The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Psychic Powers (also referred to as Psi Powers) refers to a variety of mental abilities. These range from the ability to communicate between minds (Telepathy) or the ability to move objects with the power of the mind (Telekinesis or Psychokinesis). Also popular is the ability to create fires with the power of the mind (Pyrokinesis) and Psychometry (the ability to read the history of an object by touching it).
Genre depictions range from stories about those with psychic powers run dangerously amok to those in which psychics are persecuted by society and hunted by government agents. Aliens often display a range of psychic abilities. There are also a number of superheroes whose abilities derive from psychic powers.
The film that created the cult of anime in the West. Essentially a Cyberpunk version of The Fury, this has been construed as a series of climaxes that get progressively larger in scale until they almost reach a point of sensory overload
Essentially a feature version of The Twilight Zone‘s classic Nightmare at 20,000 Feet episode, this generates some remarkable tension with a group trapped in mid-air in a small plane before a lame twist ending
Tired of the bombast of Marvel/DC Comics superheroics overunning screens? This is a superhero film for you – one welcomely brought down to Earth set in working class neighbouhoods and with a focus on real-life problems. The results are surprising and refreshing
A variant on Buried, which had Ryan Reynolds trapped in a coffin for the duration, featuring a girl trapped in an elevator as it conducts high-speed rises and drops, all before a bizarre left field SF ending
Fascinating tv mini-series set around the notion of a generation ship – the show explores the scenario in interesting ways then proceeds to put some wild spins on what we think is happening
The rarity of a really good Found Footage film. Designed to look like lost footage from 1970s psychic experiments, this concerns a scientific team who discover they are dealing with a woman who is demonically possessed
Roger Corman jumps aboard the Star Wars fad and offers up a version of The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven located in space. Corman has thrown a reasonable budget at the film for once and it emerges as colourfully enjoyable
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
A homage to 1970s SF cinema, full of trippy journeys through transcendental space and white antisceptic corridors. In aiming for this look, the film also forgot a small thing like a plot or coherent explanation of what is happening
B budget film from Edgar G. Ulmer that was made quickly to exploit the success of George Pal’s The Time Machine concerning an Air Force pilot who is thrown through time into a mutant ruled future
A spinoff from Full Moon’s Puppetmaster film series, this stirs killer dolls, mad scientists, psychics and Nazi zombies together in an undeniably entertaining mix
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.
Low-budget but not uninteresting film that throws in a mind-bending mix of aliens, dream and alternate realities
An incredibly bad film, the first ever shot on videotape concerning a man who lets nubile girls move into his home only for them to come under psychic attack
This adaptation of a Harlan Ellison story is a B-budget delight that zings with witty dialogue and a young, unknown Don Johnson giving a very funny performance as the titular boy roaming the post-apocalyptic landscape with his dog
B movie in which John Agar is possessed by a glowing alien brain, this unfortunately fails to live up to either its lurid vigour or its bad movie reputation
Classic Z budget film about a severed head in a laboratory that has plenty to place it in the bad movie category but is made with such a perverse panache that it is hard to dislike
Perhaps the best thing about this is that the Twilight saga is finally ended. This provides a moderately spectacular showdown but also wraps its plotlines up with absurd deus ex machina wimp outs and an infuriating twist ending
A film about the scientific efforts to explore the afterlife, this suffers from too many good ideas and not enough of the effects needed to convey its journey
VHS era horror about a demon that appears out of a young boy’s closet and kills all who threaten him. Mostly this is an excuse to serve up novelty deaths
Less Captain America 3 than The Avengers 3 – the entire film has been conceived as a massive superheroic punch-up. The results move with an exhilarating pace, but the Russo Brothers haven’t yet mastered Joss Whedon’s hand with character humour
The very first Stephen King adaptation, a hit that made King’s name. Brian De Palma directs with flamboyant visuals that make you gasp but the film would be nothing without its amazing central performances from Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie
TV mini-series remake of the Stephen King novel, which restores many aspects of the book not in the 1976 film. Unfortunately, Brian De Palma has been replaced by a tv director who regards it as just another assignment
Another pointless 70s remake that replicates the 1976 Carrie almost scene for scene but misconstrues the material by a mile. Crucially, it comes without the sensational casting that made the original, nor a Brian De Palma at the helm
An Australian clairvoyance thriller that seems to have substantially drawn its influence from Eyes of Laura Mars. The film was little seen when it came out and the uninvolved direction does little to draw us into what is taking place
From the era of Disney live-action comedies, this involves assorted slapstick tomfoolery as various parties try to aid or capture a telepathic alien cat that is stranded on Earth
Classic bad movie in which astronauts land on The Moon and encounter an all-female society. Some really datedly war of the sexes politics play out amid the laughably impoverished sets and effects
Sequel to Tarsem Singh’s The Cell that feels made by people who haven’t even seen the original. The original’s fascinating journey into dream terrain is replaced by a dull psychic with a link to a serial killer plot
Critical favourite that he is, I find Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s have some incredibly eerie, haunted moments. But these sit alongside banal, uneventful happenings that never seem to intersect in a plot
Doug Liman’s adaptation of a Young Adult series that was problem-ridden behind the scenes. This certainly creates an interesting scenario set on a planet where men’s thoughts are visibly manifest
Arthur C. Clarke’s book is one of the all-time SF classics; this mini-series adaptation counts as one of the biggest book-to-film abortions in the SF genre handled by people who know nothing about SF
The sequel to Village of the Damned, this makes the mistake of humanising the cold alienness of the children and taking their side against humanity, losing much of the stark effect of the original
Essentially a Found Footage version of a teen underdog discovers psychic powers film like The Fury or Akira. Nothing original, just a novelty of approach conducted with conviction
The first sequel to Chocky, the classic mini-series about a boy with an alien invisible companion, this expands the concept out with the introduction of other children
One of the earliest film treatments on the subject of cloning, this comes with an intelligent and well written script in which Art Hindle creates twelve copies of himself. The original Orphan Black if you like.
One of the few original, non-comic book based superhero films of the 2010s set in a world where those with powers are treated as a minority. This is essentially a heist film but with the addition of super-powers
The Canadian-made Code 8 was one of the few non-comic book adapted superhero films of recent years. This is a sequel where a bigger budget has been afforded to the superheroics
Nacho Vigalondo film with a head-scratchingly wacky premise – Anne Hathaway finds that a giant monster mimics her movements. Vigalondo plays this surprisingly seriously and spins it through some appealing twists
A Russian SF film about humans who have been selected to participate in an intergalactic sports tournament. This feels that it has been construed as an anti-Alita: Battle Angel and has some stunning design work
Australian effort that seems to follow the path of Aliens/Resident Evil with soldiers venturing into a laboratory of amok monsters before a Philip K. Dick-ian twist on what we think is happening
Japanese director Shusuke Kaneko turns his attention to the pyrokinesis theme. Thanks to Kaneko’s expertise with effects, this becomes the best film on the firestarter theme yet
The film that inspired The Terminator! Michael Rennie plays a cyborg who travels back in time to prevent a machine-dominated future coming about, while being hunted by two killer androids sent back to stop him
This offers the novelty of being the world’s first Ukrainian zombie film. Being made in the midst the Russian invasion, this lays into Soviet Russia and its failings with a scathing regard
Film where a woman in an asylum insists that her baby has been stolen from her womb and that she has psychic powers. Or equally possibly she is delusional. This sits on an ambiguous fence with some subtlety
In her first English-language debut, French director/writer/actress Marina de Van delivers a variant on Carrie, albeit rewritten as a tale about child abuse. Oblique, quiet but undeniably effective when de Van pulls her punches
Adapted from a series of Young Adult books concerning a group of children with psychic powers on the run in a dystopian future, this failed to find the audience it sought
A mockbuster from The Asylum that was released three days before the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. While some of The Asylum’s mockbusters have their amusements, this is cheaply and indifferently made
One of a series of films that borrow their titles from old 1950s films, this abandons any connection to the original end of the world film and concerns a boy who may be causing an alien monster to appear
In his third cinematic outing, Deadpool gets into the multiverse game, creating a hilarious team-up with Wolverine and a crossover with an assortment of other cancelled Marvel franchises
Horror anthology with the novelty where all of the stories are horror versions of fairytales. Particularly amusing is the second episode, a modernised version of Little Red Riding Hood
Adapted from an Ira Levin play, this is an hilarious parody of the whodunnit with Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve engaged in a series of games trying to outsmart the other amid a series of brilliant whiplash reversals
Amateur low-budget production about mysterious happenings in the aftermath of an alien invasion. This has many ideas but none of them much coalesce into a plot
Extraordinary anime where the members of an after school club secretly harbour great powers. From there, this expands out with reality-bending scope
Steven Spielberg makes a thoughtful return to the theme of alien contact. Rather than the rosy optimism of Close Encounters and E.T. , he seems to have embraced the dark conspiratorial view of The X Files
Mike Flanagan, one of the most exciting genre names in recent years, takes on Stephen King’s book sequel to The Shining, managing the daunting balancing act of both adapting the book and turning it into a sequel to the Stanley Kubrick film
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
The original version of Inception almost, featuring psychics entering into people’s dreams and then attempts to dream assassinate the US President. Despite much promise, the idea is prosaic in its handling
A second film version of the Judge Dredd comic-book. More faithful than the Sylvester Stallone version, this comes with a satisfyingly visceral kick, yet a low-budget means that we see little of Dredd’s satiric future
The appealing idea of a romantic comedy/road movie where both characters are zombies. The plot is all over the place but the premise is conducted with some amusement
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
Joe D’Amato directs one of the numerous 80s Italian Mad Max 2 copies. One of the very first films to depict televised human bloodsports later popularised by the likes of The Running Man and The Hunger Games
A dragon fantasy adapted from a popular book series that has Lord of the Rings wannabe stamped all over it and only unimaginatively follows in Peter Jackson’s footsteps
Disney live-action film with two psi-powered kids on the run. A popular hit that seems to have been mostly construed around a series of novelty effects set-pieces
Ingmar Bergman’s final film, a beautifully shot and richly textured family saga that was loosely autobiographical in nature on Bergman’s part. Contains considerable fantasy content.
After several other film incarnations that went nowhere, The Fantastic Four make their first appearance in The MCU. The film creates a wonderful retro world of 1960s futurism based on their original comic-books for them to inhabit
Spinoff from the Harry Potter films – unlike those, written directly for the screen and feels more like it belongs there. The US locations open the story up, while the magic creatures and new ensemble cast prove a delight
A superpowers rather than a superhero film with Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a woman with abilities on the run who is forced to seek refuge with her estranged family
From Frank LaLogiaa, a director who has made too few films, a low-budget film with Stefan Arngrim as a teenage Antichrist. This is a film filled with as much promise as it does absurd effect
Classic SF film where Marshall Thompson faces an invasion of hopping brains – pure thought monsters that have been unleashed by an atomic scientist dabbling in telekinesis
The adaptation of the Stephen King novel with Drew Barrymore giving a fantastic performance as a young girl with pyrokinetic powers on the run as she is hunted by a sinister government agency
One of Stephen King’s best books is given a new film workover by Blumhouse. Keith Thomas made a standout directorial debut with The Vigil, but this is a disaster, one of the worst of all King adaptations
TV mini-series sequel to Stephen King’s Firestarter that now sees Charlie McGee in her twenties played by Marguerite Moreau. The story feels under-plotted and over-padded
Dreary action film with Michael Paré as a soldier with the army’s psychic warfare unit who is sent on a mission to rescue a girl from the hands of terrorists
Supposedly a modernised version of Frankenstein, although what a story about a woman in a coma who uses psychic powers to resurrect a slow-witted handyman to exact revenge has to do with Mary Shelley’s classic is anybody’s guess
The greatly underrated Sean Tretta makes a Frankenstein film – a modernised one that place in a research laboratory where the monster is resurrected with expanded mental abilities
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
The seventh of the Friday the 13th films, this tries to add some novelty with a heroine who has psychic powers but is mostly the same thing as before
Brian De Palma returns to psychic powers themes in this successor to Carrie, but this is a much more sprawling and often incoherent narrative with only occasional moments of De Palma’s directorial flourish
An Alien copy produced by Roger Corman that creates a constantly eerie atmosphere in between the usual slime-drooling monster attacks. With production design by a then unknown James Cameron
An extraordinary reworking of the Japanese kaiju series with stunning CGI effects sequences. This set a new standard and is among the best of the modern Japanese monster movies
Here Shusuke Kaneko revived the Gamera series of the 1960s/70s with a series of stunning effects. The result promptly set a new standard for the Japanese monster movie
Modest and well-made British children’s tv mini-series about the mysterious psychic connection between two twins each unaware of the other’s existence
Space Godzilla is one the strangest nemeses to turn up in these kaiju films – a blue counterpart of the Big G with a giant glowing mass of crystal on its shoulders. One of the more routine entries in the modern Godzilla series
Another in the spate of gonzo Japanese splatter films. A cartoony OTT vigilante film with a Gothic schoolgirl avenger, featuring ridiculous action and splatter set-pieces
An intense kick of pure adrenaline. Imagine a version of The Six Million Dollar Man shot First Person Shooter style by hyper-adrenalised parkour junkies dragging the audience through a series of death-defying stunts
Modest and effective horror film about a teenager who starts to gains expanded mental abilities – but where this also appears to unleash monsters
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
A Dean R. Koontz adaptation from the director of The Lawnmower Man, this is a numbingly predictable film in which Jeff Goldblum returns from the dead to find he has a psychic link with a serial killer
A screw-up finds he has an implant in his head threatening dire things if he does not follow instructions, resulting in his gaining godlike powers
Takashi Shimizu, the director of the Ju-on/The Grudge films, conducts an adaptation of a manga about a man who undergoes a trepanning operation and emerges able to see people’s inner traumas given symbolic expression
The rarity of an original screen superhero film, this takes place in a Retro 1970s setting as former superheroes conduct a heist to get their badges of power back
Robert Rodriguez makes a film with Ben Affleck as a detective dealing with a man who can control others’ minds. However, this develops into a mind twister of considerable reality bending proportions
Produced by Michael Bay and directed by the perpetually insipid D.J. Caruso, this is no more than a Young Adult high school version of Disney’s Witch Mountain films concerning an alien teenager with psi powers
Based on an old Joss Whedon script about two people who discover they can see through the other’s eyes and talk mentally. A low-key film that acts as a bare stage allowing the two characters to interact
The fourth of the Indiana Jones films, returning after a 19 year gap to general disappointment. Largely a film about Indy getting old, this tries but the action scenes pale against what the series was in its heyday
A TV movie that has been construed as a blatant copy of Carrie where innocent Kay Lenz moves into a sorority house and finds occult goings-on around her
A remake of the 1978 tv movie about occult rituals in a girl’s sorority house. This is a film that feels directed and written without any real involvement by those responsible.
One of the most extraordinary films ever made about psychic powers concerning a group of children who discover remarkable talents to move objects but then that one among their number has used the power to kill
One of four cheap and tatty Mexican films made by Boris Karloff just before his death. Here Karloff plays a Caribbean plantation owner obsessed with voodoo rituals
An over-the-top New Zealand-made Gothic horror with Alexis Arquette and Sarah Smuts-Kennedy as psychically connected brother and sister who set out on a quest to find their parents, killing all in the way