The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The afterlife refers to filmic depictions of the place that souls are assumed to travel to after death. In that most fantastic cinema is made in the USA, the predominant depictions of the afterlife on screen draw on an implied Christian dualism where souls either go to Heaven or Hell. That said, there have also been a number of visions from alternate religions and mythologies, plus many others that come from a non-religious viewpoint.
Cinematic depictions of the afterlife range from the cliche of a nebulous realm of clouds tended by angels to more sober attempts, including a number films about attempts to scientifically explore the afterlife. There are various other comedic and blackly comedic treatments, showing the afterlife to be very different to what people expect.
It has become an overused phrase in this site’s critical arsenal to say “yet another 70s/80s remake that is inferior to the original”. The 1982 Poltergeist was one of the great ghost stories of the era; this hits all the beats and with bigger effects but fails to find any of the haunted mood of the original
Sequel to Poltergeist that without Tobe Hopper in the director’s seat is an unimaginative by-the-numbers effort
Hayao Miyazaki in a more whimsical comedic mood with this story of the adventures of a talking pig aviator. Even when in a lighter vein, Miyazaki cannot help but fill the film with images of charm and considerable beauty
One of a popular spate of 80s/90s Hong Kong ghost comedies where a man gets the aid of an annoying ghost girl as he pursues the woman of his dreams
Animated film from Denmark about a man who goes on an ultra-violent crusade against the porn industry over the loss of innocence of his young niece
Very nicely made French animated film based around the daughter of the pharaoh Akhenaton
From Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a ghost story that creates an incredibly haunted atmosphere. As with most of Kurosawa’s work, dazzling ideas sit alongside a murky and impenetrable plot where you are baffled trying to make sense of what is happening
Gerard Depardieu is being interrogated by police inspector Roman Polanski over a murder he cannot remember. Solid, well constructed drama that is turned on its head with a surprise ending
Evocative New Zealand-made Last People on Earth drama. Although the film reaches a frustrating ending that leaves much unanswered, the earlier scenes showing a man alone in a deserted world have an uncommon poetry
Slow sincere film in which Ellen Burstyn becomes a faith healer following a car crash
A sequel to R.I.P.D. that tells an origin story of how the sheriff character played by Jeff Bridges in the original became an afterlife enforcement officer
This feels like someone has simply copied the idea of a secretive law enforcement agency from
The first adaptation of Philip Jose Farmer’s series of novels where every person who ever lived is resurrected on an alien planet is given an abysmal treatment as a tv movie that ditches and rewrites major aspects of the books
The second tv mini-series of Philip Jose Farmer’s classic SF novels trashes the books just as badly as the first attempt. The premise and characters are indifferently rewritten, while the show is churned out by a director with a tatty indifference to what he is making
Mamoru Hosoda conducts the bizarre notion of an anime version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It is a Hamlet that Shakespeare would barely recognise, following a heroine as she makes a journey across the afterlife
In the vein of frat house comedies of the era like Animal House and Porky’s, this is an embarrassingly cringey film about a teen who is killed while trying to get laid and insists on lingering about to finish the job
One of the more forgettable Woody Allen comedies with Scarlett Johansson as a journalism student who gets tips from the afterlife
Prequel to The Scorpion King. Unfortunately director Russell Mulcahy allows his broad hand with comedy free reign and the plot is overrun by glib character banter and constant flip modern one-liners
The film that made the name of M. Night Shyamalan and still a strong and spooky story despite the variability of Shyamalan’s offerings since then. What made the film a classic was its twist ending, something that has been relentlessly copied by numerous genre films since
Pixar film with a head-scratchingly odd plot but also one of the better efforts of the divided post-2010 period that goes a long way towards recapturing the things they did so well in their heyday
Imagine A Christmas Carol retold as a bromance where Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present abandon hauntings and become besties
One of the masterpieces of Hayao Miyazaki, a gentle, beautiful work of anime set in an afterlife bathhouse where Miyazaki’s range of extraordinary creatures and quiet tenderness finds something that Western fantasy rarely ever comes near
Laughable Irwin Allen film that conducts a tour of human history via stock footage as Vincent Price’s The Devil holds a heavenly tribunal to judge humanity for inventing the atomic bomb
Beautifully made anime from Makoto Shinkai about a young girl and a three-legged chair on a quest to close a series of portals across Japan and prevent unimaginable chaos emerging
The fourth of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films. This mixes it up slightly and adapts four Poe stories into three episodes, each of which stars Vincent Price
An excruciatingly unfunny Australian comedy about a man murdered by his wife returned as a ghost to bring her to justice
Rather appealing British comedy set in an afterlife that is conceived as a dreary world of social services agencies and encounter groups. A frequently extremely black and funny but eventually charming film that gets lit up by the eccentricity of its performances
On the scale of weird movies, this is about as out there as it gets – Ryan Reynolds has conversations with his cat and dog who urge him to cut people’s heads off, which continue to talk as he keeps them in his refrigerator. A mind-bogglingly warped film and quite brilliant in its dark funniness when you work out what is going on
A strong and imaginative horror/Western hybrid set aboard a train before the realisation that it is travelling to Hell. Deft characterisations and some tight, electric confrontations make this work well
Vincent Ward is one of the least recognised great directors in the world. Here he creates an extraordinary vision of the afterlife in which he employs CGI to create a world that resembles classic artworks brought to life
Cheap badly directed film starring Martin Kove as detective who is shot but comes back haunted by visions of the afterlife
Ghost story about so-called Electronic Voice Phenomenon with Michael Keaton as a widower being contacted from beyond by his late wife. A film that achieves some quite reasonable spooky effect
A sSequel in name only to White Noise, this is a very silly film with Nathan Fillion returning from a near-death experience able to see the auras of those about to die
Oddball film set in an afterlife for suicides. You keep expecting the film to burst out into a vein of rich black comedy that never comes and you are left with a film that feels as though it is being eccentric for the sake of it.
Unique venture into meta-fiction by Wai Ka Fai that creates fascinatingly wound layers of fiction and reality that eventually become so complex that one gets lost