The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Meta-Fiction refers to a body of works where the story breaks out beyond the limits of the medium in which it is takes place. Meta-Fiction is a term that comes from literature and originally refers to characters on the printed page. This author has coined the term Meta-Film to refer to stories that break outside the confines of a film. There are lesser known examples that do the same with television and comic-books.
Meta-Fiction and Meta-Film can refer to stories where variously:-
– Characters emerge from or enter into books, films or tv screens
– Where the author of the work becomes a character inside the narrative or we are able to step outside of the story we are watching and be privy to the process as it is being written or filmed
– Where characters become aware that they are fictional or are operating along the lines of genre cliches
– Where the fourth wall is broken in some way and characters address the screen directly
Unique anthology that offers 26 episodes from different directors, each ending with a death. The episodes vary wildly in quality but a sufficient number ignore all good taste and/or travel waaaay across taboo lines
Feeble and shabbily made kid’s film in which children are transported inside the world of their favourite dinosaur tv show. Featuring some terrible dinosaur effects
Cinematic revival of the old Rocky and Bullwinkle series having the two animated characters emerge into the real (live-action) world. A film that you feel should have been funnier and more energetic than is
A modern girl pining for the perfect man is transported back into the world of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice where she ends up disrupting the story
Strange Spanish-made film about a mother-dominated psycho, which is also a film being watched in a theatre by an audience that is being stalked by another psycho
As a follow-up to Holy Motors, Leos Carax returns with of all things a musical. As might be expected of Carax, this is a wildly surrealistic film, not the least of which is one of the characters is a singing puppet
Wes Anderson’s quirky individualistic films can be an acquired taste. This is set in a stunningly designed retro 1950s town as various oddball characters intersect in between the appearance of an alien visitor
Peter Greenaway film about a woman claiming her baby is divinely conceived. As fascinating for Greenaway’s constant visual games as for the film’s brutal taboo-defying impact
What starts out as a seeming mockumentary about a serial killer turns into an hilarious deconstruction of the tropes and cliches of the slasher film. Imagine a film like Man Bites Dog crossbred with Scream
TV mini-series from the great Dennis Potter in which the lead character in a smutty novel by an aging writer rebels against her fate. As always with Potter, this blurs fiction, meta-fiction and autobiographical elements
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
A film where you are struggling to find any easy labelling. What it is is an hilariously ultra-violent and over-the-top parody of an action movie that will have your sides splitting
Disastrous Brooke Shields starring film adaptation of the famous comic-strip about a girl reporter. Nobody involved is taking the show seriously and everything is blown into camp farce.
Joss Whedon scripted work that is less a horror film than a meta-horror film that is constantly deconstructing the genre and subverting its cliches. A rare genre entry less about visceral impact than it has brains to spare
A Canadian film where a corrupt politician makes the slow realisation that he is a character inside a film. The comedy heads for obvious places at times but the film is carried by the originality and amusement of its premise
Third of the Cross films, a more fantastical variant on The Expendables, bringing 90s action actors back out of mothballs to form a team as they face various super-villains in present-day L.A.
Slasher film that is more like an Agatha Christie whodunnit, this comes with an appealing level of meta-fictionality. Mostly, it is an actor’s film and has been set-up to allow its name cast to do amazing things
George Romero’s adaptation of a Stephen King novel with writer Timothy Hutton haunted by an evil alter ego. Underrated and quite possibly the King adaptation that is the most faithful to its source material
This comes with an original idea where a troubled girl starts drawing a graphic novel that mirrors her own life only for the characters to emerge into the real world. Less horror than a dark allegorical fantasy
Jim Jarmusch is one of the foremost American independent directors and here makes his first zombie comedy. The question is is what can he bring to a genre that has been in full-on self-parody mode since Shaun of the Dead
Maybe the smartest and wittiest of the modern Marvel Comics adaptations, this takes every opportunity to deflate its own seriousness, not to mention frequently breaks the fourth wall with side-splitting results
Deadpool was an hilarious breath of fresh air amid the Marvel Comics adaptations. This sequel is even better, with the self-deflating, fourth-wall breaking humour even funnier and more slickly polished action
In his third cinematic outing, Deadpool gets into the multiverse game, creating a hilarious team-up with Wolverine and a crossover with an assortment of other cancelled Marvel franchises
Comedy in which John Candy wakes up inside the world of the tv soap opera he writes. This feels like it misses most of the possibilities inherent in its idea
Italian horror directed by Lamberto Bava and produced by Dario Argento, an Evil Dead-inspired work about the possessed dead taking over a cinema, all conducted with a ferocious enthusiasm
A mind-bogglingly meta film that starts out as a regular crime thriller before it gets invaded and taken over by psycho fan Penn Jillette who abducts the star and is determined to write himself in as the hero
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
The sight of the normally super-offensive and un-PC Troma Films trying to adjust to the post-#MeToo and Cancel Culture era while making a film about high school cannibalism is a bizarre one indeed
A witty parody of the giallo film from members of Canada’s Astron-6 collective who are proving themselves the masters of a certain type of movie spoof
Joshua John Miller, the son of The Exorcist’s star Jason Miller, makes a film where an actor cast as the priest in a remake of The Exorcist becomes possessed. A witty and clever blend of meta reference and autobiography
One of a spate of films of the 90s/00s that adapted animated tv series in live-action – in this case Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Here all we get is the animated characters emerging into the real world for slapstick inanity
A documentary about Gerry Anderson and the making of his various puppet tv shows, the most famous of which was Thunderbirds. Each show is covered in depth and surviving personnel interviewed
One Cut of the Dead was one of the freshest takes on the overworked zombie film in recent years. Here Academy Award-winning director Michel Hazanavicius conducts a French remake but misses the mark
A wittily clever deconstruction of the slasher film where a bunch of contemporary characters are transported inside a 1980s slasher movie where their modern ways proceed to hilariously upset the cliches
A New Zealand-made film where a sound effects artist is haunted by the ghost of a woman who steps out of a biopic about Henri Toulouse-Lautec that he is editing
Hilarious Stephen Chow directed/starring film where he plays an agent of the emperor in a series of gonzo exploits that go crazily over-the-top, including breaking the fourth wall
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
Brutal Michael Haneke film where a family’s weekend getaway becomes a nightmare when two boys enter the house and proceed to torture and kill them. Haneke adds a level of meta-fiction that taunts the viewer’s participation
Michael Haneke’s English-language remake of his earlier home invasion film has a sense of pointlessness to it. But in following the original so closely, it also cannot help but work where it did
Animated film spun off from the Garfield comic-strips in which Garfield emerges out into the real world. A cute premise that the film fails to develop
Sequel to Full Moon’s The Gingerdead Man, this one has been made as an hilariously meta-fictional self-parody, spoofing Full Moon Studios and their films
A film based on the hugely popular children’s horror series. The film creates a story where the creatures from all the books are unleashed. This is fun to watch, yet what we ultimately have is easy, undemanding horror for family audiences
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
Another in the spate of animated fairytale parodies that came out in the wake of Shrek, this subjects Cinderella to an excruciating barrage of pop-culture jokes and one-liners
Group of backpackers at a chateau find an old VCR that mashes up genres and sucks them inside. There’s a good idea for a horror film somewhere here but it ends up with terrible execution
A rather interesting horror film in which both the heroine and the heroine of the story she is reading are stalked by a disfigured madman, as the boundary between fiction and reality begins to dissolve
An absolutely delightful comedy from Maurizio Nichetti, a parody of Bicycle Thieves, which becomes a meta-fiction where the characters emerge from the screen and enter the modern world
A Peruvian children’s animated film about a device that allows people to enter an author’s imagination. This mostly has children having adventures in a facsimile of Jules Verne
South Korean film that replays the same story three times with slight differences, all featuring Isabelle Huppert as a different woman. Told with a rather charming sense of humour and a playful meta-fiction
In one of his last really good films, John Carpenter pays homage to H.P. Lovecraft in this horror film that becomes an amazing blurring of the line between reality and fiction
Another failed attempt to start a fantasy franchise. However, the interesting premise of someone who can bring fictional characters to life ends up going goes precisely nowhere
Interesting effort about actors putting on a cursed play that starts taking over the actors to replay events. With Robert Englund in a rare non-villainous, non-over-acted lead role
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
A big flop but highly underrated Arnold Schwarzenegger film, a sophisticated meta-fiction that views the cinema screen as another dimension and wittily deflates action cliches
This was made guerrilla-style during the Cannes festival with many scenes shot at press conferences and premieres as obsessed fan Joe Spinell stalks Caroline Munro’s actress
Film spinoff from the popular British comedy series sees the familiar characters entering the real world to meet their creators and deal with the cancellation of the show
Third of the animated films based on the Lego toy line. This has the same fast-paced humour and witty fourth-wall breaking gags as its predecessors, even if you suspect the Lego Movie brand is starting to fade
Rather witty low-budget slasher film that takes place on the set of a slasher film and pokes considerable at the process of filmmaking
Joe Dante makes a toon film winding in dozens of cameos from Warner Brothers cartoon characters. The results prove enormously playful and creative. Infinitely more creative and fun that the Space Jam films
A great tv mini-series where modern girl Jemima Rooper is transported back into Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice but disrupts the story with her modern ways
British-made homage to H.P. Lovecraft that has some of the most stunning black-and-white photography seen in some time but I am still trying to puzzle out what the film was actually about
The painfully unfunny films of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are movie parodies, mostly a random assortment of films and celebrities of the last six months run over with crude and vulgar jokes. In this case, they take on parodying principally 300
In his last ever produced screenplay, cult director Larry Cohen turns in a wonderfully playful script with Matthew Lillard as a screenwriting lecturer harassed by a killer only to find real-life doesn’t obey the same rules that screenplays do
A horror film about the screening of a lost horror film whose director is reputed to have killed people for real. Now the killer emerges from the screen to slaughter the attendees in the theatre
An anime from Satoshi Kon that tells the story of an actress and become a surreal journey through Japanese cinematic history
A tv mini-series adaptation of the famous Chinese legend Journey to the West made for US audiences by Hallmark Entertainment. The story remains stolidly earthbound and the meta-fictional contortions the story has to add to engage in to have the monk hero replaced by a contemporary Thomas Gibson are bizarre
A popular fantasy film of the 80s that sits just between the imaginative, particularly when it comes to some its creature effects and design work, and the mawkish. It also comes with an intriguing level of meta-fiction that delivers some odd messages
Abysmal third entry in the series. The creatures lack any conviction and everything is wrecked by taking the story out of Fantasia back to Earth amid hip contemporary jokes
Sequel to The Neverending Story made with a better budget. This delivers some amazing sets and creature designs but is killed with a script that discards the metaphors and complex level of meta-fiction of the original
Sequel to the Ben Stiller hit offers more of the same with a bigger museum and more exhibits come to life but little else
The third entry in a franchise that seems to be stretching to find anything to do with its premise beyond the first film. Everyone involved seems to have only turned up to collect a paycheque and be going through the motions in a show that entirely coasts by solely on your familiarity with the characters
TV mini-series that adapts eight Stephen King short stories. As with any anthology, the stories vary in quality but are generally quite reasonable
Fascinating directorial debut from screenwriter John August that tells three stories about Ryan Reynolds who gradually makes mind-boggling discoveries about the nature of reality
Demented Joel Schumacher film in which Jim Carrey sees occurrences of the number 23 everywhere and finds his life is being predicted by a book. Featuring one of the most absurd scripts ever written
The idea of a zombie film all shot in a single take. This proves a novelty amusement but then the film spins this on its head and becomes positively ingenious.
One Cut of the Dead was one of the freshest and most hilariously original takes on the zombie film of recent. This is a sequel
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
Amiable if lightweight film where a live-action Macaulay Culkin gets animated and has a series of adventures in a Land of Fiction where he must pass through various classic stories
Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon are modern teens who become trapped in a 1950s tv show and end up puncturing its innocence. The messages made end up being broad and heavy-handed but the premise and the visual palette of the film is extremely clever
From Kirikou director Michel Ocelot, an anthology of animated fairytales that prove quite delightful
A Secret Life of Walter Mitty for movie lovers wherein a milquetoast projectionist daydreams himself into a variety of movie scenarios as an inept superhero. Quirkily charming if never more than a single idea. Something you feel should have been a cult film
Alain Resnais meta-fiction with John Gielgud as an aging writer sits in bed writing a story that is based on the people around him
Woody Allen comedy in which mousy housewife Mia Farrow is the fan of a film whereupon lead character Jeff Daniels steps out into the real world to romance her
Beautifully made arthouse film about the real-life Japanese horror writer who becomes wound up in in enigmatic meta-fiction with his own creation
A film from the Pang Brothers in which a heroine enters into an extraordinarily conceived fantasy world that would appear to be taking place in her own imagination
A film from Quentin Dupieux that comes in a series of quirky intersecting stories where the dreams and films different characters are watching/making keeping blurring together in mind-boggling ways
An extraordinarily stylised homage to the 1960s spy movie, which strips everything down to a series of provocative, stylised high-end fashion poses. The visuals in the film are quite extraordinary
After a decade, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby returned for their sixth and final Road movie. Both they and the knockabout comedy are on great form with the show taking on the influence of the 60s spy movie fad and even sending them to The Moon
Road to Morocco was the third of the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road films and takes them on a parody of the Arabian Nights adventure
South Korean film that takes delight in a series of interwoven tales, of stories being told by characters within stories. Has a wilful complexity to it, although the narrative game-playing essentially becomes the film more so than necessarily produces any absorbing individual stories
The best killer car tire film ever – a monster movie spoof wound in so many layers of meta-fiction that it is positively side-splitting. The smartest and funniest monster movie in ages
The Little Miss Sunshine directors follow their hit up with a film about a writer who brings his ideal woman to life. Scriptwriter Zoe Kazan sparkles in the title role but the film never pushes its central concept too much beyond being a quirkily sweet indie romance
Based on the popular series of children’s horror tales, this Guillermo Del Toro written/produced effort borrows the idea from the Goosebumps film of having the stories come to life and the idea from Stranger Things and It with a group children fighting against them. On screen, the finished result never quite seems as much as it promises to be
A side-splittingly funny spoof of Found Footage films as a crime scene video crew uncover evidence of a serial killer and decide to make a documentary about it
Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson return to the Scream franchise to turn out the fourth and best sequel yet. The opening scene alone is the funniest one has seen in a film in some time
Wes Craven and scriptwriter Kevin Williamson make a witty homage to the 1980s slasher film, turning the genre on its head by having the characters perfectly aware they are in a horror film and of the genre’s cliches
Wes Craven’s Scream was a clever and witty homage to/deconstruction of the slasher film of the 1980s; for the sequel, he and Kevin Williamson naturally turn to deconstructing the slasher sequel
By the time of this third film and the departure of screenwriter Kevin Williamson, creativity in the Scream series seems to be flagging even though this has critic-proofed itself by calling itself a parody of a sequel
The Scream series drags itself for another sequel but at least performs a course correction by bringing back original screenwriter Kevin Williamson in the director’s chair, along with appearances of many past cast
Following the recent reboot of the Halloween franchise, many of the original cast and a new directorial team resurrect Wes Craven’s Scream franchise in some undeniably appealing ways