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 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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Sequel to the Ben Stiller hit offers more of the same with a bigger museum and more exhibits come to life but little else
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Rather witty low-budget slasher film that takes place on the set of a slasher film and pokes considerable at the process of filmmaking
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
TV mini-series that adapts eight Stephen King short stories. As with any anthology, the stories vary in quality but are generally quite reasonable
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
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
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
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
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 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
An anime from Satoshi Kon that tells the story of an actress and become a surreal journey through Japanese cinematic history
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
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
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
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
From Kirikou director Michel Ocelot, an anthology of animated fairytales that prove quite delightful
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Beautifully made arthouse film about the real-life Japanese horror writer who becomes wound up in in enigmatic meta-fiction with his own creation
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
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
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
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
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
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
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