The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Paranormal Investigators refers to individuals or teams that investigate supernatural phenomena. The majority of phenomena being examined are ghosts and haunted locales, although there are plentiful examples of investigators of UFOs, psychic phenomena, vampires, cryptozoological creatures and miracle healings.
Investigators can be academics and scientists looking into phenomena; mediums, professional sceptics to the FBI’s X Files division. Modern variants include amateur investigators armed with video cameras who appear in various Found Footage films.
See also Monster Hunters for those who track down and combat malevolent supernatural forces and Occult Investigators for those engaged in dealing with occult forces.
Uwe Boll gained a reputation as the world’s worst director on the basis of his videogame adaptations. Prize exhibit was Alone in the Dark, which abandons the game and is a series of action scenes without explanatory rationale
Film about ghosthunters investigating a reputedly haunted California winery. The scares are about as generic and forgettable as they come, although the end takes a very strange left field turn
This was the third of the Amityville films, released amid the early 1980s 3D revival. Nothing more than the usual except for various things popping out of the screen
James Wan is one of the finest directors currently at work in the horror genre. The produced by James Wan credit is a less enthusiastic prospect and had consisted of total dogs spinning off more popular works.
Comedy about a man with ghosts in his home who invites in a so-called ‘ghost assassin’ before it becomes increasingly apparent he is completely nuts. Less a horror comedy than an eccentric bromance gone wrong
This feels like an amateur film made on a big budget that consists of utterly tepid scares where the director fails to do anything not borrowed from a dozen other ghost stories
A crew of reality tv paranormal investigators are hired to investigate a haunted abandoned asylum. This sort of film has been done numerous time before.
Spanish Found Footage film about the investigation of a haunted woods during which almost nothing happens, before a left-field twist ending that makes little sense
A classic British ghost story that produces an exceedingly haunted atmosphere at times, although falls apart in a highly contrived M. Night Shyamalan twist ending
Parody of the horror genre designed to highlight British comedian Kenny Everett. Some quite funny spoofs, some that aren’t. Vincent Price appears as the leader of a coven.
A Clive Barker adaptation taken from the name of his story collection. While not uninteresting, it emerges as a haunted house story that eschews genre cliches for an everyday approach and never quite delivers its punches
A new Clive Barker film is always something to be excited about – Barker has been absent too long as a creative force. This is an anthology based around Barker’s celebrated story collection
The Found Footage horror film quickly became worn out. However, this effort about the investigation into a haunted church in the English countryside manages to generate some quite reasonable atmosphere
Another supposedly true story from the casebook of the psychic investigator frauds Ed and Lorraine Warren. James Wan’s first two entries were eerily haunting; by now, the constant profusion of effect becomes overkill that produces no results at all
This has an interesting set-up concerning mysterious happenings in a hospital where it is gradually revealed the characters exist in a limbo caught between Heaven and Hell even if it never does the idea justice
A low-budget mockbuster that joins the horde of ghost nun films that were made following the success of The Nun. From the director of Clowntergeist.
Another variant on the set-up of the team of ghostsbusters investigating a haunted locale with videocameras that has been done to death in recent years
New Zealand-made film about a trio of parapsychologists investigating a reputedly haunted farmhouse. This treads very familiar ground and ultimately suffers from a sedate approach
A rather funny horror comedy based around the concept of a livestream conducted from a haunted house – all of which proceeds to quite hilariously go wrong
One hoped this might have taken the approach of featuring a demonically possessed tongue but more mundanely uses tongue as meaning language. In reality, this is a poorly made film about a team of ghostbusters searching a haunted bar
James Wan has an exemplary track record in one’s opinion, you think this would extend to anything he produces. Here all we get are series of tired haunted house cliches before a twist ending that makes no real sense
Solid offering from the increasingly underrated Adam Mason that takes more than a few leaves from Hellraiser with a ghostsbusting team investigating occult happenings in an abandoned asylum
Haunted house story that is not substantially different from the 7000 on this site. This has some novel twists in that it focuses on an old man afraid to go out of doors who appears to open up a supernatural doorway as he sleeps
An adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft short story. While more faithful to the story than the earlier 1969 adaptation, the film is very cheaply made and collapses into the frequently ridiculous
This Canadian film is a mishmash of hauntings, psychic powers, ghost hunters, possibly imaginary friends and End of the World prophecies that fails to make the slightest sense
The Enfield Haunting is a supposedly true-life haunting that most audiences are familiar with from The Conjuring 2; this is an earlier tv mini-series treatment that offers a more realistically grounded telling
Film that is supposedly based on a true story which Barbara Hershey are her family are harassed by a poltergeist. This contains the notorious scene where Hershey is raped by the entity
Five Nights at Freddy’s, adapted from the popular videogame and featuring Josh Hutcherson fighting off killer animatronics, was a runaway success for Blumhouse. This is a sequel
This has the great idea of paranormal investigators investigating the home of real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Alas, Gacy is of zero relevance and the film no more that a tatty Found Footage effort
An overrated classic that is nevertheless an undeniable fixture of 1980s pop culture. Overlong, it is largely carried through Bill Murray’s lazy sarcasm and the sterling work from the visual effects team
There was a lot of hate centred on this for recasting what is considered a classic film with an all-girl cast. It emerges mostly likeably, no better, no worse on the whole, where the new ensemble make a solid showing
A weak follow-up to the hit original that essentially killed off any further Ghostbusters sequels. Most of the the cast are back but the plot and proceedings feel like a walk-through for all involved.
Sequel to Ghostbusters that was far better received than the 2016 reboot, giving us a new generation of ghostbusters. This succeeds largely by playing the nostalgia card for all it can
Follow-up to Ghostbusters: Afterlife, reuniting that film’s mix of new and classic cast. However, this becomes a plotting juggle that is often straining to find somewhere to include everyone
Classic BBC live broadcast tv special where a camera crew investigate a haunted house. Cited as one of the first Found Footage films, this does some ingenious things blending fact and fiction and messing with its audience
Another Found Footage horror film with a reality tv ghostbusting team investigating a haunted asylum. The Found Footage genre quickly became exhausted and this only treads where others have gone before
Mike Mendez has gained a reasonable name as a genre director since the early 2000s. This is one of his earlier works, a venture into the ghost story where three friends are haunted after drunkenly dancing on a grave
An old fashioned Victorian ghost story based on a James Herbert novel, this suffers a very laidback pace but is redeemed by its left field twist ending. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola
The second attempt to spin a film off from the Disney theme park ride, this comes in a more serious tone than the prior Eddie Murphy film but still emerges as lightweight in terms of horror
This is the finest haunted house film of all. In Robert Wise’s hands, the ghosts are unseen and only ever psychological and suggested – the results are terrifying. Adapted from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House
The original 1963 version of The Haunting was a masterpiece of unseen psychological horrors. This, in which all of the psychological horrors are replaced by loud and unsubtle CGI bombast, is one of the worst remakes of all time
One of the tatty ghost stories made by The Asylum, sold with the association of famous haunted locations or murders. Minor moments of interest if you are prepared to wade through the over-hyped shocks
The first of Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptations of Mike Mignola’s comic-book about a demon superhero. Not as good as the sequel, the film’s ace in the hole is Ron Perlman in the title role
Reboot of the Hellboy series promisingly comes from Neil Marshall but is also made by Millennium Films who have a habit of buying up previously successful properties and churning out cheaper spinoffs
In the second and the best of his two Hellboy films, Guillermo Del Toro expands the first out with an amazing menagerie of eccentric and offbeat creatures, while Ron Perlman is again on winning form in the title role
After a disastrous reboot of the Hellboy franchise, Millennium Media get it right, employing the comic’s creator on script, taking the series into wild directions with Hellboy up against Appalachian folk horrors
An NZ-made haunted house comedy that runs through a frenzied array of genre plot devices, a couple of minor jumps and some easy middle-of-the-road laughs leaving you feeling there should have been more to it
The most successful Taiwanese horror film of all time, a Found Footage film about paranormal investigators who witness a ritual and are afterwards haunted by it
A ghost story from Ti West that gains its effect from a quiet, mundanely understated approach and existing in an ambiguous place where we cannot be sure whether manifestations are real or in the imagination
After two fairly good initial entries, the Insidious series began its downward slide. Here new director Adam Robitel’s clumsy jumpshocks are a far cry from the eerie effects James Wan pulled off
Phantasm series director Don Coscarelli makes a mind-expanding effort that seems a conceptual collision between Donnie Darko, Limitless, a slacker version of Supernatural and Dr Strange
We are familiar with the Justice League but this gives us an alternate League whose members have supernatural abilities or are versed in dealing with the occult.
While holding many similarities to The Haunting, this is a strong, intelligent film about parapsychologists investigating a haunted house. Filled with eerie scares and a standout script from Richard Matheson
A film shot during the Covid lockdown, following a police detective who conducts an investigation into deaths caused by supernatural entities unleashed amid the isolation
A crazy Hong Kong blend of supernatural and slapstick, featuring a detective who employs supernatural methods to fight drug dealers who use the resurrected dead as couriers
Okay ghost story in which Gabrielle Anwar rents a haunted farmhouse. Forest Whitaker turns up as a neighbouring occult expert
Witty and funny attempt to update the vampire to the present day being hunted by a reporter. Darren McGavin gives an enormously entertaining performance. A hit tv movie that was spun out into a series.
Less famous sequel to the cult tv movie The Night Stalker but a far superior work. This repeats much of the first film but with Darren McGavin’s Kolchak hunting an immortal killer. Much better script and featuring a superbly eerie climactic venture down into the Seattle Underground
A film shot during Covid lockdown that creates a great sense of isolation with a man locked inside a possibly haunted apartment
A Japanese Found Footage film made not long after The Blair Witch Project with a man investigating various paranormal incidents around Tokyo
A couple of years ago, the hauntingly eerie Absentia made Mike Flanagan into a must-watch director; this is his follow-up – the story of an evil mirror that, while slightly the lesser of Absentia, conducts some undeniably effective games of reality and illusion
A Spanish ghost story that effectively eschews modern jumpshock tactics in favour of subtle old-fashioned scares
Loosely set around the legend of Typhoid Mary with ghostbusters investigating an abandoned asylum. One of a host of films that automatically relegate themselves to B movies by borrowing the prefix ‘Paranormal’, this sits between the amateurish and occasionally interesting
In the same vein as The Conjuring films, a film about a true-life Spanish team of paranormal investigators
Debate will always rage as to whether this was directed by Tobe Hooper or executive producer Steven Spielberg. It doesn’t alter the fact that it is a superlative rollercoaster of a ghost story that doesn’t always make sense but pulls its effects off flawlessly
It has become an overused phrase in this site’s critical arsenal to say “yet another 70s/80s remake that is inferior to the original”. The 1982 Poltergeist was one of the great ghost stories of the era; this hits all the beats and with bigger effects but fails to find any of the haunted mood of the original
The first of the long-running series of sequels to Full Moon’s Puppetmaster, this is essentially a rerun of the first film
Another offering from the revived Hammer Films. Like a few films of recent, this claims to be based on a true story – a parapsychological experiment conducted in the 1970s – but throws almost every detail out the window to substitute a well-worn bag of horror tricks
Strong, well-written film from Buried director Rodrigo Cortes about investigators of psychic frauds encountering a possibly real example. This takes a welcomely sceptical, rationalist perspective, has a great cast and fine build-up but alas falls apart in a lame twist ending
A Stephen King scripted tv mini-series about the investigation into a haunted house. This is not quite a classic in the vein of its model The Haunting but is a solid and effective entry
An animated film revival of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? This also makes an misguided attempt to build a shared universe among assorted Hanna-Barbera characters
The live-action film version of the popular Hanna-Barbera animated tv series. Despite James Gunn on script, this is not very good, a one-dimensional, no-brain film trying to look like a one-dimensional, no-brain cartoon
Sequel to the live-action Scooby-Doo, this is at least a better film than its predecessor, being more polished in its slapstick and effects but still has no more ambition beyond being a silly no-brain film
YouTube film reviewer Chris Stuckmann makes a directorial debut with this film about the investigation into a mysterious disappearance where he makes a work that is well above the often familiar material it deals with
Fascinating and original Taiwanese film about scientists investigating a haunted house and employing various methods to trap the ghosts
Low-budget film about a team of FBI ghost hunters investigating an abandoned prison where mysterious things are going on
A reasonably effective and spooky Found Footage film set around the unexplained phenomena at the real-life Skinwalker Ranch
A blatant copy of The Blair Witch Project with a group of people armed with video cameras investigating a haunted house
From the director of Excision, another film that satirically digs its claws into middle-class values but there is the feeling we have seen all of this before and the film fails to provide anything funny. Added to this is a barely scary ghost plot the film occasionally remembers to get back to
After the success of their remake of House on Haunted Hill, Dark Castle Entertainment remade another William Castle film here, expanding it with a full arsenal of visual and makeup effects
Softcore version of Thir13en Ghosts with ghosts hunters wandering through a house and seeing various girls making out. The various encounters seem to lack even the basic conviction from those involved
Another crude and witless genre parody in the vein of Jason Friedberg-Aaron Seltzer of Epic Movie, Disaster Movie et al notoriety. I there is anything worse than that it is surely a failed attempt to imitate them
An impressive line-up of genre names came together for this big event mini-series that sets out to offer a conclusive explanation for the Bermuda Triangle in a plot that juggles an entertaining stew of wild ideas involving timewarps, alternate timelines and government cover-ups
A really quite spooky film about a series of audio recordings send to a podcast that seem to contain evidence of a possession. A film that almost entirely has its effect relayed by sound
There is a certain potential to the concept of two rival teams, parapsychological debunkers and a tabloid tv crew, researching a reputedly haunted prison. Only a couple of years later, this would have been mandatorily made as a Found Footage film but suffers from a director with no aptitude for atmosphere
Christopher Landon, director of Happy Death Day and Freaky, makes a comedy about a family who turn the ghost in their house into a viral sensation
Film spinoff from tv’s hit ultra-paranoid alien conspiracy drama. The film is caught in the unenviable position of trying to give fans what they want and reiterate the basics of the series for new audiences, while giving away no plot details in advance, and as a result ended up pleasing nobody
The second theatrical spinoff from The X Files, a dismally dull entry where one wonders how the people who created one of the great tv shows of the 1990s got it all wrong