The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The small town has become emblematic of traditional values and the quiet life (particularly in US cinema). Some films show villagers as backward and behind the times, while in other portrayals, they are seen as leading a simple, untroubled life and/or more attuned to the land than city dwellers. In genre material, there is also the frequent ongoing feeling that something is not quite right in this world.
In genre cinema, small towns can be at siege from outside forces – alien invaders, Body Snatchers, vampires or zombies. More disquietingly, the threat can often come from within – that there is a secret cabal in the community that has been replaced by aliens, is being mind controlled or wants to replace their wives with androids. Or else that the townspeople are all part of a Satanic coven or that they guard some secret rite or ritual to protect themselves, maintain the harvest or grant them immortality.
A frequent plot in these films is where someone innocently strays into town and then finds that for whatever reason they are being prevented from leaving.
Darren Lynn Bousman is the director most associated with the Saw sequels and its Torture Porn excesses. His other films have been lacking. This comes with one of the most off the wall premises one has seen
One out of some thirty odd films using the Amityville name. This concerns a girl who inherits a haunted theatre in the town of Amityville
Perhaps the strangest film on Chuck Norris’s cv – the film where Chuck plays an angel. A work of Christian horror where Chuck’s son Mike plays a decent man trapped in a sinister Western town of devil worshipping children
From prolific genre director/producer Brian Yuzna, a film about the drowned residents of a town that was flooded by a dam construction now emerging to exact vengeance on the living
Classic tv movie that is one of the earliest horror/Westerns hybrids where Roy Thinnes plays a preacher who ends up in town only to find he cannot leave amid mysterious goings-on
Modest and quite effective Dean R. Koontz adaptation in which Jay Mohr is trapped in a small town run by an A.I. that does everything it can to prevent him from leaving
An entry among the 1970s occult cycle post-Rosemary’s Baby where a family stray into a sinister small town where a coven of Satanists are abducting children for sinister purpose
Legendary Canucksploitation film from Ivan Reitman about a cannibal hotel. This has gained a cult reputation. Seen it seems to lack the essential trashiness that justifies its reputation
The first film from Peter Weir, a deadpan black comedy in which a man comes around from a car crash to find himself in a small town that subsists by creating car crashes
A fifteen page Stephen King story about a patricidal child cult has spawned this film, nine sequels and a remake. Not a very good film, this is stuck with padding a very slight original out to a full-length film
This remake of the Stephen King short story (this time with a script from King himself) is a much better film than the earlier 1984 version or any of its numerous sequels
The Stephen King short story only runs to 16 pages. This is the eleventh film spinoff to date (which runs at about one film per 1.4 pages of story). Unlike the other sequels, this claims to be an origin story
One of a trio of films produced by Fangoria magazine, this concerns a town overrun by vampires but swings uncertainly between moments of effectiveness and a campy silliness
The killer clown film has become its own genre niche since the remake of It, offering assorted wacky genre mash-ups. This is a better budgeted entry than usual from the director of the cult Tucker and Dale vs Evil
David Slade seemed a promising directorial name several years ago with works like the charged Hard Candy, before making Twilight films and being lost in tv. Here he returns with a film set around a small town’s deadly Halloween rituals
After writing the huge hit of Alien, Dan O’Bannon next went onto this strange zombie film in which the people of a small town fail to stay dead
Spanish film that prefigures the subsequent A Quiet Place concerning an island where anybody who makes a noise is killed. This fails to use its premise in any interesting way.
Actress Olivia Wilde creates a variant on The Stepford Wives set in an idyllic 1950s town where the women seem to be prisoners. Wilde is making a feminist parable but the plausibility of her SF scenario falls apart
A zombie film of sorts in which the people of an Australian outback town are taken over by an alien force. A zombie film that seems to be trying not to be a zombie film.
The premise of a small town inhabited by the former inmates of an asylum, suggests a variant on Poe’s The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether. The execution is complete amateurism on every level
A low-budget 80s film about a town where the locals are in thrall to a Satanist who has demanded the souls of 103 children
A film about a sinister small town with secrets and Bigfoot creatures lurking around in the background. Quite what is going on any more than that is unclear
This was a Troma release during the period where they made a point of selling films with outrageous attention-getting titles. One only wishes there was a film on show worthy of such
A rehash of The Stepford Wives recast along racial lines. It is a surprise to see a mainstream horror hit with a strong message about racism, not that Jordan Peele neglects the horror element either
Worthwhile film that has a strong vibe of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village about a post-US Civil War town that comes under attack by mysterious creatures
Solid, well made variant on The Most Dangerous Game human hunting scenario with an alcoholic man fighting for his life in a small border town that holds an annual hunt to eliminate the socially worthless
A Spanish horror film that develops some reasonable effect in its story about a writer who moves to a small town only to find the locals are keeping sinister secrets
The novelty of the only film ever made in Esperanto. Featuring a young William Shatner as a man who stumbles into a village of demonic temptresses
The finest film to come out of 1950s SF cinema, concerning an invasion of pods that replicate people but for their emotions. The sense of paranoia and psychological tension is unsurpassed
The Leprechaun films were a cheap ripoff of the Freddy Krueger films. This supposed revival bears nothing whatsoever to do with the originals and doesn’t even seem the same type of film anymore
William Brent Bell, director of The Devil Inside and The Boy, makes a Folk Horror film. This borrows much from The Wicker Man and only seems Folk Horror by cliche
British-made homage to H.P. Lovecraft that has some of the most stunning black-and-white photography seen in some time but I am still trying to puzzle out what the film was actually about
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 wonderfully creepy Folk Horror film in which Jemima Rooper returns to her home town after many years and finds very strange things happening
Alex Garland has become a must watch name since Ex Machina and Devs. Here he ventures into an intriguing mix of folk horror and gender politics
Film that has developed a cult reputation set in a seaside town where the dead are returning to life. The film has an unsettling nightmare ambience where things happen without any explanation
Mike Flanagan returns with his best work to date. Effectively a Catholic version of Salem’s Lot, this comes with some flat out great pieces of writing
Anodyne adaptation of a weaker Stephen king novel about a curio shop that sells objects that cause people to become obsessed and in so doing wreaks havoc throughout a small town
The fourth of the Blind Dead films from Spanish director Amando de Ossorio. The film, concerning Knights Templars who were blinded and have returned as zombies, have gained a modest cult
TV movies of the 1970s can be this unexplored treasure trove of sophisticated and intelligent genre treatments. Case in point being this effort, a variant on a 1950s body snatchers film in which a man with a steel plate in his head discovers that the people of a small town are being taken over at night by aliens
TV mini-series that adapts eight Stephen King short stories. As with any anthology, the stories vary in quality but are generally quite reasonable
The only film ever directed by Dan Aykroyd, a bizarre oddity that was a huge flop on its initial release. The film is a strange comedy set in an American Gothic junkyard town where even the smallest legal infractions are punished by death. Aykroyd can’t seem to decide it the tone is comedy or horror
A horror film produced by Slash of Guns’n’ Roses fame about a family moving to a new town only to find they have been brought there for a sinister purpose
From the increasingly underrated Mickey Keating, a film about a ghostly small town where Keating creates an incredibly eerie and haunted atmosphere
A Syfy Channel film about the present-day discovery of a lost, still extant 19th Century village that has conducted a deal to preserve themselves by annually sacrificing someone to an ogre
One of the most head-scratchingly bizarre efforts among the great Ozploitation fad – a comedy about vampires in an Australian Outback town
Weird Western where a group of outlaws on the run end up in a town of witches
A standout adaptation of a classic work of Mexican literature in the Magical Realist tradition. This creates an incredibly haunted mood as it follows a man’s quest for his past to a town that seems to exist inside a twilight zone
Quite magical Francis Ford Coppola produced film about a schoolteacher who discovers she had taken a position in a town of alien refugees
One of the best and most underrated Dean R. Koontz adaptations, which creates eerie atmosphere out a town where the residents have disappeared due to what is revealed as a uniquely different creature
Film about a sinister small town where the population must always be kept at the title figure. An interestingly strange scenario suffers from far too laidback direction
Film that features a young Edgar Allan Poe fighting a supernatural menace known as The Raven
Cult director Larry Cohen makes a sequel to the Stephen King mini-series but throws most connection out to make his own wry, occasionally amusing vampire film
Silent Hill was one of the best videogame film adaptations and created a genuinely uncanny atmosphere. That film’s director returns to the franchise here with more of the same but misses the mark
One of the best Stephen King adaptations made as a tv mini-series concerning a town overrun by vampires. Director Tobe Hooper excels himself, staging the book in terms a series of captivating set-pieces
TV mini-series remake of the Stephen King novel, this fails to hold a candle to the earlier 1979 version
The Stephen King novel about a small town that is invaded by a vampire and is population taken gets its third screen adaptation in this film treatment. The 1979 mini-series is still the best version
A dark and mysterious historical fantasy about cartographers mapping the Finnish-Russian border who arrive at a mysterious village and an enigmatic stone sauna in the forest
A low-budget film about a journalist’s modern-day investigation into a secret village located near Salem, Massachusetts that results in paranoia and suspicious treatment by the locals
Z-budget filmmaker Mark Polonia makes another of his entries into the gonzo killer shark film. This is a companion piece to his Sharkenstein – yes, a work about a vampire shark!
YouTube film reviewer Chris Stuckmann makes a directorial debut with this film about the investigation into a mysterious disappearance where he makes a work that is well above the often familiar material it deals with
A piece of filler horror that is utterly generic in every respect about travelers entering a sinister East European village where the locals are up to no good
One of the more obscure H.P. Lovecraft adaptations based on an unfinished pastiche, not widely seen but well worth reconsideration
One of the best of all filmed videogame adaptations. Christophe Gans creates a creepy and unworldly atmosphere, along with a series of genuinely outlandish creature effects
Dull and unimaginative Silent Hill sequel that only revisits what went before. The first film had an uncanny otherworldly atmosphere but the sequel reduces everything to no more than pop-up Clive Barker
An almost respectable film from David DeCoteau about a journalist uncovering the disappearance of a gay man in a town that eliminates those who do not conform to its wholesome lifestyle
TV movie where Kyle MacLachlan comes across a town where the residents have discovered a Fountain of Youth
The second of three sequels to The Stepford Wives. I found the original implausible on any level and this is quadrupled when you get to replacing their children with android duplicates. A film that has been generated without anybody sitting and thinking about the premise on a practical level
Ira Levin’s original novel wherein the men of a town replace their wives with subservient android duplicates seems to have its satiric point blunted when it comes to the film adaptation
Frank Oz conducts a remake of The Stepford Wives, which becomes a broad comedy take on the gender wars in the modern world
One of the best Stephen King tv mini-series with Colm Feore as a mysterious stranger who manipulates and turns an entire town against themselves
The Strangers was one the sleeper hits of the 2000s. This is the first chapter in a three film reboot. On the minus side, it has been handed over to Renny Harlin, who should be on any worst directors list
The director of the I Spit on Your Grave remake makes a low-budget film about a haunted Western ghost town
The first film from the inimitable Bill Plympton, a work of bizarre surrealist animation and strange satiric transformations as a man sets out on a journey to find the final line for a tune
David Lynch’s dive into the dark underbelly of smalltown weirdness became the cult tv series of the 1990s. This is the slightly re-edited pilot issued for theatrical release internationally, which offers an ungainly wrap-up to the proceedings
Francis Ford Coppola makes what may be a ghost story or a vampire film but things are so confused you are never sure what. Less like the mature work of one of the great American filmmakers than an ingenue effort from director straight out of film school with a head full of muddled pretensions
Quite possibly the most boring 1970s Euro horror film ever made. Innocent travellers stray into a village of vampires but hardly anything happens in this soporific Spanish effort least of all the title orgy
Blumhouse production where Finn Jones moves to a small town and finds the portrait of the town’s founder is a ringer for him
Another entry from the revived Hammer Films, an intelligent and effective variant on Pet Semetary that manages to delve into some dark and chilling places
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
One of the first Reds Under the Bed hysteria films of the 1950s where a man stumbles on a small town where a Communist fifth column are conducting biowarfare experiments as part of a planned invasion
Sold as a sequel to The Wicker Man, although works as more of an update and expansion of its themes. Received a muted reception but is a not entirely uninteresting film, if nowhere near the league of the original
Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia makes what is essentially a comedy version of From Dusk Till Dawn albeit with witches instead of vampires. This has one of the funniest openings I’ve seen in some time but thereafter dissipates into broadly farcical and overlong runnings around
You have to admit the title gets your attention but this is otherwise a slasher film of sorts about a group in search of Stephen King’s home