The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
A children’s fantasy adventure that never strays beyond the environs of an American high school and comes with the lowbrow slapstick, excruciating comic caricatures and incredibly bad effects
The second of Kevin J. Kindenmuth’s surprisingly good compilations of video shorts around the loose theme of alien invasion and takeover
This seems amusingly construed as a mash-up between two of James Cameron’s most famous titles … what we get is a painfully cheap film about people being pursued through the woods by an alien creature
Not to be confused with the Oren Peli Found Footage film. Sean Connery’s son Jason directs a film where a host of alien nasties imprisoned at Area 51 manage to escape
Animated adaptation of the classic Batman comic-book story, this places the Batman/Cat Woman relationship centre stage to give her the most substantial workout of any film
Attempt to create another Twilight franchise that quickly becomes the anti-Twilight, shucking the pro-chastity message for a decidedly inflammatory stance against small-minded Christian prejudice
Adaptation of the fairytale that takes place in an exquisitely dreamy sumptuousness – a stunningly designed, costumed and photographed world that has a genuine magic. However, the motion-capture animated Beast looks far too much like a CGI effect
Live-action English-language remake of the anime short about a demon-hunting vampire girl. The original is reduced to no more than a series of slick by-the-numbers action poses
The MCU offers up their first superheroine with very unexceptional results. A competent enough effort but DC’s Wonder Woman easily blows everything this tries to do out of the water
Follow-up to the 2000 tv mini-series adaptation of Dune, this adapts Frank Herbert’s two books sequels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. The production lacks the depth of its predecessor
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
Blumhouse revival of/sequel to The Craft, the film about a quartet of teenage witches. This updates the original to the modern era in ways the original never did
Low-budget UFO/alien abduction film that mostly this just retreads familiar material, although it does evince a certain interesting state of rubber reality about what is happening
A confused and incomprehensible film in which Michael Biehn is drawn in to the hunt for a girl whose blood contains an immortality virus
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
The original Emmanuelle was a supposedly autobiographical memoir about the sexual dalliances of a bored wife in Thailand. Here Emmanuelle is now abducted by aliens for further encounters
One of the best Disney animated films in some time. Set around a Colombian American family that have hereditary magic powers and live in a magical house, this comes with an enormous degree of colour and energy
A homemade New Zealand film that attempts to pull an ambitious time travel story that takes place in multiple era with temporal police intervening after a scientist invents a time portal
Follow-up to The Ewok Adventure, a tv movie released to theatres internationally. This is a better film than its predecessor that even captures something of the Star Wars spirit on occasions
The film version of the comic-book that was made by Roger Corman intended to never be released. This has a reputation as a bad movie and is extremely impoverished adaptation but is more authentic to the comic-book than other big-budget films
One of the big hits among the spate of Marvel Comics adaptations in the 2000s. This has a very mixed reputation but brings the comic-book team to life in a reasonable effort
Despite all the hate this received, I am maybe the only person out there that liked it. It is three-quarters of a good film that strips the Four of costumes and tells a character-driven story about people dealing with powers
The 2005 Fantastic Four was an amiable entry among the Marvel Comics adaptations of the 2000s. This sequel substitutes lowbrow comedy and renders the great character of the Silver Surfer as a CGI cartoon
US film based on a real Japanese historical incident that has been oddly spun out into a Keanu Reeves-starring epic samurai fantasy film. One of the biggest financial flops of 2013
Second tv version of the Raymond Briggs book about a secret society of bogeys who love all that is filthy and disgusting, This cheats when it comes to the bogeys but goes all out on the disgustingness of their lifestyle
An entry in a popular series of French slapstick comedies with Louis de Funes as a comic gendarme. In this, the series sole genre entry, he goes up against alien visitors
You can’t complain that this is not exactly what you expect it to be – two hours of cartoonish action during which the brain singularly fails to engage. This is less unapologetic about being a military fantasy than the first film
Stephen Sommers make a film based on the popular action toy line. Barring one exhilarating sequence in the middle, this consists of lots of sound and CGI fury amounting to very little at all
Sequel to the live-action US-made adaptation of the manga about a power-suit superhero. As with the first film, there are lots of rubbery aliens and martial arts fights
After being hired by The Thing remake and having his work replaced by CGI, makeup effects artist Alec Gillis made his own homage. With modest resources, he does a far better job of capturing the outlandishness of the original
The penultimate chapter in the Harry Potter series surprisingly strips out most of the effects and is much slower, more character driven, while moving the saga towards an epic conclusion
I’ve never been a huge fan of the Harry Potter series but the final chapter rounds out the boy wizard saga in rousing style, mounting an epic-sized battle and finding characters depths that hold some of the best writing of the series
Fourth of the Harry Potter films and one that feels much more seamless and sure of itself as a story. The problem is the absurd contrivation of J.K. Rowling’s weak story that wheels out every sports movie cliche in the book
The Hobbit became Peter Jackson’s equivalent of the Star Wars prequels and this is the weakest work he has produced under the J.R.R. Tolkien banner. Five picaresque chapters of the book are extruded into bloated set-pieces
Eli Roth is a director associated with the Torture Porn cycle and one does a double-take at him making a family-friendly film. The results emerge somewhere between Harry Potter and a Goosebumps film
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
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
It Came from Outer Space was one of the classics of the 1950s SF film. Here it was resurrected as a cable-made sequel. Without Jack Arnold or Ray Bradbury on board, the results are dreary
Animated Justice League film, which adapts a comic-book storyline that reconceived the various DC superheroes as they were back in the era of their original creation
Another of Sony’s films spun off from Spider-Man supporting characters. In the comics, Kraven is a Spider-Man super-villain with a big game hunter motif but here is turned into a superhero
The fourth entry in DreamWorks popular animated series, which by now is just another entry in the series that is coasting by on recognition factor, while offering minimal difference
Disney’s original The Little Mermaid was an enormously fresh film. This is the live-action remake that came out amid much controversy and is inevitably a lesser shadow of the original.
Another in the early 2010s fad for fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasy films – in this case, a version of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty told from the viewpoint of the witch
Nobody much liked Maleficent but did make a reasonable amount of money, hence a sequel. The surprise is that in the hands of Norwegian director Joachim Rønning, it is far better than one expected
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
This ended up being the lowest rated of all MCU films. One wondered whether this was just fannish hyperbole but no what we end up with is the Batman & Robin of The MCU, the single worst film that franchise has produced
Tim Burton used to be the great hope of fantastic cinema but his efforts since 2000 have been greeted with general disappointment. This Young Adult adaptation plays out like a fantasy version of the X-Men
Disney make a sequel to Moana, their venture into Pacific Island mythology
Despite being a huge box-office and critical success and being nominated for an Academy Award, I am in a minority in disliking this. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that it appropriates the culture from my neck of the woods and only spins it out as a series of glib jokes and one-liners
Apparently the biggest grossing film in China ever. What we get is not much more than a rehash of E.T. with the addition of flying swordsmen. What kills the film is an emphasis of excrutiating slapstick and low-res CGI that makes the various creatures resemble versions of Mr Blobby
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
Nominal remake of the Boris Karloff The Mummy, which has now been inflated into a big budget Indiana Jones adventure. Stephen Sommers lets the film overspill with CGI spectacle but the exercise is deflated by a jokey, unserious attitude
The third of the Brendan Fraser Mummy films that feels like it has no point other than to steal $10 from your hand and give you a bucket of content free mental popcorn in return
An amazing breakout hit from Russia, a film that is busy to the point of overcrowding with ideas and its’ director’s visual excess but delivers the goods in ways that make your jaw drop
The second directorial film from Clive Barker is a hugely ambitious work concerning the discovery of a city of monsters – containing some extraordinary makeup creations – but proved a box-office flop
A painfully bad Charles Band production for children about a strange couple that set up a pet shop selling alien creatures
Delightful and charming Studio Ghibli film about shape-changing raccoons that blend with humanity when their forest is threatened
Third in the series about android terrorists, this is now about an amok android on a spaceship
Shabby copy of Alien with shipwreck survivors facing a genetically engineered monster on an oil rig
A Bollywood venture into science-fiction that does a reasonably impressive job of trying to mount CGI superheroics … on the other hand, the plot deals in simplistic black-and-whites and draws on models of SF two decades out of date
Film that features a young Edgar Allan Poe fighting a supernatural menace known as The Raven
Essentially Christmas the Action Film featuring Dwayne Johnson as Santa’s bodyguard going into action accompanied by Chris Evans as a nerdy hacker when Santa is abducted
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
Sequel to the Hong Kong erotic film, an entirely unrelated work that inflates the original into a madcap Wu Xia film filled with crude, rude humour
The first of Disney’s live-action comedies, a comic variant on the werewolf story with Tommy Kirk turning into a dog. Mildly amusing but later efforts would do this type of comedy better
The remake of the old Disney comedy becomes a vehicle for Tim Allen, played with a manic slapstickery wherein Allen demonstrates there are few levels of silliness he will travel to in imitating dog-like behaviours
1950s mad scientist film where a scientist develops a regeneration serum only to turn Mari Blanchard into a man-eating femme fatale
The second of 2012’s Snow White films after Mirror Mirror, this turns the fairytale into an epic fantasy. Well produced but ultimately a film that lacks anything unique nor pushes far enough into the dark fantasy it promises to be
The directorial debut for Brian Yuzna, this has a satiric and weirdly paranoid tone but what makes the film is its sensational display makeup effects involving a secret society of shapeshifting orgiasts
A live-action film based on the titular segment from Fantasia. From Jerry Bruckheimer meaning that it is a film of empty-headed special effects that fails to conjure any magic of its own
Low-budget superhero that co-opts the cod-film noir look from Sin City. Alas the film has an excessively sprawling and complicated plot, while the film noir style looks like no more than cheap pastiche reduced to cliche poses by well-meaning amateurs
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
The last of the classic Star Trek films. Nicholas Meyer, who made the last good Trek film The Wrath of Khan, returns to give the characters a moving send off, while the plot that reenacts the fall of the Berlin Wall with the Klingons gives the films a political immediacy that was missing since the tv series
A Star Trek film spun off around Michelle Yeoh and the secret service that appears in the modern revival series
Excrutiatingly unwatchable live-action film in which trained animals have all been dubbed with smartass voices. In the nominal plot, a group of dogs gain superpowers, which becomes dragged out into a series of witless slapstick scenes, all overrun with agonisingly hip and unfunny one-liners
Modestly effective film about people being hunted by a shapechanging killer car
James Gunn’s almost completely successful reboot of the cinematic Superman, the first film perhaps that comes with a total confidence in the comic-book source and where Gunn is not afraid to be goofy
The first sequel to The Terminator where James Cameron returns with the biggest budget for a film at the time. Cameron harnesses then top-drawer CGI technology to create one of the most original nemeses in any SF film
The sixth Terminator film that boasts the return of both James Cameron and Linda Hamilton to the franchise. After the troughs of Terminator: Genisys, this makes one forget about the last three sequels
A hodgepodge of competing elements – an aging Arnold Schwarzenegger, a soft reboot, alternate timelines, reintroduction of the familiar, twists to the familiar – that make no sense on a narrative level, least of all come anywhere near what James Cameron delivered back in the first two films
1950s B movie about time travel experiments that produce a deadly woman from the future. Nothing standout but Salome Jens has an otherworldly presence as the woman
John Carpenter at the peak of his career, remaking The Thing from Another World as a wild and phantasmagoric film steeped in paranoia that proved to be the absolute epitome of the era’s fad for air-bladder transformation effects
Though pitched as a prequel, this is essentially a remake of John Carpenter’s classic. Alas, this only finds the same phantasmagoric outlandishness as Carpenter did in a couple of scenes that may be moderately impressive for those who have never seen the original
The third of the MCU’s Thor films. This time Kiwi director Taikia Waititi gives much more of a comedic emphasis where you get the impression the intention has been to push the film in the direction of Guardians of the Galaxy. On the other hand, the superheroics are routine
One welcomes a collaboration between Tsui Hark, the godfather of Hong Kong fantasy cinema, and Yuen Wo Ping, fight choreographer for The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but the the results are oddly disappointing, with Yuen’s talents seeming buried under the CGI
Unimaginative time travel/action film that plays out like
Nick Willing conducts the first of his SF revampings of popular tales. Here The Wizard of Oz is reworked into a Steampunk fantasy with some startling reinterpetations of the familiar characters
Are there any new creative directions that Michael Bay feels he he has to explore for a fourth Transformers film? All the Transformers beating the crap out of each other and copious mass destruction has become hard to tell one of the films from each other
The third of Michael Bay’s Transformers films. While the human scenes opt for a ghastly miscalculated sense of humour, the effects houses are at the peak of their game, even if Bay allows them to drag the mass destruction out to a numbing excess
The first of Michael Bay’s Transformers sequels has even better effects and more copious mass destruction to the point it washes over you without any effect
The first of several animated films based on Marvel Comics properties, this does a solid job in adapting Mark Millar’s The Ultimates, a retelling of The Avengers origin story
Follow-up to the previous animated Marvel Comics film featuring The Avengers, this serves to introduce Black Panther to the screen for the first time
It was a box-office bomb but this is one of the most breathtaking and completely designed SF work to ever cross the screen. In terms of effects, sets and costuming, Luc Besson gives us a work that is an overwhelming treat for the eyes
The sixth entry among the popular multi-director anthology series, this includes episodes from Scott Derrickson among others but is also one of the weaker of the V/H/S films overall
The first Japanese entry in the great alien invader fad of the 1950s. Nothing great but it does boast the awesomeness of starfish-shaped aliens
M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter Ishana directs a film of her own. Say what you will about nepotism, it is a really good film
Robert Rodriguez appears to have gotten the oversized non-event that was Alita: Battle Angel out of his system by making another of his seat of the pants home movies – this is less Spy Kids than Superhero Kids – and brings back one element Alita forgot, a sense of fun
Anime from Yoshiaki Kawajiri about a war with a demon dimension that falls halfway between H.P. Lovecraft and a hard-boiled detective thriller and brims over wit fascinatingly pathological sexual imagery
A horror anthology that ostensibly tells a series of children’s tales but heads for an admirable grotesquerie
Deliberately made to look like a lost 1980s/early 90s film, this has a winning concept and sets in with an appealingly sarcastic amusement. On the other hand, the film is never quite as amusing as it gives the impression it is going to be and starts to lose it in the third act