational comedy that uses the set-up of a backwoods slasher film without much interest in horror