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
The sixth entry in a series that began as a smart and clever parody/deconstruction of the slasher film. Now this has become just another teen franchise film that has forgotten all the meta margin notes.
The fifth and most enjoyable of the Chucky films, this amplifies the black humour to an outrageously funny level, while conducting an hilarious meta-fiction with Jennifer Tilly playing herself
There is a good idea for a film in here somewhere where a fan joins Scream Queen Tiffany Shepis playing a Scream Queen tracking down the print of her werewolf movie before finding she is a real werewolf. But the presentation is an utterly confused mishmash
One of the most extraordinary works ever made for tv. From the pen of Dennis Potter, a mini-series that blends film noir, meta-fiction and autobiography
Not to be confused with the Stephen King story collection, this is about a film crew shooting a film in an abandoned asylum about murders conducted there who discover a trove of snuff movies whereupon the director becomes obsessed with recreating them
A insanely madcap work of meta-fiction. Imagine stupider versions of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction mixed with Stranger Than Fiction as they discover they are fictional characters
BBC production that seems to be a straightforward biopic of Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle only for it to take a very strange dogleg into meta-fiction
Quite reasonable meta-fiction where a surprisingly subdued Will Ferrell discovers he is a character in a novel and tries to rebel against his fate
Mind-bending Charlie Kaufman meta-fiction in which Philip Seymour Hoffman creates a vast theatre project that drags on for years and starts to merge into his own life
Film spinoff from the animated tv series Teen Titans Go! This hits in with an hilairous barrage of one-liners wickedly spoofing the superhero genre and jokes at DC Comics canon
Jean Cocteau’s follow-up to his earlier Orpheus becomes an opportunity where Cocteau makes an autobiographical films, revisiting his own life and works
Not a remake but a sequel to the cult true-crime film The Town That Dreaded Sundown with a series of copycat killings influenced by the film occurring in the present-day. Directed with a bravura stylishness that makes you jump out of your seat in joy
Sequel to Graveyard Shift with a vampire appearing on a vampire film set and taking over the role in the film
Sequel fairly much in name only to Urban Legend and barely at all about urban legends, this has the amusing idea of taking place at a film school and features a number of sly asides. This alas befalls routine direction
Full marks for an attention-grabbing exploitation title, this is a horror film that takes place on a horror film set where film being shot and sinister characters on the sideline blur in a rubber reality
M. Night Shyamalan makes one of his best films in ages. He kicks back his heels and goes nuts – at the same time as he is spooking us he also has us laughing; he ventures into making a Found Footage film but at the same time is also deconstructing the process with hilarious results
Seventh of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films where Wes Craven returns to direct the most remarkable of all the sequels, an extraordinary meta-fiction that takes place in the real world
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
One of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s splatter films about a stage magician who cuts up women on stage and real life. The film makes mind boggling plays between reality and illusion
A Chinese work of meta-fiction where a man is tasked with killing the author of a book that is having effects on the real world
Unique venture into meta-fiction by Wai Ka Fai that creates fascinatingly wound layers of fiction and reality that eventually become so complex that one gets lost
This nominally tells three slice-of-life tales but in each the principal character is creating a book or film about one of the other characters. This becomes a meta-fiction of considerable cleverness as we see how the problems of one character end up reflected in the other character’s story