The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
In biology, a parasite is a lifeform that lives on, in or by attaching itself to a host and feeding from them. Genre cinema has adapted the idea to its own uses and gives us a variety of lifeforms that attach themselves to humans (almost always) and control or feed upon them.
The most famous parasite in genre cinema would be the chestburster in Alien (1979). Body Snatchers films are filled with a good many other parasitic alien lifeforms that take over and control humans or even the dead as part of an Alien Invasion. The horror genre has developed a number of variations of their own.
An amazingly bad movie from the VHS era where a woman is exorcised by a televangelist and coughs up a tumor, which crawls out of the trash and possesses her son, driving him to kill and bring bodies home to feed the tumor
One of the most influential films on this site, producing a host of sequels and making the careers of all involved. At heart, a simple monster on a spaceship film, it is made into a classic through Ridley Scott’s relentless suspense and H.R. Giger’s design work
Full marks for the title. Rather than any spacegoing version of Titanic, we have a spaceship named Titan1-C, which is soon abandoned and thereafter a cheesily ridiculous film about alien chestbusters
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
This is a weird little film about an alien vampire that is slowly rejuvenating. This has an interesting swim of strange ideas but in reality isn’t very good
The rapper turned filmmaker Flying Lotus directs a copy of Alien with an amnesiac crewmember of a ship landed on a hostile planet where the crew are hunted by an alien nasty
A wildly deranged and gore-drenched ride. Imagine Rosemary’s Baby with an Alien chesburster where a woman is impregnated by a parasite that maintains a monologue as it urges her to kill and drink blood to feed it.
A comedy about a demon that appears out of a man’s ass!!! This has the dementia to be a potential midnight cult hit but misses the mark by a wide mile and stumbles around obvious targets in predictable ways
Animated film featuring a team-up between the sons of Batman and Superman, which ends up being far more fun than you expect
The Asylum’s mockbuster take on Avatar: The Way of Water, which ingeniously exploits the fact that Saturn has a moon called Pandora. The rest is a low-budget body snatchers film
Fine film in which a young couple’s idyllic getaway to the title location becomes a nightmare as the ocean produces a fog that starts to create mutations
The best film from the great and underrated Frank Henenlotter about the relationship between a man and a parasite in his brain that feeds him drugs to make him go and kill
Not to be confused with the Peter Jackson Braindead, although the similarity of titles only emphasizes how weak and unfunny this 1980s splatter homage comedy is in comparison
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
An ambitious film in its depiction of a near-future Russia and satire on the media. The latter half has the hero undergo a mystical experience and discover that advertising brands are living entities that feed on human need
Another of the last films made by Bruce Willis, before his retirement. Here Bruce is on form and gives a decent performance. The film is an Alien copy with the crew of a space mission under attack by a parasitic lifeform
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
A theatrical film directed by 1970s genre tv producer Dan Curtis. This has the intriguing idea of a house that acts as a psychic vampire. In all other respects, this plays out as a standard haunted house story
Throwback to the 1950s SF film where alien body snatchers take over the nurses of a hospital. This fails to find the right cheesily absurd tone needed
Don’t Fuck in the Woods was a reasonably smart slasher film that came with an attention-grabbing title. This is a sequel that introduces body-snatching parasites to the mix
Lawrence Kasdan directs an adaptation of the Stephen King novel about a group of men on a weekend get together in the woods who find themselves in the midst of an alien invasion
Robert Rodriguez directs from a script by Scream writer Kevin Williamson. This wittily deconstructs the 1950s alien body snatchers film by way of The Breakfast Club
Wannabe in the fad for Young Adult films. An alien invasion story that takes place without drama or engagement in anything that happens. This seems more interested in its teen love triangle than combatting the alien threat
Green Lantern is a classic comic-book character but his screen presence were damaged by the Ryan Reynolds film. This conducts a severe reset of the character’s continuity
A surprisingly good little film about a group of friends being infected by parasites escaped from a laboratory. Confidant assured horror filmmaking with some way out effects.
A compilation of shorts from anime directors set in the Halo videogame universe. The first two episodes have a breathtaking scale but the others are bitsy stories but nothing standout
The Adams Family have been one of the most interesting creative talents in recent years – a family who perform all the functions on their films. Here they reinvent the Alien-inspired monster movie with highly entertaining results
A mind-bogglingly wacky entry in the gonzo Japanese splatter film featuring a crazed bloodbath as Japan is overrun by zombies. This goes frequently nuts featuring vehicles and plans made up of zombie bodies
This was a minor cult hit at the time and concerns an alien that hops between human host bodies while having the invincibility of a Terminator. The idea is played with considerable panache and directed with great flair
The Hidden was a wittily enjoyable hit about body-hopping aliens. This is a cheap sequel that substantially reuses material from the first film, while missing everything that made the original work
Andrew Niccol, a director of smart conceptual sf, seems mismatched on an adaptation of a Stephenie Meyer novel but Niccol tones down Meyer’s overripe teen romance to deliver a smart take on the alien body snatchers genre
A largely routine haunted house film where Lara Flynn Boyle plays a wife who becomes certain that the house next door is parasitic and preys upon people’s minds
Irish horror film about a series of deadly parasites amok on a rural farm. Playing like a serious version of the NZ comedy Black Sheep (but with cows), this has a grim, grimy atmosphere to it that does produce some undeniable effect
The ninth of the Friday the 13th films and the most variant and fun of the series. This cheerfully turns expectations on their head and readily punctures the series cliches
Hilariously nonsensical horror film with Joanna Pacula as a sinister aunt. The plot throws in laughable novelty effects, including a killer cat, absurdly overwrought symbolism and some voodoo rationale
In the late 2000s, Japan has produced a series of films drenched in gore, featuring absurd creature effects and action moves; this was the first of them – a wonderfully cartoonish film with rival bio-mechanoid creatures fighting
A sequel to Meatball Machine, the film that started the gonzo Japanese splatter genre, filled with wild mutations, over-the-top splatter, a surreal sense of humour and an obsession with schoolgirls in panties
Alien body snatchers comedy that feels less like a film than an extended fanboy in-joke
A woman alone in a farmhouse fights off invading aliens. Undeniably, effective, this is an uncredited remake of the classic Twilight Zone episode The Invaders
The second directorial outing of a young Charles Band, this is essentially an earthbound version of Alien. Not a very good film, the principal reasons to watch are some cheap effects and a young Demi Moore
Low-budget directorial effort from a makeup effects artist about a parasitic creature loose in a nightclub after hours
Live-action adaptation of a manga about the war between body-snatching parasites that are capable of rearranging their host’s bodies. This plays out as a madcap version of The Thing relocated to a Japanese high school
Parasyte Part 1 was a manga adaptation filled with wild effects sequences. This sequel is an even better film that expands the characters and ideas in quite fascinating directions
One of the best and most underrated Dean R. Koontz adaptations, which creates eerie atmosphere out a town where the residents have disappeared due to what is revealed as a uniquely different creature
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
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 first of the Quatermass films and the first major genre hit for Hammer Films. Nigel Kneale creates a literate work of science-fiction horror about a returned astronaut mutating after exposure to an alien fungus
The fourth film from David Cronenberg, a clear (although by no means uninteresting) attempt to repeat the success of Shivers with Marilyn Chambers as a woman with a vampiric skin parasite that turns victims into maddened killers
The Soska Sisters take on remaking the classic David Cronenberg film about a woman with a blood-drinking skin graft who leaves a trail of rabid victims. The sisters smartly update the original, bringing a host of new ideas to bear
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The fourth film in the [Rec] series. This abandons the Found Footage look but without it, all we have is just another zombie film, nevertheless this builds to an intensively gore-drenched climax
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
This sells you with its concept – a stripper and a religious fundamentalist are trapped together in a peepshow as the apocalypse occurs – and works surprisingly well
The title suggests more a sea adventure but this is a surprisingly good monster movie about the crew of a fishing vessel attacked by a sea creature and infected by parasites.
Horror film about a soldier returned home from conflict strangely ‘changed’ reminiscent of the classic Dead of Night. From the director of August Underground films.
David Cronenberg’s first commercial release, a vivid work about parasites that turn the residents of an apartment building into sexual fetishists. Cronenberg has set out to shock while beneath that he creates fascinating metaphors about sex
James Gunn directs a film about body-snatching alien slugs that proves enormous fun and comes packed to the edges with numerous genre references and homages
Smile was a sleeper hit about a viral curse and created a reasonable spooky atmosphere. The surprise is that this sequel manages to still deliver the goods too
Adapted from an acclaimed book, Julia Ormond stars as an Icelandic heroine in a detective story with an SF twist
Really quite funny film in which a teenage girl becomes pregnant with a body-snatching parasite. Think Mean Girls meets The Hidden
Last and by general opinion the least of the Sam Raimi-Tobey Maguire Spider-Man films. With three super-villains present, the plot feels as though it is bursting at the seams juggling the various origin stories and ongoing dramas, although Raimi still delivers some solid superheroic action scenes
Strong intelligent SF film where a cosmonaut returns from a space mission with an alien parasite attached. On one level, not too different to a host of Alien copies but the difference is all in the approach
Second of the Star Trek films, usually regarded as the fan favourite because of its often moving character focus on themes of life, death and aging. Ricardo Montalban makes a grandly theatrical villain and the film gets some great suspense out of space war sequences
Fine animated film that traces Superman’s early years – Superman: Year One if you like – as we see pieces of the mythos coming together
The finest moment from gimmick master William Castle with Vincent Price as a coroner searching for a parasite that feeds on fear. Full of Castle’s luridly sensationalistic effects and containing the first portrayal of an LSD trip on screen.
Anything with the Marvel Comics name on it is box-office gold. This spins a standalone film off from one of the main villains of the Spider-Man comic-book. This is watchable by several showstopping effects set-pieces.
The first sequel to the passable Venom. Next to Batman & Robin, this could be a strong contender for the worst big-budget superhero film ever made
The third of the Venom films, which has become one of the worst of the modern Marvel spinoffs. By this point any pretence that the films are taking themselves seriously has been long forgotten
Effort from the near-ubiquitous Blumhouse that is constantly confounding expectations – a plague outbreak drama but not quite, a zombie film but not quite. In the end, not a great or groundbreaking film but certainly a modest one that takes things in some interesting and original directions
Completely insane gonzo Japanese horror that feels like it is made by a mad scat fetishist involving parasites that emerge out of people’s asses. The film is driven by its outrageously perverse imagery but for all that is haphazard and incoherent when it comes to explanatory rationale