The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Séances are a means of contacting the dead. The séance almost always takes place with a group of people seated in a circle holding hands as an adept (the Medium) attempts to channel the spirits of the departed. Another method of holding a séance is via an ouija board, where the spirits of the departed will guide a cursor (the planchette) over lettering to spell out the answer to a question.
The purpose of a séance is usually to contact and find some information from the dead. A good many horror films centre around séances that unleash evil spirits or where the unwary become possessed. Séances are often held in Haunted Houses.
There are also several films about fake séances and fake mediums. There have also been several comedy portrayals.
An animated film revival of The Addams Family. You feel that a PG-rated film sold to family audiences is a bit tame for the Addams’ dark humour, nevertheless this gets much of the kooky silliness.
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
Fine thriller about the hunt for a frogman serial killer prowling the canals of Amsterdam. The police procedural plot is not so important as the entertaining dispatches and some of the finest action sequence of the 1980s
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 classic British ghost story that produces an exceedingly haunted atmosphere at times, although falls apart in a highly contrived M. Night Shyamalan twist ending
A possession film that takes the Found Footage approach. This takes the traditional approach of Catholic priests intoning exorcism rituals etc and fails to do anything interesting
Marcus Nispel is a director most associated with remakes of other films. In original material here, he is still rehashing moves from other films – an abandoned asylum and every shock effect in the possession/exorcism playbook
This promises the amusing idea of a sarcastic 00s take on The Breakfast Club but emerges as no more than a glorified episode of Scooby-Doo, in a plot about punishing the children of privilege
Horror film about a mysterious creature in the cellar with a bag over its head that can bring a dead loved one back to life for two minutes, but where use of this comes with a price
An early David Lean film, an adaptation of a Noel Coward play, a drawing room comedy in which a medium conjures a man’s late wife amid much malarkey and mayhem
Luigi Cozzi’s return to screens after 26 years, a head-scratchingly bizarre effort overloaded with ideas about parallel worlds, cosmic journeys and homage to the early cinema of Georges Melies and others
A film of electrifying tensions set just after World War II where a group of friends gather in an apartment and hold a séance that in turn brings out what they did during the War
Director Anthony DiBlasi has become a rising name in the horror genre in recent years. Here he makes a film about a deaf woman who gains mediumistic abilities and her tracking a serial killer who turns his victims into living marionettes
Larry Blamire, a director who specialises in genre parodies, takes on the Old Dark House thriller. Not quite up there with Blamire’s funniest films, nevertheless, the film conducts some amusing spoofs of the form
The intriguing idea of a haunted radio signal. A ghost story that does something different telling an ambitious double-stranded story even if it fails to pull it off with complete satisfaction
Director Paul Solet made an incredibly creepy debut film Grace. His follow-up has Keir Gilchrist imprisoned on home detention with an ankle bracelet only to find the house is haunted
Modest and quite well made film entirely shot, produced and acted by the Adams Family who have gone on to make a series of other striking horror films. This concerns a man haunted by a ghost after he kills a girl
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
Boris Karloff mad scientist film with a fear of science at the most extreme of any work of this era. What seems absurd is the film’s belief that doom will be brought by a device that is nothing more than an EEG machine
Sam Raimi chose to follow up his hugely successful Spider-Man trilogy with this incredibly silly film about Gypsy curses. Raimi piles on ridiculous shock effects that become so over-the-top that the film ends up somewhere in orbit
The Asylum’s mockbuster response to the hit of The Exorcism of Emily Rose and actually a far more interesting film. This discovers itself with a go-for-broke trashiness that the horde of Emily Rose imitators balked at
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
A popular hit in which Patrick Swayze is killed and becomes a ghost. Bruce Joel Rubin’s script has enormous fun in interpreting aspects of the ghost story from the ghost’s point-of-view.
Another of the films from the East Side Kids/Bowery Boys, a prolific comedy act of the era. Here the boys set out to bust a fake medium racket during the course of which they are aided by a ghost
TV mini-series based on the Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett novel that spoofs The Omen and Biblical End Times prophecies. The series is very close to the book as though it didn’t want to edit any precious gag
There is a good idea here, exploring what happened in the meeting between Lord Byron, Mary Shelley et al at the Villa Diodati in 1816. However this is hijacked by Ken Russell in lunatically over-the-top-mode
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
Vincenzo Natali tackles the ghost story, turning everything on its head in a series of mind-boggling twists. One of the few post-Sixth Sense films to take the film’s big twist as its starting point and build from there
Another supposed true-life ghost story, an early case by Ed and Lorraine Warren. The film exists as a progression of pop-up scares that through the need to keep producing effect produces no effect at all.
Word of mouth hit that has in its fingertips the capacity to be a great horror film. Moments of intense spookiness and an awards-worthy performance from Toni Colette but Ari Aster has an unfocused script
The first major genre film made during the Covid lockdown, a modestly effective work that borrows the basics of Unfriended for a story about a séance being held over a Zoom call
A routine haunted house film that was made as a tv movie,. One of the several early genre works made by celebrated tv producer Aaron Spelling.
A Russian dark fantasy work that generates quite spooky atmosphere in its story of a missing husband who returns in a coma possessed by an evil force
On a pure plot level, this is largely a generic haunted house story but director James Wan creates an eerie atmosphere and manages to undeniably jangle the audience’s nerves on a number of occasions
James Wan proves himself one of the finest directors in the horror genre with this sequel to his 2010 film. The plot is trimmed to deliver an effective scare show and Wan again produces a series of eerie and unworldly jumps
This doesn’t have James Wan directing and is a far less interesting ghost story before doing a repeat venture into the beyond. On the plus side, incoming director Leigh Whannell does generate a fair degree of eerie tension
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
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
An Australian Found Footage film about a haunting. Rather than the intense spookiness of Paranormal Activity, this is more a mockumentary that is constantly turning what we expect is going on on its head
A haunted house film from Andrew Jones, who makes an okay but very low key film – the spookiest it ever gets is a phantom record player. Things are lifted by a modest M. Shyamalan-esque twist
One of the best and most original ghost stories in some time, a mini-series for the BBC set in the 1890s, this does remarkable things in entirely turning the genre on its head
This is a modest British horror film about a group of students that accidentally summon a djinn during a seance that proceeds to possess one of the group and kill all the others present
One of Woody Allen’s slighter films about rationalist Colin Firth who is debunking medium Emma Stone but becomes convinced of her powers as romance sparkles
Another film with a sinister adjectives for titles we have had since Insidious. This concerns a pregnant woman finding that the fetus she is carrying has been replaced by an evil spirit.
The one moment of triumph from director William Girdler who takes a work that sits just on the threshold of schlock and transforms into something incredibly eerie with an injection of H.P. Lovecraft and American Indian mysticism
A strange Japanese film in which a suicidal lesbian receives relationship advice and from the ghost of a drag queen
May the Devil Take YouThe Evil Dead. Here Timo Tjajjanto makes a sequel and goes absolutely demented
Classic occult film from former Val Lewton associate Jacques Tourneur that sits in a wonderfully ambiguous place where we cannot be certain whether the supernatural is real or imagined
An 80s Scream Queen film featuring Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer as sorority girls who become possessed. From director David DeCoteau
Visually stunning Russian film with a clairvoyant and a police inspector teaming up to solve a series of occult murders in 19th Century St Petersburg
Sequel to Nosferatu the Vampyre featuring a return performance from Klaus Kinski with the action (or lack thereof) relocated to Venice
From cult director Roberta Findlay, this is a film about a haunted ouija board. What is going on doesn’t make a lot of sense but Findlay serves up a series of bizarre deaths that prove entertainingly absurd
A Spanish ghost story that effectively eschews modern jumpshock tactics in favour of subtle old-fashioned scares
Blumhouse horror film based around the Parker Brothers boardgame. Modern multiplex horror films don’t come more generic than this. On the other hand, you cannot deny that debuting director Stiles White creates some occasionally quite spooky moments, it’s just that the rest of the show comes entirely by the numbers
Another title jumping on the fad for ouija board films we’ve had since Blumhouse’s Ouija series, this concerning an ouija board that has a malevolent spirit trapped inside it. Routine tension by the numbers – possessed people with glowing eyes are just not that scary
Blumhouse’s Ouija didn’t get many good reviews but they proceeded with a prequel here. This is automatically the better film from the outset by employing Mike Flanagan, behind amazing works like Absentia, Hush and The Haunting of Hill House, as director, even if it comes out as one of Flanagan’s lesser works
Another in the spate of deliberately ridiculous killer shark films concerning a ghost shark that emerges from an ouija board
A bafflingly incoherent effort – quite what it is about I am at a loss to explain. The sole distinction it has that it was repackaged from its anonymous original title to market it on the tail of Blumhouse’s Ouija: Origin of Evil despite the fact an ouija board only briefly features at the start
Less another sequel than a spinoff of the Paranormal Activity series, this takes place with Latino characters and in a whole different culture and socio-economic strata. While this gives the series a face change, everything else it feels like the shuffling of a well-worn deck of plot cards
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
The second-to-last film from legendary Z-budget filmmaker Ted V. Mikels. The title is a misnomer and the film is more about a woman discovering her abilities as a medium. Despite having been making films since the 1960s, Mikels has improved none in quality
In the same vein as The Conjuring films, a film about a true-life Spanish team of paranormal investigators
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
The haunted house genre is one that has become thoroughly exhausted by overuse in recent years. This puts the elements together with a professional assemblage but is essentially no different to the 347 other haunted house films that this site has seen in the last twelve months
Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa conducts a remake of the British thriller Seance on a Wet Afternoon. Where the original was a mundane film that depicted a kidnap scheme involving a fake medium, Kurosawa builds this out as an actual ghost story
Adam Wingard’s regular scriptwriter Simon Barrett directs a revival of the girls’ boarding school ghost story. I had very high expectations of this
Standout thriller with Kim Stanley as a medium who fakes a child kidnapping with husband Richard Attelborough to prove her powers
Fairly by-the-books possession and exorcism film that does have the novelty of playing out in a morgue and where the entire cast has been pared down to four. There also seems an earnest strain of belief in Christianity/Catholicism that runs throughout
Another version of the popular figure from Japanese urban legend, which has appeared in a number of films. This is an anthology where four Japanese directors have come to L.A. to shoot a series of strictly average short horror tales, not all of which feature the Slit Mouth Woman
One of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s film, this features a totally demented plot involving a man who develops psychic powers and his encounters with witches and LSD trips
The Stand is in my opinion Stephen King’s greatest book. The question is whether this new mini-series version will improve on the laughably failed 1994 version
Another entry in the popular Folk Horror revival of the 2020s, this is a superb slow burn film that operates essentially as a British Pet Sematary
Tales from the Hood was the novelty of an African-American made horror anthology. 23 years later the principal talents (including producer Spike Lee) reunite for a sequel
An Australian film has been getting some great word of mouth, a teen horror that stands it head and shoulders above its contemporaries
Ghost story that seems to be intended to play to a more literary level than most of its contemporaries
One of the films from gimmick master William Castle, a more routine ghost story that eventually opts for a mundane ending and was sold with the gimmick of Ghost Viewer glasses. Later remade as Thir13en Ghosts
The third film about the title criminal mastermind from Fritz Lang. Here Lang returns to a radically different Germany to the one he fled in the 1930s, the West Germany of the Cold War, to deliver a creepily paranoid work about the surveillance society
A Roger Corman produced horror parody that conducts send ups of most of the horror icons of the 1980s – Freddy Krueger, Pinhead, Michael Meyers etc – without being particularly funny
Another giallo thriller from Dario Argento filled with all the wild bursts of imagination, bizarre plot twists and set-pieces we have come to expect from him
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
Inspired by an autoccorrect error, this is deliberately ridiculous film about a priest who transforms into a dinosaur to fight evil, A film made with a full awareness of its own absurdities where the ineptitude of the shoestring effects adds to the charm.
Paco Plaza has become one of the premiere names in Spanish horror due to the [Rec] films. Here he attempts to follow in the footsteps of The Conjuring with a film based on a supposedly true supernatural incident in 90s Madrid but fails to make a terribly interesting work
Solidly atmospheric effort concerning a middle-aged couple who buy a house with sinister forces lurking in the basement. This builds to an admirably gore-drenched climax
Way back before Blumhouse’s Ouija and the subsequent cheap ouija-titled films, there was the 80s horror Witchboard, which proved popular enough that it produced two sequels starting with this
A passable 80s horror in which Tawny Kitaen summons an evil spirit via an ouija board. That was a sufficient hit on video shelves that two sequels followed and then a remake.
Old Dark House comedy set around the antics of big band leader Kay Kyser. Starring several horror names of the day – Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre