The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Paranoia is a fear-filled state of mind where someone believes that the world is conspiring against them. Paranoia is listed as a psychological disorder by the American DSM. That said, most people at one point or another experience varying degrees of paranoia without it being pathological. These can range from full-on belief in conspiracy theories and alien lizard people to merely that a partner or co-worker may be up to something. Usually when we talk about paranoia, we refer to people fearing things happening based only on tenuous suppositions or slim imaginings.
What we are concerned with here is paranoid mood. That is to say, the sense created in a film that something is going on around the protagonist(s). This can range from conspiracies by the government or secret organisations, that aliens are stealing people’s bodies, that neighbours might be Satanists, serial killers or up to some form of no good, of alien abductions, medical experiments being conducted on people, of lurking monsters, that They (the government, the military, scientists, the medical establishment, alien lizard people, corporations, forces of conformity etc) might be out to get you. Or even that what you suspect about reality itself may be in question.
Some themes by their very nature lend themselves to paranoia – Body Snatchers, Secret Societies, Conceptual Reversal Twists and of course Conspiracy Theories. The tone of most paranoia films sit in an edgy state of mind where a person’s belief about the world around them may be an illusion that is abruptly peeled back to reveal something far more sinister. The paranoia will be evoked in terms of uncertainty and will often have a perfectly calm and rational alternate explanation that makes it seem that everything is in the protagonist’s mind. Many works of Black Humour also come with a sense of paranoia that is pushed to an hysteric extreme.
The finest film to come out of 1950s SF cinema, concerning an invasion of pods that replicate people but for their emotions. The sense of paranoia and psychological tension is unsurpassed
The first film from Steven Spielberg, a tv movie that was released to theatres. Spielberg demonstrates style to spare in the gripping tale of a lone man on the road who finds himself stalked and followed by a murderous truck
A work of considerable brilliance from a young Roman Polanski with Catherine Deneuve as a woman slipping into madness in an apartment over the course of a weekend. What makes the film particularly disturbing is Polanski’s lack of a blurring line between reality and hallucination
John Carpenter at the peak of his career, remaking The Thing from Another World as a wild and phantasmagoric film steeped in paranoia that proved to be the absolute epitome of the era’s fad for air-bladder transformation effects
Classic film and one of Roman Polanski’s finest works, the comically paranoid story of a housewife who increasingly comes to believe that the child she is pregnant with was fathered by The Devil
An excellent remake of the Cold War classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The original has now been smartly retooled for the 1970s and slots right into the Me Generation era with paranoia perfectly intact
John Carpenter’s first film, made as a student project in collaboration with an also unknown Dan O’Bannon. A send-up of the boldly going space exploration of Star Trek, this features a ship where the crew are going stir crazy. The results are hilarious
Gripping Danish thriller in which morgue attendant Nicholaj Coster Waldau finds a serial killer is playing games with him. Filled with paranoia, sharp twists and lashings of black humour
One of the classic films from producer Val Lewton concerning a secret society of Satanists. An oppressive atmosphere of gloom and morbidity hangs over the film and, as always with Lewton, it comes with striking directorial effects that play on the imagination
An astonishingly bleak John Frankenheimer film in which a disillusioned middle-aged man is contacted by a secret organisation that rejuvenates him to become Rock Hudson
Orson Welles’s adaptation of the Frank Kafka novel about a man caught in a nightmare bureaucracy is one of the most visually stunning black-and-white films ever shot
Standout thriller set around the world of computing, one of the earliest techno-thriller to adapt to the new internet age
Stephen King and George Romero collaborate on a horror anthology made as homage to the EC Comics, telling five tales that replicate the blacker-than-black sense of humour (and even the visual look) of the comic-book with hilarious results
One of the last films from William Friedkin, an astonishingly deranged descent into paranoia and madness, featuring an alarming performance from a young, unknown Michael Shannon
Classic German silent film about a pianist who receives hand transplants and believes they are possessed. Superbly stylised direction from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari director Robert Wiene and with Conrad Veidt putting his all into the contorted mime work
John Frankenheimer film. concerning a Communist plot for creating a brainwashed assassin, Frankenheimer shoots with stark and blackly funny effect and this has duly become a cult classic
Abel Ferrara’s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an overlooked film that settles in with an undeniable creepiness that is just as effective as the earlier versions. The metaphor for the pod people is more diffuse in this one but that does not mitigate the film’s effect
Ole Bornedal conducts an English-language remake of his Danish thriller Nattevagten. Rich in black comedy and dark twists, Bornedal demonstrates a mastery of Hitchcockian suspense
Almost an arthouse variation of the evil psycho child thriller but one stripped of thriller tropes and told in terms of an alternately striking and hauntingly elliptical tableaux of impressionistic images
One of Roman Polanski’s least recognised films in which he both directs and plays the lead as a mousy man driven to a state of paranoia and the point he loses his identity by the neighbours in a Parisian apartment building
The very first alien body snatchers film. With Jack Arnold’s eerily haunted landscapes and a memorably literate Ray Bradbury script, this is one of the classic SF films of the 1950s era
Hollywood noir from the Coen Brothers, this takes us inside the crumbling mental state of a screenwriter in the 1930s. Like a David Lynch remake of Day of the Locust, this comes rich in the Coens’ black uncomfortable humour
A fascinatingly different and original work. A scrupulous effort is made – from the dialogue and clothing – to place us inside a 17th Century setting dominated by insanely legalistic religious superstitions and fears, at contrast to which there lie a series of phantasmagoric visions of witches
At age 81, David Cronenberg is still on great form with this perversely fascinating work about the development of a technology that places cameras inside graves to observe corpses as they decay
Not to be confused with Tod Browning’s shock classic, this starts with a mind-bending quality that leaves you wondering WTF is going on, before logically and ingeniously unfolding as a psychic powers film
A wonderfully paranoid film where drug dealer John Boyega discovers illicit mind control experiments are being conducted on a ghetto neighbourhood and that he is one in a series of clones
A strong and effective environmental horror film from Larry Fessenden in which the crew of an Alaskan drilling operation disturb something beneath the frozen ground
Considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest films, this centres around Joseph Cotten as the favourite uncle who comes to town as his niece increasingly suspects that he may be a serial killer
Fascinating British film about pacts with an ambiguous Devil figure. The film largely exists to push protagonist Jim Sturgess into as many morally uncomfortable places as possible
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have become must-watch directors in the last decade. This film, which was shot in their apartment during Covid lockdown, becomes the ultimate conspiracy theory rabbit hole
Alexandre Aja film with Halle Berry and sons at a cabin in the woods facing an evil force outside. A work that screws with what we think is going on
A thriller that develops quite a degree of eerie suspense as Juliette Lewis moves into a new apartment and finds she is surrounded by some very strange neighbours
All-star adaptation of the Franz Kafka novel that gets a far better sense of the book’s black ironies than the previous Orson Welles version
Compulsively watchable Ryan Murphy mini-series about a family whose life is torn apart by a sinister letter-writing campaign. A true story that gets far most bizarre than most fiction
Imagine Brian De Palma’s Blow Out by way of Barton Fink. Set around the sound recording of a giallo horror, this mounts an impressive spiral down into claustrophobia and paranoia, even if it is never quite the horror film it keeps trying to be
Adaptation of an autobiographical Philip K. Dick book that he wrote in an attempt to make sense of a series of bizarre hallucinations, this long-rumoured film manages, despite a low-budget, to mainline the brain-twisting nature of Dick’s writing better than any other adaptation
An alien invasion and takeover film that was clearly inspired by the success of tv’s The X Files. This is a smart effort that emerges as something unworldly in David Twohy’s hands
Fascinating work from Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of the earliest depictions of Virtual Reality on screen and one that sets most of the genre’s tropes in place
Classic of the 1950s alien invader genre in which a young boy discovers that the adults around him are being taken over by Martian invaders. Director William Cameron Menzies makes striking use of sets to further a sense of alienation
Wildly experimental South Korean adaptation of the Kafka story about a man turning into an insect – a film shot entirely by the director in bed with the camera pointed at his feet
The title monolith is a cheat, this is however a creepy Australian film about a series of ultra-mysterious objects
A modestly effective variant on the body snatchers theme with a scientist developing new plants coming to the realisation that the plants are taking over people’s minds
Modest and underrated Philip K. Dick adaptation that builds reasonable atmosphere during its journey across a planet and doubt as to who among the party might be one of a breed of evolving androids
Nightwatch about the paranoia of a morgue attendant on the night shift was a festival hit. After 29 years, the principals reunite for a sequel
Amid the mostly silly output of James Bond copies in the 1960s, this is one that comes with a sharp satiric bite in which president’s analyst James Coburn finds himself caught in the midst of a series of conspiracies
Rare cinematic treatment of the generation ship story that conducts it with a modest degree of affectiveness. Produced by Paul W.S. Anderson.
John Carpenter makes an alien invasion film that works as a biting satire of Reaganomics in which aliens are manipulating reality to increase their profit shares in Earth
Reminiscent of George Romero’s The Crazies, this is a subtle, low key film about a small town as it is affected by a toxic waste leak that causes mass insanity
An anthology of five short Found Footage horror films each from a different director. As with any anthology these are variable in tone but are on the whole mostly effective and contain a number of alternately unearthly and spooky moments
Clever and well made Found Footage film about a NASA crew encountering something alien on The Moon’s surface. Falls somewhere between Alien, Apollo 13 and Paranormal Activity
Film based on true-life New Zealand mass murderer Stanley Graham, a disenfranchised farmer who became a local hero after shooting several police and inspiring a massive manhunt
Spain’s Alex de la Iglesia has become a specialist in comedies with a dark bite. This centres around a crosscut of characters trapped inside a bar during the outbreak of a deadly infection
One of the first Reds Under the Bed hysteria films of the 1950s where a man stumbles on a small town where a Communist fifth column are conducting biowarfare experiments as part of a planned invasion
Modest and quite effective Dean R. Koontz adaptation in which Jay Mohr is trapped in a small town run by an A.I. that does everything it can to prevent him from leaving
Scathingly funny film where a party held by a group of self-absorbed twentysomethings turns deadly as it appears there is a killer in their midst
Variation on Invasion of the Body Snatchers with body-snatching doppelgangers emerging from mirrors. Directed with an impressive air of subtle, brooding disquiet, this manages to run up some reasonable twists on an oft-told tale
Nicely chilling film in which Maika Monroe believes that the person in the apartment opposite might be stalking her
1970s television produced some remarkable genre works. One of the best was this – a work of eerie tension as scientists conducting experiments at a remote laboratory find something unseen is toying with them
The directorial debut for Brian Yuzna, this has a satiric and weirdly paranoid tone but what makes the film is its sensational display makeup effects involving a secret society of shapeshifting orgiasts
This was one of the last gasps of the 1950s alien body snatchers genre. Conducted on a low budget, this nevertheless comes with some modest effect as a scientist and his family face mysterious doppelgangers
A variant on The Game where Michael Douglas had his life turned into a nightmare series of rubber reality games that were being staged for his amusement. This spins the same idea through a witty series of horror movie homages
Julianne Moore discovers her late son has been erased from photos and people’s memories eventually leading her to an explanation involving mysterious aliens
The third film about the title criminal mastermind from Fritz Lang. Here Lang returns to a radically different Germany to the one he fled in the 1930s, the West Germany of the Cold War, to deliver a creepily paranoid work about the surveillance society
A rehash of The Stepford Wives recast along racial lines. It is a surprise to see a mainstream horror hit with a strong message about racism, not that Jordan Peele neglects the horror element either
The Found Footage genre has become fairly much strip-mined of all possibilities and I felt little enthusiasm for yet another. That said, this film about a reality tv crew in a heavily superstitious East European village, proves surprisingly well made and entirely wins you over with a bravura climax
Very odd early Peter Weir film about a strange plumber who moves in and takes over cautious Judy Morris’s apartment
Modest 1980s video release that builds with some unnerving effect as Timothy Daly grants shelter to Kelly Preston only to earn the wrath of a pursuing Satanic cult
Defying the sensationalistic title, this is actually a fairly reasonable entry in the 1950s alien body snatchers fad in which wives discover their husbands have been taken over by aliens come to Earth to repopulate their species
This adaptation of the Robert Heinlein novel was not a success when it came out but is a modest addition to the alien body snatchers genre with some undeniably effective moments
The third of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films, the only one without Vincent Price. Here Ray Milland develops a fearful obsession of being buried alive
Australian film where a girl turns up at the trailer home of a recluse. A series of tense psychological games ensue where it becomes apparent neither of them are being truthful
An adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story in which Gary Sinise plays a man who is dragged away by security accused of being an android replacement that has a bomb implanted inside him
Psychological thriller where an uptight Colin Firth gets a handsomely charming roommate in Hart Bochner who proceeds to seduce everybody in the building with sinister intent
Remake of the classic Cold War thriller from Jonathan Demme that has been updated for the era of George W. Bush
Barbara Hershey plays an aging woman who moves into a retirement home. The film then develops an edgy paranoia about possibly supernatural happening around her
Film that draws on the basics of The Keep and takes place in a haunted bunker in the British-German trenches of the First World War as soldiers face something that preys on their fears
An original work that conjures a fantastic sense of ominous Lovecraftian cosmic horror as a man is haunted by a cult whose purpose is to wake a slumbering deity that is dreaming all of reality
Featuring Simon Pegg as a paranoid writer seeing sinister happenings everywhere. This should have been a darkly funny comedy but the film winds everything up to a shrilly hysteric fever pitch
Brad Anderson makes a paranoid nightmare as Sam Worthington takes his daughter to a hospital only for her to go missing and he to encounter a Kafka-esque bureaucracy that insists she doesn’t exist
Though pitched as a prequel, this is essentially a remake of John Carpenter’s classic. Alas, this only finds the same phantasmagoric outlandishness as Carpenter did in a couple of scenes that may be moderately impressive for those who have never seen the original
David Fincher film in which Michael Douglas is wound into a conspiracy that makes him doubt everything around him. Fincher creates paranoia but the story eventually becomes an improbably contrived house of cards
Robert Pattinson (before he was a recognised name) as a convalescing pilot during WWII who is haunted by demonic spiders in an adaptation of a book by occult writer Dennis Wheatley.
This rehashes the basic set-up of Rosemary’s Baby but with a spin where a couple move into the perfect apartment only to find their neighbours are health obsessed seniors with a sinister agenda
A film about Grimcutty, a boogeyman that lurks inside an internet meme and thrives on causing parental fears. This sits on the edge of being almost interesting
Tony Todd heads a B-budget body snatchers film about a neighbourhood being taken over by beings that promise a great transformation
A B budget variant on the 1950s an alien body snatchers film uncreditedly based on Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters. Other films in this niche created great paranoid atmosphere but here the results only look cheap and tatty
Horror film in which Tom Cavanagh goes into hospital for a routine procedure only to emerge with his leg amputated amid increasingly more surreal things happening around the hospital
Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, John Landis and George Miller came together to make this homage to tv’s The Twilight Zone. The episodes are variable but the standout is Miller’s Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
Frank Oz conducts a remake of The Stepford Wives, which becomes a broad comedy take on the gender wars in the modern world
Ira Levin’s original novel wherein the men of a town replace their wives with subservient android duplicates seems to have its satiric point blunted when it comes to the film adaptation
The second-to-last film produced by the legendary George Pal, concerning people hunted by a psychic supermind
Mickey Keating film in which two siblings go to help a brother who appears in mental distress and claims to have imprisoned a monster in his basement
A film where a girl goes to stay with her girl friend at a cabin in the woods but thinks her friend might be drugging her and taking her blood
A film from Duffer Brothers creators of tv’s Stranger Things. This is a fallout shelter drama where the Duffers create a strong paranoid mood but kill the film with a ridiculous twist ending
Joe Dante black comedy about a neighbourhood where everybody becomes paranoid about the weird new people moved in. The film’s bite gets lots amid everything being pitched at a clumsily shrill level of hysteria
Ten different filmmakers from around the world combine to make an anthology of eight horror stories set during the Covid lockdown
A head scractchingly strange Sam Raimi produced film in which Raimi’s brother Ted plays a man suffering from hallucinations who tries to come to the aid of the girl of his dreams
Dean R. Koontz adaptation with Bruce Greenwood as a private detective drawn into helping a woman protect her child from crazed cultists that believe he is the Antichrist
Saw series Darren Lynn Bousman downplays sadism in favour of a psychologically ambiguous film about a series of attacks possibly conducted by the Jersey Devil
Low-budget and fairly indifferently made sequel to David Twohy’s quite good alien invasion film