Aniara (2018)
Spaceflight Goes Off Course
Film based on a full-length Swedish SF poem that concerns the despair, emptiness and strange societies that emerge among those aboard a spaceship that is thrown off course
New Religions
New Religions is a topic that deals with anything not covered under Religion in Fantastic Cinema, which concerns content that falls under the umbrella of traditional beliefs. Strange cults are dealt with under Cults.
This theme deals with
– Religions that might develop in the future, fantasy worlds or Alternate Histories
– Religion as it might be observed by alien cultures
– Strange new religions that might emerge in the here and now such as people worshipping Lovecraftian entities or those engaged in folk religion
The Ant Bully (2006)
Animation/Boy Reduced to Ant Size
An animated film about a child who is cruel to ants only to be magically reduced down to their size and then have to become their saviour against an exterminator
Babylon A.D. (2008)
Cyberpunk Future
This was critically dismissed – even its director spoke out against it – nevertheless it proves a flawed but not entirely uninteresting French Cyberpunk film as mercenary Vin Diesel is hired to protect miracle girl Melane Thierry
Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)
Planet of the Apes Sequel/Telepathic Mutants
The second and most underrated of the Planet of the Apes films. For a time it repeats the original but gains considerable imagination and a striking satiric bite with the introduction of the mutants
Children of Dune (2003)
Desert World/Intergalactic Politics/Precognitive Messiah
Follow-up to the 2000 tv mini-series adaptation of Dune, this adapts Frank Herbert’s two books sequels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. The production lacks the depth of its predecessor
Children of the Corn (1984)
Pagan Child Cult/Stephen King Adaptation
A fifteen page Stephen King story about a patricidal child cult has spawned this film, nine sequels and a remake. Not a very good film, this is stuck with padding a very slight original out to a full-length film
Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1992)
Pagan Child Cult
The second of the films spun off from the Stephen King short story. This is better that its predecessor, premised around a series of novelty deaths and offering some explanations for what is happening
Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995)
Pagan Child Cult
The third of the films based on the Stephen King short story, this moves the locale to the city but is otherwise based around a series of completely ridiculous makeup effects every few minutes
Children of the Corn: The Gathering (1996)
Pagan Child Cult
The popularity of the Children of the Corn franchise – eleven films spun out of a sixteen page Stephen King story – baffles one. This is the fourth film, its greatest distinction being that it stars a then unknown Naomi Watts
Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998)
Pagan Child Cult
Quite who the audience for these Children of the Corn films is that they keep making more of them is a mystery. This was the fifth of eleven films and at least better than the last two entries
Children of the Corn (2009)
Pagan Child Cult/Stephen King Adaptation
This remake of the Stephen King short story (this time with a script from King himself) is a much better film than the earlier 1984 version or any of its numerous sequels
Children of the Corn (2020)
Pagan Child Cult
The Stephen King short story only runs to 16 pages. This is the eleventh film spinoff to date (which runs at about one film per 1.4 pages of story). Unlike the other sequels, this claims to be an origin story
The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)
Intergalactic Adventures
The sequel to Pitch Black where Vin Diesel’s serial killer now becomes the hero of the show and the original planetary survival story is expanded out into an ornate Gothic space opera
Cloud Atlas (2012)
Cross-Historical Epic
A cross-historical epic from The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer. An uneven film driven more by its determination we view it as an epic. Surely a studio publicist’s nightmare, it grasps at the meaning of it all yet eludes telling audiences what it is about
Curse of the Blind Dead (2020)
Blind Knights Templar Zombies
A revival of the popular 1970s Blind Dead series about Knights Templar zombies. In this era of zombie films homages and remakes, it is a surprise nobody has thought to do so before
Dagon (2001)
H.P. Lovecraft Adaptation/Village of Mutants
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
Dead Space: Downfall (2008)
Animation/Videogame Adaptation/Spaceship of Mutated Dead
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
Dune (1984)
Desert World/Intergalactic Politics/Precognitive Messiah
David Lynch disowned his film version of the classic Frank Herbert SF novel. However, Lynch may be incapable of making a bad film and this, while acting freely with the book, has a visual grandeur that makes it highly watchable
Dune (2000)
Desert World/Intergalactic Politics/Precognitive Messiah
This TV mini-series remake of the Frank Herbert novel is much more faithful to the essence and complexity of the book, even if it lacks the visual resplendence of the film versions
Dune Part One (2021)
Desert World/Intergalactic Politics/Precognitive Messiah
Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic SF novel comes with a determination to give the story and its richly detailed world faithful life on screen. Villeneuve adapts freely in many areas but gets the complexity of the saga
Dune Part Two (2024)
Desert World/Intergalactic Politics/Precognitive Messiah
The second part of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic SF novel Dune, this delves more deeply into the world of the Fremen, although starts to diverge more from the book
Earthsea (2004)
Epic Fantasy/Apprentice Wizard
This TV mini-series adaptation of the Ursula Le Guin books is an insult. This was quickly mounted on the back of the success of The Lord of the Rings films but feels like tv filler that has zero affinity for Le Guin’s richly cultured world
Enemy Mind (2010)
Enemies Stranded on an Alien Planet
A modest and effective low-budget reworking of the classic Enemy Mine delivered with a quite reasonable intelligence and professionalism
Franklyn (2008)
Interwoven Stories/Religious Dystopia
A fascinating series of interwoven stories, one of which is set in a religion-dominated dystopian future. An intriguing puzzle that arrives at a surprise left field ending
Gappa the Triphibian Monster (1967)
Japanese Monster Movie
This was a fairly crappy and terrible Japanese monster movie from a rival company seeking to copy the success of Toho’s Godzilla films
The Golden Compass (2007)
Epic Fantasy Adventure
The attempt to create another Lord of the Rings went astray with this adaptation of Philip Pulllman’s fantasy series, which cut many of the core elements of the books so as not to offend religious conservatives
In the Lost Lands (2025)
Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy Quest
Paul W.S. Anderson adapts a George R.R. Martin fantasy story but somehow still manages to make it into another Resident Evil copy still starring Milla Jovovich
The Invention of Lying (2009)
World Where Nobody Lies
Ricky Gervais co-directs and stars in a comedy set in an alternate world where everybody tells the truth and he discovers he is the one person who can lie and how this proceeds to change the world
Iron Sky: The Coming Race (2019)
Nazi Moonbase/Alien Lizard People from the Centre of the Earth
Timo Vuorensola’s follow-up to Iron Sky. It is hard to believe that a film with a premise that combines Nazis on the Moon with alien lizard people from the hollow core of the Earth could go wrong
Logan’s Run (1976)
Dystopian Future
Dystopian SF mounted on a big budget by people that don’t have a clue what they are doing. This creates one of prettiest depictions of the future of any film of this era but it is only a surface deep depiction
The Master (2012)
L. Ron Hubbard Fictionalised Biopic
Paul Thomas Anderson’s loose biopic of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard is a film composed of great acting and great individual scenes more so than it ever coheses as a story or delves in to interrogate its characters. Far too elusive as a story to quite be the masterpiece it is readily being hailed as
Matriarch (2022)
Folk Horror
A wonderfully creepy Folk Horror film in which Jemima Rooper returns to her home town after many years and finds very strange things happening
Nightfall (2000)
Isaac Asimov Adaptation
Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall, about a planet surrounded by six suns that only experiences nightfall once every thousand years, is considered the No 1 classic science-fiction short story. On film, it has alas befallen two impoverished versions from Roger Corman of which this was the second
On the Silver Globe (1988)
Colonisation of a Alien Planet
Andrzej Zulawski, known for the demented Possession, makes an SF film about planetary colonisation. The spirit of Andrei Tarkovsky hangs over the film, which is long and philosophically rambling. What you cannot deny is the film’s epic scope and the mad splendour of Zulawski’s visuals
The Prophecy 3: The Ascent (2000)
War Between Angels
The third of the Prophecy films with Christopher Walken as the angel Gabriel. This time the wry humour and interplay of ideas of the other films feels more thinly drawn
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
Intergalactic Adventures
William Shatner tries to emulate the success had by Leonard Nimoy in directing a Star Trek film but falls on his face, badly overstressing the comedy elements and delivering the worst of the Classic Trek films
Star Wars (1977)
Space Opera
The single most influential science-fiction film of all time, one that created a massive industry of sequels and spinoffs, not to mention copycats, and changed the way that people thought of science-fiction
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)
Space Opera
George Lucas’s return to the Star Wars series after a sixteen year absence and a build-up rivaled only by the Second Coming. Instead most audiences went away disappointed. Lucas has used the interim to push the technology to its heights but the story and characters are lacking
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)
Space Opera
The second of George Lucas’s Stars Wars prequels is no particular improvement. The romance is stiff and awkward, badly written while the effects sequences seem to be running out of new things to do and so just up the scale of what has happened before with so much going on it reaches a point of visual overload
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Space Opera
The last of George Lucas’s Star Wars prequel trilogy and the last opportunity for him to get it right, which he generally does. The effects are expert but are not allowed to dominate as much as they did previously and the focus has come back onto the story and Anakin’s transformation into Darth Vader
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Space Opera
George Lucas’s first sequel to Star Wars and a work that holds up every bit as well as its predecessor, in many places betters it. The story darkens the mythos and introduces new characters, while the special effects sequences are the peak of the series
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)
Space Opera
A disappointing end to George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy. The script lazily wraps up loose ends while sidelining the new characters introduced the last time, and the climax rehashes the climaxes of the two other films
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Space Opera
It’s not another Empire Strikes Back but it makes up for the prequels. A good part fanservice to the original – if overly reliant on rehashing elements from Star Wars – this also does many things right
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
Space Opera
I’m not one of the haters on this. It’s the first Star Wars sequel since the 1980s to invigorate the series with fresh action sequences and place more focus on the characters instead of the action
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)
Space Opera/Animation
Theatrical spinoff from the Star Wars prequels, released to introduce the popular animated series. This shows it is time for George Lucas to move beyond recycling something that was successful three decades ago
Starship Rising (2014)
Space Opera
Modest space opera from British director Neil Johnson that achieves things with its effects on a low-budget that easily rivals A-budget films
Uforia (1985)
UFO Religion
Appealingly eccentric comedy set in the American Midwest where supermarket cashier Cindy Williams gains a cult following after preaching that the UFOs are coming
Ultramarines (2010)
Animation/Wargame Adaptation/Space Marines vs Demonic Forces
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
Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968)
Expedition to Venus/Russian SF Film
Another Roger Corman film made up out of footage recycled from Russian SF films and pseudnonymously directed by a young Peter Bogdanovich in a rather silly plot about astronauts encountering dinosaur-worshipping women on Venus
Warning (2021)
Anthology of Future SF Tales
An anthology film that has been intended in the same vein as tv’s Black Mirror, offering a series of dark reflections of technological changes
Zardoz (1974)
Barbarian Disrupts Utopia of Immortals
Most science-fiction films lack worthy ideas, this is one that contrarily suffers from too many and collapses under the weight of its pretensions to profundity