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.
Canadian film about a woman alone in a cabin that has a set-up that seems to be heading in the direction of an effective horror film about cabin fever and/or paranoia – only for things to then get completely baffling as to what is happening
Likeable DreamWorks animated film filled with much slapstick energy about a group of talking animals that venture into a housing estate in search of food
A Belgian-made venture into Backwoods Brutality territory that keeps heading into stranger and more disturbing places until it almost seems to be taking place on another planet altogether
Passable animated film from Sony Pictures Animation, although the story arcs too closely resemble every other animated film for it to have much in the way of notability
Appealing animated film with an environmentalist theme where four young orphan animals go on a quest to save their woods
Lucky McKee, director of May and The Woman, makes a film about two men meeting at a cabin in the woods where secrets emerge amid psychological tensions between the two
This has an interesting set-up about a woman pursued by a boogeyman figure from her nightmares where others cannot be sure whether she is delusional at the same time as the figure starts eliminating them – but the film’s low-budget gets in the way of adequate treatment
A above average entry in the recent trend of horror anthologies featuring episodes from different directors, including Joe Dante and Mick Garris, featuring at least a couple of standout entries
Any Found Footage film about people venturing into a haunted forest cannot help but draw comparison to the progenitor of the genre, The Blair Witch Project. This comes up with some sufficiently original twists and spooky moments, even if it is eventually unbuckled by its pretensions
The British equivalent of The Blair Witch Project, although this makes the title not strictly accurate – it should more correctly have been called A Night on the Moors. This conducts the build-up in an especially interesting way with much interplay between the trio of characters who all come holding secrets
Alexandre Aja film with Halle Berry and sons at a cabin in the woods facing an evil force outside. A work that screws with what we think is going on
A modestly effective film about a group of deserting soldiers during the Napoleonic Wars who enter a haunted forest
Obscure almost interesting film where Robert Culp drops out of city life, renovates a possibly haunted house before being drawn into a surreal Free Love fantasia
A strong contender for the worst Blair Witch copy AND the worst Amityville film ever made. This has the feel of a home movie made by a husband and wife and is laughably ridiculous in its failings
A parody of the Backwoods Brutality film. One of the very first films produced by Lloyd Kaufman of Troma fame
The Adams Family have become one of the most impressive genre talents in recent years. It has been fascinating watching them explore a dark version of American folk horror – this takes them into the darkest places they have visited yet
A Hungarian-made Found Footage horror film with vague claims to being about the Mothman. This only goes where The Blair Witch Project trod before, although subverts it in a twist ending (8)
Tarsem Singh makes a Snow White film. Tarsem’s sets, costumes and visuals are expectedly exquisite and extravagant but all is unwound by a campy, unserious approach
The Y2K Problem was a now largely forgotten social apocalypse that never happened so why someone is making a film about it now is a scratch of the head. This is a Backwoods Brutality film that abruptly jumps tracks to become a monster movie
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
A filmed version of Julie Taymor’s staging of the Shakespeare play about fairt enchantments. Forget standard interpretations, Taymor opens the play up with an extraordinary visual flair
Under the umbrella title ShakespeareRetold, Shakespeare’s tale of fairy enchantments and romantic mix-ups is reimagined in a modern day British holiday camp
Amid Kenneth Branagh’s dynamic cinematic revival of Shakespeare in the 1990s, there was this all-star adaptation of Shakespeare’s whimsy about fairy enchantments
The amusing idea of a mimicry of a Bear Grylls-type wilderness survival reality show – but with the addition of a monster.
Adaptation of a book by famous children’s writer Enid Blyton about a series of adventures in a magical tree. Blyton would be turning in her grave at some of the changes and modernisations
Bigfoot film made by two brothers using a non-professional cast and crew, which emerges better than you might expect and generates passable tension
Quite good New Zealand made film about mysterious happenings during a hike into the bush, where what is happening is kept in a state of careful ambiguity
Maybe the world’s first serious, non-horror, non-cutsie Bigfoot film – an interesting film based on eyewitness accounts that seeks a genteel understanding between the two species
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
A group of youths walk through the woods lost then discover why they are there in a hackneyed genre twist ending you can see coming an hour before it does
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
Quite a good A24 release that brings together an impressive cast as a young girl discovers and determines to protect a magical creature. This channels the essence of E.T. and tugs all the heartstrings it can
One of the numerous Bigfoot films of the 1970s. This takes a quasi-documentary approach that never makes for a particularly interesting film and where the Bigfoot of the show gets to do very little
Hugely underrated Ridley Scott film that was a box-office flop. Scott attempts to reconstruct the fairytale as something dark and primal and creates moments that are superlative cinema
One of the very first Found Footage films, predating The Blair Witch Project, although this is less people running around the woods with cameras than an investigative mockumentary
A cabin in the woods horror made with an ineptitude of execution. This sets out to rip off The Evil Dead but becomes one shock effect after another that runs into an incomprehensible mass like a bad nightmare
As the title suggests, this is cryptic. Chloe Pirrie wanders off in the woods, encounters a mysterious Bigfoot creature and afterwards experiences a baffling identity exchange
Czech puppet fantasy about a toy’s journey through a forest filled with a bizarre menagerie of creatures that are both cutely affecting and sinisterly threatening in the Maurice Sendak vein
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
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
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
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
A lumbering, stagebound adaptation of Stephen Sondheim musical that lamely dips into the fairytale parody that Shrek and other films tapped far more engagingly over a decade ago
Modest story about a catastrophic countrywide powercut – rather than depicting a widespread apocalypse, the film is a character-driven piece focused around two sisters living on their own at a cabin in the woods
An enigmatic and baffling Canadian-made film about a man who goes to life in the woods where something (possibly imaginary) seems to be taunting him. This eventually leaves audiences confused what is happening
Forget about the ostensible explanation about outbreaks of Lyme Disease in the script, this is another zombie film in all but name even if the phrase is never mentioned
Canadian-made home invasion thriller that reminds of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. A film that seems set to brutalise a middle class couple’s sensibilities only to slip into utter tameness
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
A uniquely original film. Almost an arthouse take on a slasher film where we are placed in the hulking killer’s shoes and the rest of the show takes place in abstract brushstrokes
The harrowing 1970s raped woman on a revenge spree film is given the remake treatment, although is watered down in many key areas. The revenge scenes however are played up for a particular nastiness
One of the most raw and savage films ever made, this sits on a dividing line between true horror and exploitation as we experience Camille Keaton being raped with no detail spared before exacting a brutal revenge
A Mike Flanagan film that keeps you in a state of seat-edge tension. The premise is a simple one – a deaf woman is terrorised by a killer waiting outside her house – but Flanagan delivers it with electrifying effect
A quite reasonable Backwoods Brutality item with a group who go hunting in backwoods Oklahoma but stir up the inbred poachers and end up being hunted themselves
A solid and well-made film that creates quite a reasonable tension as a family that live in the woods deal with a lurking wolf. What is going on sits in an interesting state of ambiguity.
Solidly effective Belgian film about a woman fleeing through the woods from a killer who wants to make snuff movies. One of several films about people hunted in the woods to come out around the same time
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
A slasher film that certainly grabs your attention with a sensationalistic title. While not without occasional amusements, this is mostly amateurish
A Backwoods Brutality film that becomes quite gore-drenched. Written by its leading man Paul Logan who casts himself as a perfect action hero wading in to kick hillbilly ass
Animated film that offers a revisionist take on Little Red Riding Hood. Everything is played in a manic barrage of pop culture gags and level of inanity that is seriously mind damaging
A newlywed couple head to a cabin in the woods for their honeymoon. This seems to be a traditional backwoods horror but instead travels into an increasingly unnerving and way out territory
Incomprehensible New Zealand film about a group of camp counselors being haunted by something as they run through the woods
Cabin in the Woods drama with Yvonne Strahovski and her children terrorised by a hulking masked maniac. Tension and suspense that feels served by a conveyor belt
Beautifully filmed, intimate work about a woman’s attempts to eke out survival in the woods in the aftermath of an unspecified apocalypse
Third in the series of slasher homage films where Adam Green steps back from the director’s chair. This ups the gore content and number of genre cameos, otherwise is fairly much the same as before
Hatchet was a homage to the 1980s slasher film that had a mild amusement. In the sequels, Adam Green upped the number of genre cameos and in-jokes, while pushing the gore effects to an extreme
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
This starts out seeming a backwoods horror before plants in the woods start erotically influencing the characters, resulting in a series of provocative scenes that combine plants and sex
Likeable effort from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Productions in which a Bigfoot is befriended by a family. The star of the show is Kevin Peter Hall in the amazingly expressive Bigfoot makeup from Rick Baker
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.
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
One of a series of cheaply produced fairytale adaptations made by Cannon Films. This adapts the Brothers Grimm fairytale with tatty banality
Locke as a ghost story. A really good film that takes place during a car journey as a married couple race off to help their daughter who has had an accident. A tight, twist-filled script with some great performances
This Canadian film is a modernised telling of Hansel and Gretel where the witch becomes a man with possibly paedophile intent. A film seems to want to go into dark places but gives them an utterly tepid treatment
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
Osgood Perkins emerges as a top director in this dark and extremely adult interpretation of the fairytale. There is nothing about this that can be viewed as a children’s tale any longer
We have had a few UFO Found Footage films, most of which are rehashes on The Blair Witch Project with aliens instead of backwoods hauntings. This is one entry that produces a series of eerie jumps
Biopic of A.A. Milne that tells the story of how he came up with his most famous creation Winnie the Pooh. The film takes some time to warm to, but eventually opens up with some heartwarming charms
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
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
One of the most unique horror films in some time, an entirely original South African film work where forestry works encounter a living forest entity come to life around them
Frozen was the most successful animated film of all time. It also felt the most formulaic and least inspired Disney film of the 2000s. As part of Disney’s new business policy of recycling everything, this is a sequel.
Near laughable film in which Chuck Norris is cast as the guardian spirit of a forest preaching eco-friendly attitudes to kids and inspiring them to stand up against loggers
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
Film based on a true-life claim about a supposed alien abduction. This probably won’t convince anybody who does not already believe but it is undeniably a well-made film, at its most striking when we go aboard the UFO
From the heyday of the slasher film, this seems to be trying to conduct a slasher version of Deliverance. Largely forgotten today and unremarkable but for an amazing cast of before-they-were-famous faces
From the producers of the ABCs of Death films, a further horror anthology where nine directors from around the world deliver eight episodes based on the folklore of their region
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
Backwoods horror that starts well, keeping its menace ambiguous but collapses into a mishmash of pretensions and amateurish symbolism
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
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
Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell return in a sequel to their earlier low-budget cult hit. With a far better budget this time, Raimi goes completely over-the-top with a delirious silliness that will bring tears to the eyes
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
Ferociously paced low-budget hit that put the names of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell on the map. What made the film a cult hit was Raimi’s full tilt pace and entertainingly over-the-top splatter effects
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
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
Nominally a sequel to Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s first film Resolution, this concerns a strange cult but expands outwards to involve a mind-boggling array of backwoods timeloops and reality blurrings
A variant on the horror anthology film that manages to let the potential in its three stories fall through its hands. Narrated by Rod Serling, creator of tv’s classic anthology series The Twilight Zone, who must’ve needed the money
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
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