The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Reality and Illusion refers to works where the protagonist may find that what they believe about the real world proves to be an illusion or some elaborate form of Simulation. Most of these are works involving Conceptual Breakthrough, and frequently Conceptual Reversal Twists, on the part of the protagonists.
Questions of reality and illusion can frequently be found in films dealing with Virtual Reality and Altered Memory. They can also be due to some sort of drug trip, or else a fugue state or hallucination experienced by somebody with mental health issues – see Mad Person’s Delusion. In horror, such games can be conducted with malevolent intent by evil or demonic forces.
Creating illusions and/or messing with what some people accept to be reality is frequently the powers employed by some Magicians and those with Psychic Powers.
Another form of illusion can be what is referred to here as the Reality Game, a type of film where a protagonist becomes wound into an elaborate but ultimately mundane charade placed on by a master gameplayer to make the protagonist doubt the reality around them.
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
Based on a videogame, a film set at a morgue where a new assistant has to fight off supernatural forces and complete a series of rituals to prevent herself from becoming possessed
Quite a good film about a space expedition where the crew members on a mission to Saturn fall into an increasing paranoia and inability to tell what is real due to the drugs used in the hypersleep process
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
An almost unclassifiably strange film about fandom for a weird 1990s tv show, this seems to be heading for David Lynch territory and becomes an allegory for trans identity
A film about an agoraphobic videogamer confined to their apartment who is given a Virtual Reality headset to test that soon starts to warp their sense of reality
A film about a stop-motion animation filmmaker who descends into a dark and obsessive state of mind
Jonathan Rhys Meyers wakes up in a hospital as strange hallucinatory and nightmarish things start to happen. The fact that this is a deathdream film becomes very obvious
A standout work concerning a demon that invades dreams and then erases all memory of the person in others. Shot during Covid lockdown and haunted by an incredible sense of isolation
Undeniably reminiscent of the standout The Vigil, a horror film set around an Orthodox Jewish funeral home that creates great uncanny mood
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
Horror film about a viral curse that bends the victim’s sense of reality and illusion, this settles in with some undeniably creepy effect
A multi-director horror anthology where all the directors are Latin American
Rodney Ascher, who made the wacko Room 237, makes another fascinating documentary that discusses the theory that we might all be living in a virtual simulation
One of The Wachowskis returns to the world of The Matrix and rather wittily turns it into an anti-blockbuster about her reluctance to do so
Low-budget British film about a mysterious killer lurking in the house
Quite an entertaining film based on the conspiracy theory that we are all living in The Matrix where Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek become wound up in virtual simulation
Film in which a man is inducted into a secretive organisation that reveals he has superpowers
Controversial variant on the human bloodsports plot of The Most Dangerous Game but where liberals hunt conservatives. A film with a darkly satiric bite that sets out to offend people on both sides of the political fence
Bryan Bertino has become a Must Watch director ever since The Strangers. Here he makes an uncanny slow burn film about a family gathered to tend a dying father as something evil waits to claim his soul
That starts out seeming a standard mindless action film in which Vin Diesel is resurrected as an augmented super-soldier only for everything we assume to get turned on its head in interesting ways
Spider-Man: Homecoming was Sony’s Spider-Man reboot where the elements came together with winning regard and Tom Holland’s politely eager nervousness made for a fantastic Spider-Man. This was the first sequel.
Standout film set among the Orthodox Jewish community where a man sitting an all-night vigil with a corpse finds it possessed by a demonic force that starts toying with him
I had mixed feelings about the first part Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel. The second part here is a better film, although it too eventually gets buried in over an hour’s worth of Muschietti’s jumpshocks
Iranian director Babak Anvari impressed with Under the Shadows. This is his follow-up where barman Armie Hammer’s life is turned upside down after he picks up a sinister cellphone
Robert Rodriguez made his first film for $7000 and repeats the same here to show anyone can do it. The result is a wild, mind-bending work loosely based on his own experience as a human test subject in drug trials
Another in the fad for horror films about escape rooms we have had in the last few years, this concerns a possibly haunted venue and reaches an interestingly odd ending
A above average entry in the recent trend of horror anthologies featuring episodes from different directors, including Joe Dante and Mick Garris, featuring at least a couple of standout entries
This has been called the unluckiest film ever made – there is even an entire documentary devoted to the collapse of a prior version. Here Terry Gilliam’s film about people on delusional quests finally emerges with the glory he always intended it to be
Andrew Niccol is one of the consistently intelligent and original directors out there. This, set in a world where mass surveillance has erased the concept of anonymity, is the most fascinating and original depiction of a future in some time
I far preferred the 1990 mini-series to the cinematic remake of the Stephen King book. This emerges as a lesser copy of tv’s Stranger Things, which did the whole 80s nostalgia/horror story far better
A reality bending film about a man held in an automated prison where he must outsmart the prison’s A.I. in order to affect an escape
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
Two guys’ trip across the border into Mexico goes wrong as they end up imprisoned and tortured by cartel. This dives into a dangerous world with an askew sense of humour and becomes more bizarrely twisted as it goes on
Ben Wheatley produced film that soon becomes a first order mindfuck. An detective undercover in therapy could just be a mentally ill man with delusions of being a detective or just as equally be having his reality manipulated
Completely ridiculous killer clown film with a theatre haunted by clowns where nothing makes any sense. Even more absurdly, it becomes a preachy diatribe in favour of the right to gun ownership
Like a version of David Fincher’s The Game rewritten for the mobile user generation where a slacker is forced through a series of scenarios that mess with his sense of reality
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
This has the novelty of being shot guerilla-style at Disneyland and Disney World without permission. Nothing prepares you for the amazingly dark work you get, a surreal hallucinatory drift through the park’s underbelly
Waltz With Bashir director Ari Folman adapts a work by Stanislaw Lem into a conceptually challenging part-animated film concerning a virtual actress and a future where the populace lives inside a drug-induced mass hallucination
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
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
I was never a particular fan of the Schwarzenegger original and this improves on it somewhat. This is far better conceived as an action film with some amazing Cyberpunk designs. On the other hand, the two decades interim has made the story’s Philip K. Dick-ian reality bendings seem commonplace
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
A wonderfully cool film about malevolent twins with psychic abilities. that is an astonishingly assured effort where the various set-pieces come with the confidence of a director who has been working in the genre for years
Christopher Nolan’s The Matrix. Concerning an action theme that invade people’s dreams, this is a bold, brilliantly original SF film driven by ideas – a film that succeeds beautifully on all levels
The always interesting David Blyth returns to screens with what feels like an amateur remake of Nicolas Roeg’s Track 29 that becomes a confused and plotless mishmash of hallucinations, random BDSM scenarios and shock effects
Jaco Van Dormael film that reaches for epic ideas in a story about multiple life pathways and a babble of ideas taken from physics but fails to assemble them in a way that makes much sense
Jason Connery directs a film that draws upon the basics of The Keep about soldiers venturing into a tomb in Iraq where they awaken a great evil housed there
A Virtual Reality/horror film about a malevolent spirit incarnated inside a videogame. This churns all the Virtual Reality cliches as though nothing had changed since the tide of shabby 1990s Lawnmower Man copies
A remake of the cult Herschell Gordon Lewis splatter film about a stage magician who creates illusions of eviscerating people on stage
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
Fascinating directorial debut from screenwriter John August that tells three stories about Ryan Reynolds who gradually makes mind-boggling discoveries about the nature of reality
Richard Linklater conducts an animated adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel with extremely faithful results. Keanu Reeves is a police officer assigned to investigate what he realises is himself
A venture inside the dreamscape from anime director Satoshi Kon who creates a beautifully animated work even if some of the ideas become excessively convoluted
A film that has been construed almost entirely as a series of spooky jumps and hyped suspense scenes with nothing in the way of rhyme, reason or connecting rationale. Produced by Sam Raimi
Seventh and worst of the Hellraiser films. Clive Barker had departed three films ago and the copyright taken by a company that specialises in cheap sequels. This blurs reality and illusion so much it makes no sense
Fascinating film from Brad Anderson where Christian Bale is subject to a series of reality blurrings. What hangs over the show most of all is Bale’s intensely physical performance for which he lost a third of his body weight to turn himself into an anorexic shell of a human
Colin Firth is released from hospital following the death of his wife but experiences a series of reality-blurring hallucinations
This travels into very similar places to Roman Polanski’s The Tenant – a paranoid tale about a man surrounded by very strange apartment neighbours. Apart from adding some reality blurring SF twists to the mix, this does little more than churn cliches
The first of the sequels to The Matrix inevitably disappointed on the massive build-up. The Wachowskis leave more questions than answers, while the new action scenes are often jaw-dropping they also feel boiler-plated on
Third of The Matrix sequels and the weakest of the series. This offers one showstopping effects sequence, on the other hand it also leaves a host of unanswered questions dangling
Vincenzo Natali’s second film, a cool and superbly disquiet thriller about corporate brainwashing and espionage that comes with a series of Philip K. Dick-ian reality bending twists
TV mini-series in ten two-hour parts that deals with UFOs, covering several generations from the 1940s to the present. An interesting take on UFO encounters with the benefit of some phenomenal performances
The fifth Hellraiser sequel and the only one among the last four worth watching. It brings back Ashley Laurence but abandons the Cenobites for a fascinating series of reality bending games
A routine horror about teens that live in fear of creatures that lurk in the dark. Presented by Wes Craven.
The English-language remake of Open Your Eyes, starring Tom Cruise. The Spanish version is still the superior of the two but this stays surprisingly faithful to the original
Indie SF film where Denis Leary wakes up as patient in a psychiatric institution while he insists he has been awoken from cryogenic suspension in a future where he is awaiting execution
A unique and very original animated film from Richard Linklater where a character wanders through a dream, encountering various people and their different philosophical outlooks
An anime from Satoshi Kon that tells the story of an actress and become a surreal journey through Japanese cinematic history
A Roland Emmerich produced Virtual Reality film that toys with some ideas that almost make it a great SF film before cliches and a bad twist ending take over
A film that was as groundbreaking when it came out as Star Wars was in its day. The Wachowskis create a defining work on Virtual Reality themes and do so with a sublime cool and a series of breathtaking action moves that blew everybody away
David Cronenberg tackles Virtual Reality themes in an interestingly mind-bending work. Cronenberg has some interesting takes but this ended up being overshadowed by the phenomenon that was The Matrix the same year
From Alex Proyas and David S. Goyer, this has an astonishing conceptual audacity in its plot dealing with shifting realities and transplanted memories, making it arguably the finest science-fiction film of the 1990s
Ingenious film that predicted reality tv shows where Jim Carrey’s life has been a tv show since birth with him unaware of everything is staged
Excellent film from Alejandro Amenabar in which a handsome playboy finds himself in the midst of a baffling series of reality flips before arriving at an SF twist ending
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
In one of his last really good films, John Carpenter pays homage to H.P. Lovecraft in this horror film that becomes an amazing blurring of the line between reality and fiction
A quickie effort made by Albert Pyun for Charles Band’s Full Moon Productions to exploit the Virtual Reality themes popularised by The Lawnmower Man, concerning a malevolent VR videogame
One of the many virtual reality films that came out after The Lawnmower Man with Edward Furlong dealing with a figure from a horror videogame who turns his life upside down, urging him to become a killer
The fourth and last in the series of 1980s horror comedies that began with House produced by Friday the 13th director Sean S. Cunningham. This brings the first film’s William Katt back to round the series out
Adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story is killed by being turned into an Arnold Schwarzenegger action vehicle and by director Paul Verhoeven’s burying the reality bending subtleties of the story under bludgeoning ultra-violence
Stephen King adapted mini-series and one of the best. A dark Coming of Age tale, Tim Curry makes an unsettling Pennywise (in doing so popularised the figure of the killer clown)
One of the better 80s attempts to copy A Nightmare on Elm Street from an old Charles Beaumont script in which Bill Pullman is a neurologist who becomes involved in an increasingly wilder series of reality bendings
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
Mind-twisting mini-series where videogame designer Stephen Dillane is wound into a series of reality and illusion games
Jemma Redgrave is a socialite who is plagued by nightmares that take over her life. A British attempt to copy A Nightmare on Elm Street that collapses into a muddle of symbolism and reality-blurring dreams
Mad psychologist creates a giant brain about the size of a small car that controls minds and is hungry to devour people. A deliriously entertaining film that seems to embody the essence of the cheesy makeup effects driven 1980s horror film
Amiably silly haunted house film with William Katt fighting rubbery pop-up monsters. This doesn’t take itself too seriously. A minor hit that produced three sequels.
Absolutely fascinating David Cronenberg film that swims with a heady mix of ideas that blur tv, reality and the human body
Excellent and overlooked film with Kathryn Harrold as a psychiatrist trying to deal with the fact that one of the patients in an asylum has vast psychic powers
Ray Bradbury’s book about the human colonisation of Mars is an SF classic for its wistful, nostalgic poetry. This tv mini-series adaptation is killed by a lumbering director who over-explains Bradbury’s imagery in the most literal ways
A two-part episode of the Gerry Anderson tv series Space: 1999 that was repackaged as a feature film to take advantage of the late 1970s post-Star Wars SF boom
Absolutely extraordinary British tv play that was one of the formative works in the development of Folk Horror on screen
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
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
An anthology that adapts three stories from Ray Bradbury’s short story collection but does so with singularly heavy-handed regard. The best aspect of the film is the framing story with a brooding Rod Steiger in the title role.
Complex and often baffling film in which Michael Caine is on a Greek island where he placed at the centre of a series of enigmatic reality charades by Anthony Quinn
A Federico Fellini film in which Fellini’s wife Giulietta Masina plays a housewife whose grasp starts to slip over until it is taken over by hallucination and fantasy
A low-budget SF film that prefigures Solaris and displays some imagination as astronauts land on a planet to find familiar things recreated from their memories