The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The Ambiguously Fantastic refers to works that create a deliberate uncertainty about whether elements of the fantastic exist or not. They raise the suggestion that it could exist or equally that it might be all in a protagonist’s imagination or there may be a more mundane explanation for what is going on.
Sometimes this may result in a Rationalised Fantasy where the end of the story pulls back to deliver a mundane explanation for seemingly fantastical events, or everything is revealed to be conclusively in someone’s imagination. Just as equally, a work may leave the ambiguity unresolved.
The most common examples of this might be whether ghosts and hauntings are real. Efforts included here also leave doubt about the actuality of monsters, aliens, angels, reincarnation, miracles, witchcraft and deviltry, UFOs, werewolves, or claims that someone is an alien or time traveller.
The classic Ambiguously Fantastic story was Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898), which has been multiply filmed, in which we could not be certain if the central character was seeing ghosts or it was all just in her imagination. On film, the classic Ambiguously Fantastic films were the works of Val Lewton, beginning with Cat People (1942) in which we could not be certain if the heroine really could turn into a panther or it was just her superstitions and the imaginings of others.
A micro-budgeted production shot in a trailer in the woods with a cast of two that sits in a fascinatingly ambiguous place about whether the central character has sold his soul or gone off his psychiatric meds
A horror film made as an allegory for Covid with a family trapped inside a bathroom without supplies as a mysterious catastrophe happens outside their door
Fascinating, enigmatic film about a woman isolated on an island off the Cornish coast who is haunted by cryptic mystery figures, who are possibly all in her imagination, possibly not
This has quite a few similarities to the underrated The Wind with Sarah Paulson as a mother in the 1930s Dustbowl seeing possible supernatural figures amid the dust storms, which could just as easily be fraying sanity
The title leads you to expect a variation on Jack the Giant Slayer but instead we get a very good story about a troubled girl who believes in giants. Very similar to A Monster Calls, this is carried by a fantastic performance from 15 year old Madison Wolfe
Film that is supposedly based on a true story which Barbara Hershey are her family are harassed by a poltergeist. This contains the notorious scene where Hershey is raped by the entity
Strong and intelligent low-budget vampire film from Kevin J. Lindenmuth that plays with a fascinating ambiguity in the story of a man obsessed with a mystery woman who is making him kill
A new version of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic, multiple filmed lesbian vampire story. This retells the story in dreamy Victorian surroundings
A completely indescribable film about a young girl who befriends a hitman and asks him to protect her from an imaginary monster. The result falls somewhere between Leon/The Professional and a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film
A bizarre South Korean comedy about a businessman who is imprisoned by a possibly crazed man who insists that he is an alien. Things sit in an absurdly funny ambiguity. Later remade by Yorgos Lanthimos as Bugonia
Promising film about two people at a mine in the desert affected by what would appear to be the drill having dug all the way down to Hell. The film plays a corny idea seriously and sits in an interestingly ambiguous place about what is going on.
Albert Brooks film with Sharon Stone as a Greek muse. This suggests a Woody Allen whimsy crossed with something of Robert Altman’s The Player and its satire on Hollywood with real-life celebrities playing themselves
One of a number of films based on the most famous of all Japanese ghost stories. This is a adaptation made in the neo-realist style of the period that was released in two parts
Ghost story that does an effective job of generating dread and eerieness while also existing in a place that leaves you unsure whether it is all not just occurring inside the lead character’s fraying sanity
Adapted from a David Gerrold book, this is essentially the Adam Sandler adopts a kid film Big Daddy by way of K-PAX and its ambiguous alien visitor
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
Yorgos Lanthimos has become a director of acclaim in recent years. Here he remakes the Korean film Save the Green Planet where crazy conspiracy theorist Jesse Plemons abducts CEO Emma Stone insisting she is an alien
The seventh of the Child’s Play films with the killer doll Chucky. I never much cared for the original series but the modern films – those with Chucky’s name in the title – have become a lot wittier and playful, constantly making jokes back to the rest of the series
A Clive Barker adaptation taken from the name of his story collection. While not uninteresting, it emerges as a haunted house story that eschews genre cliches for an everyday approach and never quite delivers its punches
Low-budget film that absorbs you in an intensive headspace as family members visit a reclusive brother who claims to have The Devil locked in the cellar
An amiable venture into the light fantasy films that were popular during this era., Here angels come down and intervene to aid a baseball team on a losing streak
One of the better copies of Cat People, an Anglo-horror film with Barbara Shelley coming to believe that she is the inheritor of a family curse that causes her to turn into a big cat
Big serious film about reincarnation that places the arguments for into a courtroom setting. Director Robert Wise and a young Anthony Hopkins fail to do much with a talk-heavy script
An interestingly odd film where a videographer looking for a story investigates homeless man Joe Manganiello’s claims to being a superhero, which may or may not be true
An enigmatic film set in a future where aliens have invaded the Earth as a lone soldier is sent to crew a remote post and imagines he is seeing things
An obscure oddity in which elderly Jewish man Zero Mostel finds Harry Belafonte in his home insisting that he is an angel sent to help
Ambiguous ghost story in which Peter Gallagher sees and talks to his late wife Michelle Pfeiffer. Written by hit tv producer David E. Kelley (The Practice), this frequently disappears into its own self-congratulatory dialogue
A film from the early days of the Anglo-Horror cycle about the greedy relatives seeking a will being killed by a possibly supernatural cat
Strongly reminiscent of The Innocents, Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones plays a nanny arriving at an estate to tend a boy who claims to hear his dead mother’s voice in the stone walls.
M. Night Shyamalan delves into the crop circle phenomenon and makes an alien invasion film. At this point his films were predicated on big conceptual surprises and this comes out as a damp squib when we find out what is going on
Another version of Henry James’ classic psychological ghost story updated to the 1960s where the subtleties of the original are rendered in terms of crude effects
An interesting adaptation of the classic lesbian vampire story Carmilla. This modernises and relocates it to Middle America and plays the vampirism with a psychological ambiguity
Uneven New Zealand-made film where a girl meets a mystery man who claims that he is Jesus Christ
A couple on a getaway to an uninhabited island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef find the island may be haunted
Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, John Landis and George Miller came together to make this homage to tv’s The Twilight Zone. The episodes are variable but the standout is Miller’s Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
Indie film that seems a mix of A Field in England and The Picnic at Hanging Rock. The first half contains some very realistic scenes of people getting wasted on drugs but the second as characters set out along a path in the woods that leads to Hell proves frustratingly elusive
A peculiarity from Cannon Films that was a flop, a comedy in which a weird teenager believes he is an alien and suddenly attracts the attention of a bunch of UFO cultists
Chinese-made Wu Xia film – sort of a flying swordsman variant on A History of Violence. This comes on an impressive scale but also plays down the action element and leaves all the flying swordsman moves sitting on the fence as being possibly mundane
An enigmatic and baffling Canadian-made film about a man who goes to life in the woods where something (possibly imaginary) seems to be taunting him. This eventually leaves audiences confused what is happening
This received acclaim on the arthouse circuit. Tilda Swinton plays both the daughter and her mother who go to stay a hotel that may be haunted. Everything hovers in a state of ambiguity
Blumhouse film where a Westernised Indian girl rejects her traditional mother’s fears about her new boyfriend being a bad man reincarnated only for them to come true
This, the second film from Nacho Vigalondo, is a head-scratcher, Though it is ostensibly an alien invasion film, Vigalondo instead creates a comedy of errors
Blumhouse film that stars Topher Grace as an asylum detainee who is released to home detention and may or may not be hallucinating seeing figures inside the house
Adam Gierasch, known for his gore-drenched horror films like Autopsy and Night of the Demons, takes a change of direction into the haunted house genre
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
Uwe Boll seems to be improving. Here he has abandoned action for a character-driven drama about the appearance of an ambiguous stranger heralding the Biblical end of the world
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 Peter Straub adapted ghost story that sits in an ambiguous state about whether Mia Farrow is seeing her dead daughter or going mad. This comes influenced by Don’t Look Now
After some 150 other films, you have to wonder what another version of Hamlet has to offer. This Canadian adaptation does little other than updating the setting to the 1940s
In his second film as director, Oliver Stone ventures into the disembodied hand theme. An amazingly OTT Michael Caine plays a cartoonist who believes the hand he lost in an accident is exacting vengeance against his enemies
Robert Pattinson (before he was a recognised name) as a convalescing pilot during WWII who is haunted by demonic spiders in an adaptation of a book by occult writer Dennis Wheatley.
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
A blatant but far more pedestrian copy of Cat People in which a man has blackouts during which he suspects he turns into a catman who is wanted by police for a string of murders
This may be or may not be a werewolf film. What we have is a work that is long on mood and much ambiguity as a man hides in the English countryside from a crime he has conducted
From The Blair Witch Project co-director Daniel Myrick, a film about two paramedics abducted into a crazed UFO cult who believe their delivery is coming
Adrian Lyne became one of the most visually exciting directors of the 1980s. Here he makes an afterlife film that swings between moments of greatness and a script that seems very confused about what is happening
Horror director Brian Yuzna jumps aboard the alien abduction and impregnation theme that was popular at the time thanks to tv’s The X Files. All of Yuzna’s films have a fascination with sexual perversity so here the emphasis is placed on the impregnation
Saw series Darren Lynn Bousman downplays sadism in favour of a psychologically ambiguous film about a series of attacks possibly conducted by the Jersey Devil
This is a werewolf film with a difference. Everything comes with an ambiguity that is seen through the eyes of a young child trying to make sense of what is happening to her father
Kevin Spacey is a mysterious patient in a psychiatric institution who makes possibly true claims to be an alien. An uncredited ripoff of the far superior Man Facing Southeast
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
High hopes for this third film from Juan Carlos Fresnadillo emerge as no more than Boogeyman with shallow artistic pretensions and is a disappointingly middle of the road work
One of a series of films that borrow their titles from old 1950s films, this abandons any connection to the original end of the world film and concerns a boy who may be causing an alien monster to appear
Film about an escaped killer and teenagers stalked on a haunted stretch of road. A film that creates mystery about what is happening only to reach a frustrating non-resolution. Without the well-known name of Bruce Davison, this would only be low-budget amateur film
Paul Hogan became a huge international star with the Crocodile Dundee films. He next went on to appear in this oddity star as an aging ex-con who believes he is an angel
A John Hughes written remake of the classic Christmas film where a man (Richard Attenborough) claiming to be Santa ends up tried in court.
Justifiably obscure 1980s video release that has been intended as a copy of The Evil Dead concerning possible Viking berserker spirits amok in backwoods Utah. Cheap and routine on almost all counts
Another remake that nobody asked for. The 1990 film is reworked in a script that ditches almost all of the afterlife themes and instead seems to want to be a film about veterans addicted to reality-blurring drugs
Roger Christian was art director on Alien but will always be remembered as director of the notorious Battlefield Earth. Here he is stuck making a cheap, tatty and frequently incomprehensible copy of Alien about alien impregnation
Albert Pyun film that takes place entirely in a warehouse where a woman is taken prisoner by a man who may or may not be an alien. As with much of Pyun’s output from this period, this is cheap and eventually incoherent
Gigantic flop starring Will Smith and a reasonable cast line-up that has the most ridiculous screenplay ever written. Mostly a positive inspirational drama about grief but does definitely arrive at a bizarre fantastical ending