The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
In scientific terminology, mutation is a change in the DNA of an individual or organism. It is one of the principal factors responsible for the Evolution of a species – where genetic changes are carried through multiple generations and those changes that are best adapted to survival come to predominate. Ever since the concept of DNA was understood, genre fiction has latched onto the possibilities of mutation with great enthusiasm.
1950s SF was filled with numerous examples of mutants, usually of the three-eyed and scaly-skinned variety, that would appear in the aftermath of a Nuclear Holocaust. Mutation also has the ability to create superhumans, frequently those with Psychic Powers. Equally it can have hideous side effects and turn humans into all manner of monsters, hybrids or deformed oddities.
Mutation is frequently the given cause when it comes to Monster Movies where atomic energy or genetic experiments have the ability to turn regular-sized creatures into Giant Animals – this is particularly so in the fad for Atomic Monster Movies.
Mutation is also often the cause of a superhero gaining their powers in a Superhero Film – indeed, almost the entire Marvel pantheon of superheroes owes their powers to mutagenics – where it can create a great range of abilities. Just as equally it can also serve as the origin for a Super-Villain.
It is nice to see Bryan Singer regain his form after several years lull. The plot is nothing world-shattering but it is nice to see a character-driven X-Men, while Singer delivers the superheroics with a cheer-out loud elan that most of the sequels missed by a wide margin
An excellent film about a psychologist sent in to assess a child who reveals phenomenal intelligence and psychic powers
The sequel to the DCEU’s Aquaman reaches for epic effects spectacle, although the character of Aquaman undergoes a substantial shift and is now given more of a comedy playing
The reasoning behind rebooting the Spider-Man franchise after ten years and only three films is a puzzle. That said, this offers an edgier origin story than Sam Raimi’s take and Andrew Garfield makes for a fine Spider-Man
The gonzo Japanese splatter film is one of the insanely demented corners of genre cinema today. This is a prime example, filled with mind-bogglingly perverse anatomical rearrangements and attachments, the screen is awash with blood and everything directed with a mad cartoonish energy
Troma film that has maybe the silliest movie title ever. This sets out to be so persistently moronic and wilfully offensive that it eventually attains a delirious absurdity
Bryan Singer’s immediate sequel to X-Men, this ups the number of new mutant characters, although only sporadically manages to kick in with the spectacular superheroic action sequences the first film had
Amid the spate of post-Jaws Animals Amok films, this, which comes armed with a John Sayles script and plays on the urban legend of baby alligators flushed into the sewers, was a rather enjoyable effort that plants tongue in cheek
Made not longer after the buddy cop hit of Lethal Weapon, this has a curmudgeonly human paired up with an alien partner. A fairly ordinary cop show plot is boosted by two fantastic central performances
The second of Kevin J. Kindenmuth’s surprisingly good compilations of video shorts around the loose theme of alien invasion and takeover
Animated spinoff of the videogame. Your first impression is that animation is not suited for a gore-drenched film. One’s misgivings are silenced by the wildly phantasmagoric range of creatures the film throws at you
One of the better among the current fad for Young Adult dystopian SF works post-The Hunger Games. This dispenses with dystopian Coming of Age stories and gives us a fascinating conceptual mystery even if the answers prove underwhelming
Alien scripter Dan O’Bannon jumps aboard the 80s/early 90s fad for H.P. Lovecraft adaptations is this directorial outing that eventually develops quite reasonable effect
Modestly effective effort about a man whose body is slowly fading away and becoming invisible. A film carried by some fine effects sequences, this derives its frisson from the gradual revelation of what is happening but loses it when the mundane subplots take over in the second half
One of the best of all filmed videogame adaptations. Christophe Gans creates a creepy and unworldly atmosphere, along with a series of genuinely outlandish creature effects
A Body Horror film that creates some undeniably ick effect where Dave Franco and Alison Brie play a couple who experience an infection that causes their bodies to start fusing into one whenever they touch
One among the 00s spate of gonzo Japanese splatter films. The film exists as a series of outlandishly over-the-top and absurdly entertaining splatter and bizarrely cartoonish bio-mechanoid transformation
Second of the Bruce Timm animated films based on DC’s Justice League, this has been construed as a Mirror Universe take that pits the Justice League up against villainous versions of themselves
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
An animated Marvel Comics adaptation that is actually two separate stories involving The Incredible Hulk, who battles respectively Wolverine and Thor
Milla Jovovich is a part of a vampire rebel underground in a dystopian future. A film filled with incredible design schemes and action scenes that are as spectacular as they are ridiculously improbable
An amusingly tongue-in-cheek horror comedy that is a throwback to the1950s featuring an attack by giant crabs. With some surprisingly good crab effects too.
Rodrigo Gudiño, editor of Rue Morgue magazine, directs a horror film with strong Lovecraftian overtones about a portal opened at a mysterious cabin in the woods
An early entry among the pre-MCU surge of Marvel Comics films in the early 2000s sees Ang Lee taking on The Incredible Hulk. Not Lee’s best film, this was slighted at the time but is worth reconsideration
Film about a Vietnam Veteran snapping and going over the edge that gained acclaim when it came out. More a work of grim social realism than horror, it is frequently amateurish but contains an undeniably bleak charge
Live-action film based on an anime series where the original is built out with a series of of extraordinarily gorgeous over-ornamented visuals set in a strange retro-future world
Surreal Japanese horror film in which the world is taken over by spiral patterns. A strange and trippy film.
Cult anime about a monosyllabic vampire hunter moving across a hallucinatory post-apocalyptic dispatching mutants and vampires
Irish-British production that depicts the social housing estates of Glasgow as a desolate netherworld inhabited by mutant children. Undeniably effective but the depiction of children of urban ghettos requires you to tune out any liberal instincts
Low-budget film designed to copy the success of Destination Moon that ended up being the first film of the 1950s Golden Age. A surprisingly modest effort about a rocketship going off course to land on Mars
This has the fascinatingly original idea of setting a horror film inside the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The location is unique and the film generates a fair and reasonable tension
Luc Besson makes a preposterously entertaining work where drug mule Scarlett Johansson develops superhuman mental capabilities – sort of if you imagine Limitless reconceived as an action film
Animated adaptation of the one of the biggest Marvel Comics event storylines of the 2000s – the same one also used in Thor Ragnarok. Essentially Spartacus recast with The Incredible Hulk
Gonzo comedy set in alternate world where a samurai-sword wielding Buddy Holly wanders through a post-apocalyptic present
The finale of the saga comes with a tough, gritty edge that make it the best directed of the series. On the other hand, it builds well only to arrive at an ending that goes oddly sideways and throws sympathies to the wind
The Resident Evil films are designed for people who were introduced to drama via the Xbox, action sequences that can be assembled in random order and where it doesn’t matter what happens. I watched this, the sixth and final entry, with next-to-no enthusiasm but then quite unexpectedly it starts to work
Promisingly ambitious animated SF film that tries to catch some of the trippy qualities of Heavy Metal where the impressive quality of animation is let down by a juvenile story about a rock band in a post-holocaust future
A film about a killer snowman. Conceived as a one-liner spouting villain and outfitted with a series of novelty Christmas-themed deaths, this does not take itself too seriously with rather appealing results
An alien invasion film that exists largely as a series of dazzling effects set-pieces, although proves frustrating when it comes to plot or explanatory rationale
A fitfully amusing H.P. Lovecraft fanboy comedy. Lovecraft, a noted conservative, would likely have deplored the idea of the nerd comedy but this gets the flavour of Lovecraft’s works down better than most
The theatrically released pilot film for the 1970s/80s tv series based on the Marvel Comic that tells the Hulk’s origin story. This is one of the better episodes of the otherwise banal series
One of the handful of films from the underrated 70s/80s director John ‘Bud’ Cardos. Cardos does extremely creating an usual smalltown atmosphere simmering with Southern bigotry, before the film erupts into a more standard toxic waste zombies outbreak film
Throwback to 1950s films like The Quatermass Xperiment with Alex Rebar as an astronaut infected with a condition that causes his flesh to melt. A B movie boosted by great melting effects from Rick Baker
South Korean anime that is set in a future world where people are obsessed with shit. This comes with a demented energy and a filthy-mindedness that is determined to outrage
Godzilla creator Ishiro Honda makes a film about a meek man who gains the ability to transform into a mist and promptly becomes a bank-robbing super-villain
One of the first films from Roger Corman. Set among a group of survivors in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear holocaust, Corman blatantly steals the plot from Five and adds a mutant monster to the mix
Sequel to the hit multi-director anthology has a less high-profile line-up of directors, nor hits the astonishingly perverse heights of its predecessor. As always some entries never do much but the film finds its stride in the last few episodes
Gonzo killer animal and zombie films have been hugely popular in recent years – it was probably inevitable they meet. This comes with the deliriously ridiculous image of zombified human-beaver hybrids on the attack
One of the better of Bert I. Gordon’s B movies of the 1950s. This was rushed out not long after The Incredible Shrinking Man and displays some imagination despite cheap effects
DC Universe Animated film that is adapted from an Elseworlds story that offers up an alternate 1920s version of Batman who is fighting up against H.P. Lovecraft entities
It took DC Comics the better part of a decade to catch up with the massive success Marvel Comics are having on screen in crossing their characters over. Zack Snyder comes to the party offering up THE biggest headline double-bill in superherodom
Barry Levinson becomes one of the few name directors to venture into the Found Footage genre and soberingly portrays the outbreak of an ecological catastrophe from multiple viewpoints
A real oddity among the werewolf genre – a film that tries to mix the werewolf up with the 1950s fad for the atomic monster movie in having the transformation brought on by atomically irradiated wolf blood
An enthusiastically gore-drenched New Zealand comedy about mutant sheep, this favourably harkens back to the heyday of Peter Jackson’s early splatter films
Fan parody/homage of H.P. Lovecraft that comes waist-deep in references and jokes. The film is an amateur effort made with a painful cheapness in some areas; nevertheless it is clear that the team are really into making it and their enthusiasm carries the film
Another of the last films made by Bruce Willis before his retirement. This one has a watchable central idea and is set around the idea of a prison for super-villains even if Bruce is not up to much
B-budget director Fred Olen Ray makes a cyberpunk action film where the cut-price nature of the exercise is elevated by a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour
Stuart Gordon returns to adapt H.P. Lovecraft for a third time. As before, Gordon allows Lovecraft’s unspeakable terrors to be eclipsed by creature effects but the results are nothing too memorable
B-budget director offers up a copy of Mad Max 2 and peppers it with plentiful tongue-in-cheek exploitation elements stirred with undeniable vigour
Despite all the hate this received, I am maybe the only person out there that liked it. It is three-quarters of a good film that strips the Four of costumes and tells a character-driven story about people dealing with powers
The adaptation of the Stephen King novel with Drew Barrymore giving a fantastic performance as a young girl with pyrokinetic powers on the run as she is hunted by a sinister government agency
A huge hit and one of the key influences that created the box-office dominance of Marvel Comics in the 2000s/10s. A fine incarnation of the comic-book, Sam Raimi brings it to life with exhilarating web-slinging scenes but overdoes the winsome innocence of Peter Parker
Sony’s Spider-Man franchise ingeniously competes with Marvel’s shared universe by bringing all their previous incarnations of Spider-Man together
Gonzo comedy that looks like a film about post-holocaust mutants that has been directed by Russ Meyer
Nobody has good things to say about the 2014 reboot of the Turtles. This sequel is stuck with its legacy – giant over-sized Turtles that lacked the cuteness of the originals; bitchy non-acting Megan Fox – but comes out winningly by doing one thing – emulating the spirit of the original cartoon series
Monster movie from Godzilla creator Ishiro Honda featuring a glowing blob that dissolves humans. Mostly a routine policier that is spiced up every so often by novelty effects of people melting
In 2025, Popeye entered public domain in the US. As with Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, this was immediately greeted with several horror takes on the character. This is one of them – essentially a Popeye slasher film
After the disaster of X-Men: The Last Stand, the decision was made to give a whole film over to the series’s most popular character, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and to go with a prequel that told his origin story. Largely a film that exists as a series of superheroic action scenes
While this received a good deal of fan buzz, I must admit to being disappointed. It strips much of the superheroics and mutant cameos of the other X-Men films until it feels more like a Westerner in Japan thriller like Black Rain or even a routine film noir plot that happens to be cast with Wolverine
Based on the survival horror videogame, this was the first in a surprisingly popular series of films. It also presaged a major return of the zombie film during the 2000s/10s, even if this only treads where George Romero went better before
Passable effort that copies that basics of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with a group of stranded teens running afoul of an in-bred family
Killer slug movie from hack Spanish director Juan Piquer Simon where the sole notable aspect amid the cheapness of the production is some very gory deaths
The title and the description of a space station crew dealing with a mutating runner duck gives the expectation of something wacky – what we get is more like a variant on Dark Star, a comedy set around the boredom of life on a space station and a 1970s era episode of Doctor Who
Remake of the classic H.G. Wells novel that comes with the novelty of being directed by Wells’s great-grandson. More disappointingly it prefers to merely remake the 1960 film rather than return to the book
The seventh X-Men chapter arrives with a certain ennui. Bryan Singer creates some epic scenes but the sprawling ensemble and the series’ ragged continuity makes it hard to invest in the characters, while the new villain looks like a B movie wizard and the mass destruction climax comes surprisingly by the book
Despite the bad press surroundings this, I failed to find it as bad as other reviewers. It’s a solid if not standout entry in the series with some fine superheroic action sequences
Planetary adventure in the Star Wars vein with a few shakes of the junkyard future look of Mad Max 2. This was made to exploit the short-lived early 80s 3D revival fad
The second of the Resident Evil anime films. This is set before the release of the T-Virus and focuses on origin stories for some of the characters
Nicolas Cage’s career choices in recent years have taken him into serious psychotronic headspace. Shion Sono is a director whose film’s inhabit demented territory. It seemed inevitable that the two should meet up on screen
The second-to-last film produced by the legendary George Pal, concerning people hunted by a psychic supermind
Brett Ratner inherits the X-Men franchise from Bryan Singer for the third film in the series and promptly killed it off (after this point everything became prequels featuring Young X-Men). Ratner’s handling of the superheroic action lacks Singer’s exhilaration or any affinity for the characters
A British-made copy of Alien that has been construed as a series of bizarre images and scenes that make no real sense – even the title is given no explanation
From cult director Joe D’Amato, this throws together hardcore erotica and gory zombie film in a conceptually bizarre mix that leaves you scratching your head
Routine variant on the 1970s killer bug film, although the bugs here are gooey and cartoonish not meant to be taken seriously
Independently made 1970s monster movie. The film came along about ten months too early to be be part of the great spate of B movies that copied Alien and so draws on the earlier model of The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Nothing exceptional
The second of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s unsold Genesis II pilots. While you can see the series had some potential, the plot about the venture to a society where women keep men as slaves has a giggly silliness that feels like a throwback to 50s films like Queen of Outer Space
The first of the Resident Evil sequels and a better film than its predecessor, getting in a series of spectacular, if at times ridiculously silly, action sequences
The first in a series of anime films that were produced by Capcom, the creators of the Resident Evil videogames, and intended to run parallel to the live-action films. I was never a big fan of the live-action films. The question is – does Resident Evil work better in the anime format?
Adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story is killed by being turned into an Arnold Schwarzenegger action vehicle and by director Paul Verhoeven’s burying the reality bending subtleties of the story under bludgeoning ultra-violence
Low-budget superhero that co-opts the cod-film noir look from Sin City. Alas the film has an excessively sprawling and complicated plot, while the film noir style looks like no more than cheap pastiche reduced to cliche poses by well-meaning amateurs
A Gonzo Killer Shark film about a social media influencer bitten by a radioactive shark who becomes a shark-human hybrid
A remake of the work that launched Troma films. The original The Toxic Avenger was a gungily nasty film that readily trod way over all lines of good taste. In being cast with name stars, this has been cleaned up considerably
A film naming itself after an entire genre either has massive ambition or huge pretensions. Beyond the grandiose title, this is not much more than a better budgeted version of an 80s planetary adventure
1950s B movie about time travel experiments that produce a deadly woman from the future. Nothing standout but Salome Jens has an otherworldly presence as the woman
One of the more cheesily entertaining among the Italian-made ripoffs of Mad Max 2 during the 1980s (as well as more than a few dashes of Escape from New York). The film works up a moderate head of steam
Animated film based on the popular fantasy wargame. The set-up is a fascinating mix of SF and mediaeval religion but the plot rehashes Aliens without much payoff and the animation is B-budget
The second live-action Turtles film is a disappointment. The Turtles are infectiously enjoyable characters but the script has an indifferent laziness, while parental concerns over violence have mandated that the fight scenes be watered down to an absurd level
Bert I. Gordon makes a sequel to The Amazing Colossal Man. The film cheats where a good chunk of running time is padded with footage from the original
A mockbuster from The Asylum released to ride on the coattails of Mad Max: Fury Road. Slightly more watchable than most of their offerings, although still cheaply made, this is the oddity of a Mad Max film with the addition of vampires
Third of the Resident Evil films. This expands the scale of action to show the entire world destroyed by the virus but for all that and a decent budget, director Russell Mulcahy fails to push the elements to a suitable head of steam