The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Indie superhero comedy that reads a good deal funnier on paper than it ever produces laughs on screen. The production lacks the budget to produce more than a handful of cheap superheroic digital effects
From The Blair Witch Project co-director Daniel Myrick, a film about two paramedics abducted into a crazed UFO cult who believe their delivery is coming
Thai entry in the Asian horror fad. A film that has a premise but little beyond that. It feels like it is being too nice to push its audience in any way with all the supernatural manifestations eventually blurring into a sameness
A low-budget 1950s SF film with John Carradine as a mysterious, shadowy alien visitor. This borrows a good many of its ideas from The Day the Earth Stood Still
Finally, the answer to what happened to Marc Caro after parting ways with Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Caro directs what would appear to be a darkly lit and confusing variation on The Green Mile set on a space station
A film about the modern discovery of a unicorn, this seems designed to shatter any cutsie notions about unicorns and instead becomes a work about greed and where the unicorns become vicious and monstrous. An A24 film produced by Ari Aster
South Korean film about a doctor with shamanistic powers, this starts out seeming to be a horror film before becoming something different altogether
Frank Darabont had a hit with the Stephen King adaptation The Shawshank Redemption. Here he makes another King adaptation about a Death Row inmate with healing powers
Fascinating Australian film in which Robert Powell plays an enigmatic stage magician who may or may not have real powers who comes to influence a politician’s family
This has quite a few similarities to the underrated The Wind with Sarah Paulson as a mother in the 1930s Dustbowl seeing possible supernatural figures amid the dust storms, which could just as easily be fraying sanity
Chuck Norris’s son Mike directs a laughably ridiculous faith-based film where a miraculous child appears, come to heal the people of an impoverished, drought-ridden town
Dogme 95 film about a woman convicted to prison who has miraculous healing abilities. There are undeniable similarities to The Green Mile but this uses them to delve into issues of faith
Set in a nowhere New England town where fisherman Colm Meaney discovers a moss with miracle-healing properties. Sort of a Magical Realist version of The Shipping News
Mexican film made to celebrate the Day of the Dead wherein Death befriends a poor peasant and bequeaths him a gift of a gourd of healing water. While not terribly sophisticated, this works as a pure and simple fable
The Monk is a sordid classic of 18th Century Gothic literature, filled with crazed lusts and Catholic guilt and damnation. However, in the hands of French director Dominik Moll, all the tortured sexuality has been watered down and the story stuffed as a costume drama
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 Blumhouse and James Wan co-production about a malevolent swimming pool
Film that develops a Folk Horror vibe as Eva Green hires a nanny with mysterious healing powers. The horror version of Mary Poppins
Hammer Films turn the historical story of Rasputin and his influence over the Russian throne into a horror film. Although they treat history liberally, this is a vivid film with an intense performance from Christopher Lee
From the promising Australian director Zak Hilditch. Carmen Ejogo’s daughter is bitten by a snake, a stranger heals her only for Carmen to then be told she has to kill somebody else in payment
Slow sincere film in which Ellen Burstyn becomes a faith healer following a car crash
Dramatic recount of a true-life sensation during the 1950s when an amateur hypnotist claimed that he had regressed a housewife to recall her past life in 19th Century Ireland. The film has an earnestly prostheletysing belief in its own case but sceptical examination pulls holes in its credibility
An eccentrically oddball comedy in which a man discovers that his strange roommate may be a comic-book super-villain. Made independently but with a dry wit that is hard to resist
Ken Russell’s adaptation of The Who’s hit album is filled with gloriously mad, glitter rock excess and wildly over the top acting in the ways that only Russell ever managed
Paul Schrader adapts an Elmore Leonard novel about a youth who suddenly becomes sought by various parties when it is discovered he has miracle healing powers but the results never quite come off
One has zero enthusiasm for this, which has been sold as Twilight meets Harry Potter. Defying expectation, it is written with a sarcastic amusement puncturing its own seriousness and has a great performance from its leading lady, if in the end it is too weighted down by story exposition needed to set up its sequels to ever open up dramatically
The novelty of the first Christian horror film. As opposed to much of the message-heavy tripe that usually gets peddled in this niche market, this is actually well structured with a number of interesting ambiguities and engaging as a story for the better part