The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
In fantastic cinema, portals are doorways that lead to somewhere else. A portal need not be a literal doorway – it can be a gate, a window, a cave, a hole in the ground, a Time or Space Warp, or else a stargate, even a cupboard as in the Narnia films. Stories are rarely about the portal in itself but almost always about the adventure that can be found on the other side. In horror films, they can be doorways that let something else into this world.
Often portals are hidden and the key to open them or the map to their whereabouts is something that is greatly sought. Or else they can simply be discovered forgotten or unnoticed amid some corner of the everyday.
A work of bizarre genius from stop-motion animator Jan Svankmajer. A surrealist take on Alice in Wonderland that is more Eraserhead than Lewis Carroll, filled with Svankmajer’s bizarre Claymation creatures
The greatest science-fiction film ever made? Stanley Kubrick goes against all convention – the film is slow, has no clear story and reaches an enigmatic ending and yet it is a work of brilliance, both visually and in terms of effects technology
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
This could be Christopher Nolan’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. But where Kubrick was cold and oblique, this is a 2001 with a heart. A pleasure to see a film rooted in credible science and dealing with high concept SF
A big flop but highly underrated Arnold Schwarzenegger film, a sophisticated meta-fiction that views the cinema screen as another dimension and wittily deflates action cliches
This BBC adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s book about rival 19th century magicians kicks J.K. Rowling completely out of the ring. A beautifully staged costume drama, written with a superb Austen-esque dryness of wit
Jean Cocteau’s beautiful modernisation of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice updated to post-War France
This Hayao Miyazaki film about a girl who becomes assistant to a mysterious magician is not quite in the same league as Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away but has the sublime beauty, eccentric characters and tender charms that all his work does
Chuck Jones, the director of numerous Warner Brothers cartoons, adapts a popular children’s book that comes with a dizzying array of surreal visuals and puns
Hilariously eccentric Spike Jonze-Charlie Kaufman collaboration in which John Cusack finds an office building that has a portal that takes someone through into actor John Malkovich’s head. The wacky spins that the script places on the idea are ingenious
The film that put the name of Clive Barker on the map. A work of considerable imagination where Barker delves into forbidden pleasures and fuses the film with S&M imagery for the memorable creations of the Cenobites
A fascinating word-of-mouth hit based on a YouTube series about the exploration of a labyrinth of extra-dimensional office rooms built on an eerily alien design scheme
The welcome return of stop-motion animator Henry Selick, the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and at his wildly imaginative and darkly menacing best in an adaptation of a book by Neil Gaiman
One of the best of the Amicus horror anthologies. All of the episodes are strong, well cast and well directed. The third episode offers a particularly funny comic take on the exorcism film
The culmination of one of the most ambitious cinematic exercises ever conducted, with Marvel weaving storylines through several films to finally merge here with flawless regard. The characters get far more depth than in all of their previous films
Beautifully made anime from Makoto Shinkai about a young girl and a three-legged chair on a quest to close a series of portals across Japan and prevent unimaginable chaos emerging
Disney’s animated adaptation is usually hated by Lewis Carroll purists for its free and easy treatment of the story but for everyone else comes with a splendidly demented visual absurdism
Studio adaptation that freely mixes elements from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and features an all-star cast line-up, this works far better than the purists would have it
The animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse proved an unexpected success. This sequel builds on that ups the artistic quality of the original to something quite extraordinary
The first of Roland Emmerich’s special effects epics. Emmerich rehashes Erich von Daniken’s Ancient Astronauts theories but casts it as a planetary adventure on an epic canvas with surprisingly entertaining results
James Gunn’s almost completely successful reboot of the cinematic Superman, the first film that comes with a total confidence in the comic-book source and where Gunn is not afraid to be goofy
Scott Derrickson acquits himself well taking on one of Marvel’s magician superhero. He replicates well the psychedelic esoterica that gained the comic book a cult following and Benedict Cumberbatch anchors the show perfectly
Highly enjoyable Terry Gilliam film about a young boy who joins a group of dwarves on a series of adventures though time
Variation on the Groundhog Day timeloop theme, this has two people trapped on the same day at a wedding. Of all the copies, this is a delight that has a really hilariously madcap creativity
Third of the V/H/S films, all horror anthologies in the Found Footage style. While the other two were fairly hit and miss, this is extremely good. Each of the four stories sits among the very best episodes among the current crop of multi-director horror anthologies
One of the best children’s films from Charles Band, an utterly bizarre effort about a world through a magic mirror ruled by talking ducks
The first of the Hellraiser sequels. This lacks Clive Barker’s original dark obsessive vision but is worthwhile in its own right, expanding the scope of the story out into a magnificent vision of Hell
One of the less known films of Joe Dante. A 3D work that just predates Avatar, it is a YA horror story in the vein of The Goonies or Dante’s own Explorers crafted with care and an affection for the characters
Cultishly bizarre, deliberately offbeat and wacky film that was made as a vehicle for the band Oingo Boingo. More a film you admire for its determination to be strange than anything else
Stephen King adapted mini-series in which James Franco finds a mysterious door that leads back to 1960 and sets out to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy
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
A very likeable children’s film about a boy befriending the monsters under his bed. Made with a gleefully malicious anarchy and some great creature effects
Following Tin Man and Alice, another of Nick Willing’s ingenious rewritings and rationalisations of classic children’s tales in science-fiction terms. Here the essentials of Peter Pan are transported to another planet
This is a horror film that comes with one of the most captivating and original build-ups of any film seen of recent. A man is hired to simply watch a locked doorway – only to then finding things moving
From Isaac Ezban in his English-language debut, a cleverly and pleasingly contorted film where a group of friends discover a mirror that leads to a parallel timeline
Second half of the two-part animated adaptation of The Death of Superman, which depicts the aftermath where Metropolis is puzzled over the appearance of four impostors all claiming to be the real Superman
Adaptation of the superhero comic is played for comedy, making it very different in emphasis to the other films in the DCEU. The boy into man transformation is played up as essentially Big with superpowers – with appealing results
Spookily effective Japanese ghost story about a mother’s pilgrimage around a series of shrines to raise her daughter’s spirit from the dead
An anthology of short anime pieces from various directors, including creator Katsuhiro Otomo, the cult creator of Akira. The four episodes vary from historical to fantasy to futuristic warfare and, as with any anthology, vary in quality from the okay to the watchable
Third of the Sonic the Hedgehog films and surprisingly far more entertaining than you expect from such a lightweight formulaic film
Film spinoff from the animated tv series Teen Titans Go! This hits in with an hilairous barrage of one-liners wickedly spoofing the superhero genre and jokes at DC Comics canon
Modest B-budget SF film with scientists opening a time portal and becoming caught up in a future war between humanity and mutants
Multi-director anthology about a series of mysterious portals that appear around the world, this creates a sense of something genuinely alien and otherworldly
Joe Cornish gained much buzz with Attack the Block. His follow-up film concerns a kid who inherits Excalibur. Cornish has fun translating elements of the Arthurian legends to the present-day
An H.P. Lovecraft adaptation that makes exacting effort to get the mood and period setting right
The underrated Victor Salva, director of Jeepers Creepers, takes on the deviltry and occult film where with his ability to conjure eerie jumps and outlandish images produces something original and out of this world
Following on from his reworking of The Wizard of Oz in Tin Man, this is a tv mini-series where Nick Willing rather fascinatingly reinterprets Alice in Wonderland in SF terms
A fairly reasonable tv mini-series adaptation of Lewis Carroll – a version that excels in terms of design and in using The Jim Henson Workshop to bring the Wonderland creatures to life
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 Irish horror film that generates undeniably mysterious atmosphere after a family move into a new house and the teenage daughter disappears after going down into the cellar
Hilariously bizarre film with people dealing with an entity that is man with a massive mouth that is intent on swallowing an army of identical little girls
A live-action film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that conducts a passable run through of Lewis Carroll with the supporting characters populated by an all-star British cast
The first sequel to House, this is largely unrelated to its predecessor and plays itself with a sense of humour to emerge as the superior film. Now a skull opens doorways in the house into different eras
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
Before the films, this was an earlier BBC tv mini-series version of the C.S. Lewis book, one of a series of four adaptations. This is faithful to the story but suffers from impoverished effects
The second of the BBC’s tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, the slightest of the works where the story is reduced to two half-hour episode
Another of the DC Original Animated Movies. This deals with both the Legion of Super-Heroes and Supergirl, bringing them together in a mutual adventure
This was the third of the four BBC tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books. The tv versions treats the books with quite reasonable faithfulness but suffer from extremely cheap looking effects
Dutch film involving action between this and a parallel Earth. Much of this is shot First Person Shooter perspective, while the director provides an accomplished level of mass destruction CGI effects all by himself
This was the fourth and final, as well as the best of the BBC’s tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, which works well enough despite the impoverished production values
Low-budget independently made film that manages to effectively use a singe warehouse location to suggest a gateway to Hell
TV mini-series that adapts six less well known short stories by H.G. Wells into an anthology with Wells as the central character. A couple of good stories, some that never hit the mark
The directorial debut of Ryuhei Kitamura. A film premised on the idea of mashing the John Woo-styled gangster film up with the gore-drenched George Romero zombie film.
A horror anthology with a mordant sense of humour with Clancy Brown doing a great turn as an octogenarian mortuary attendant who tells several stories of the bodies he has tended
Hallmark mini-series set in a world 200 years after the classic fairytales have occurred, this wittily deflates or contrasts classic story elements with the present-day
The Marvel onslaught continues with this resurrection of a martial artist superhero character from the 1970s. Amid the mostly ho-hum MCU offerings of the 2020s, this becomes an energised action vehicle
After a disastrous fan reception of its initial trailer, the film of the videogame arrives on screen. The surprise is that for such a zero expectation film and one that defies the engagement of any of your braincells it is as much fun as it is.
Modest horror film of the 1980s where kids inadvertently open a demonic gateway. Like a juvenile version of Poltergeist, this comes with the bonus of some fairly good effects
An Asylum mockbuster released at the same time as Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 B.C., this involves time travel mission into the prehistoric past that accidentally brings a dinosaur back to the present
Would be quirky, surrealistic indie film with lovers on the run in Las Vegas. Quentin Tarantino appears as the spirit of chance from an interdimensional swimming pool
Drawing very clear influence from Clive Barker and Saw, this is a delve down into perverse fetish, gateways to Hell and bizarre hallucinations. After watching the film through twice, I still remain confused to what it was all about
The Dyatlov Pass Incident has gained a fascination as an unexplained mystery. Here Renny Harlin makes a Found Footage film that heads for full on conspiracy theory explanations
Welsh director Caradog James impressed with his previous film The Machine. Here he makes a horror film concerning an urban legend about an old crone haunting those who disturb her, but fails to do anything notable
Australian animation about a boy’s adventure on an island amid pirates, inventors and magic creatures that in its better moments suggests a collision between Peter Pan and Pufnstuf. Unfortunately, the film is made with a budget that must have been well within four figures
Sequel to the hit videogame adaptation, this offers up fairly much the same mix of elements as before – a cutely anthrompomorphic creature and Jim Carrey going to rafter-rattling excess
An animated revival of The Smurfs. This was greeted with a very negative reception. With a massive celebrity voice line-up packed into almost any corner of the film the casting director can manage
A highly ambitious film about a mysterious alien portal that appears in Earth orbit and the attempts to explore what is on the other side
For supposedly the Paranormal Activity series final entry, this offer the novelty of the first Found Footage film in 3D – a gimmick that signals the series is out of fresh ideas. Moreover, the series’ look via watching security cameras has been de-emphasised in favour of another CGI driven ghost story
Live-action version of the popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon series. In its favour, it is at least slickly polished and comes with far less in the way of irritating smartass humour that one expected
Sequel to the 2010 Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland. This has even less in common with Lewis Carroll’s book sequel than its predecessor did – a total of two scenes. The sets and effects are just pretty eye candy
Strange Canadian children’s film about a boy who goes bald and is then given a peanut butter solution that causes wild uncontrolled hair growth
One of the key films of cult Italian director Lucio Fulci, a gore-drenched but plotlessly incoherent mishmash about zombies emerging as the gates of Hell are opened
Tim Burton takes on Lewis Carroll but Carroll gets lost beneath Burton doing his usual quirky eccentric thing and a plot that seems to want to turn Alice’s adventures into a modern epic fantasy
Live-action adaptation of the one of the great early comic-strips Little Nemo in Slumberland, a work that was ground-breaking for its experimental innovation
A kid makes the discovery that his father is a superhero and he and his friends amuse themselves with the cool gadgetry in his secret headquarters, before being required to defend it against a villain
Action film made at the height of the popularity of tv’s The X Files with Jack Scalia fighting off the Men in Black
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
Another animated Barbie film that leaves you quite certain that every problem in life can be solved with a positive upbeat ditty
A story about an apprentice at a mysterious company that deals with magic, this could well serve as a fix for those wanting something more of the Harry Potter franchise
An oddity among the animated Batman films. This seems less another Batman film – Bruce Wayne gets more screen time than Batman, for instance – than it does a homage to the 1970s martial arts film
A Young Adult fantasy adaptation that fells a Harry Potter wannabe repackaged with the brooding teen romanticism of the Twilight series, all under a director whose indifferent handling fails to animate any of the material
An Argentinean film where the four members of a girl rock band are forced to deal with a zombie outbreak
A film about a possessed refrigerator!
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
A sequel to R.I.P.D. that tells an origin story of how the sheriff character played by Jeff Bridges in the original became an afterlife enforcement officer
A low-budget mockbuster from The Asylum designed to jump aboard the bandwagon of Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder
Amnesiac persons wake up in a bunker filled with monstrosities. Sort of H.P. Lovecraft served up as a low-budget variant on Resident Evil
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
Produced by Bloody Disgusting, an anthology from different directors about a series of mysterious alien portals that appear around the world
Live-action film based on the Mattel toy line and popular animated tv series. Given a Cannon Films budget, it emerges as a cheesily absurd Flash Gordon/Conan the Barbarian knockoff