The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Troglodytes are creatures that live underground. This can be in sewers, mines or cave systems. They can be prehistoric or degenerated humans, regular people that may have been trapped by cave-ins, or another entire species. They have frequently have developed an entire culture in the underground, or else are feral creatures. They commonly depicted as blind, having lost the capacity for sight after living in darkness.
There have been a number of films set in the Centre of the Earth and Underground featuring explorers encountering troglodytes. In other cases, the troglodytes will inhabit underground railways or live in the sewers.
When Rodney Ascher’s incredibly uncanny documentary The Nightmare came out, I predicted sleep paralysis would become a new theme for horror. This starts as a sleep paralysis film but veers off to become something else
This is like a Western version of The Hills Have Eyes. Exceptionally written – slow, sombre and character-driven, containing one of Kurt Russell’s best performances, before emerging into a brutal horror survival story
One of the original troglodyte films about creatures lurking underground that was the template for films like The Descent. Well-made as 1980s horror films go but it takes forever before the main action kicks in
From Laika, a stop-motion animated work about misunderstood creatures who wear boxes as shells and are perceived as monsters by polite society. An enormous degree of creativity has gone into this
This big-budget film came out the same year as The Descent and is a very similar work about a cast of name explorers in a vast network of underground caves being hunted by monsters
This has the fascinatingly original idea of setting a horror film inside the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The location is unique and the film generates a fair and reasonable tension
A tense and well sustained horror with Franka Potente trapped in the London Underground after hours and menaced by a deformed creature that lurks in the tunnels
Film about cannibalistic survivors of a cave-in who lurk in the tunnels beneath the London Underground, this has gained a reasonable cult following over the years
Film about an all-girl caving expedition encountering underground dwelling monsters. This made the name of Neil Marshall who ratchets up a degree of gripping seat-edge tension that far exceeds any other film in recent memory
Neil Marshall’s The Descent was a ferociously effective horror film that proved a sleeper success. This is an unnecessary sequel that only offers up a limited variation on the same jumps
Dan O’Bannon scripted film that is uncreditedly based on an H.P. Lovecraft story about family horrors and creatures lurking beneath the graveyard. Aka Bleeders
Solid effort about two girls who venture into a storage facility only to unleash a creature. Filled with reasonable and effective tensions, not to mention a surprise mid-film twist that makes it into something else
Genuinely mind-screwing effort from Leos Carax. Imagine a version of Cosmopolis as hijacked by Alejandro Jodorowsky – a series of surreal vignettes that arrives at a major “huh?” ending
Found Footage film involving something (it is never clear) stalking people around disused cellars. Direction consists of a handheld camera vaguely waved in the direction of what is happening
About the ninth film version of Jules Verne’s desert island survival story. This doesn’t add the giant animals/insects other versions do, although we still get a number of wild sf elements the original book never had. Problem though is that the film never adds enough to make proceedings very interesting
Likeable animated fantasy made for young children
This adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic novel was one of the best films from 1950s SF producer/director George Pal. The time travel is depicted with considerable wondrousness and standout effects for the era
Largely forgotten adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel made for tv. While other versions place the story in Victorian England, this has been Americanised – where the time traveller is a weapons designer and journeys back to the Wild West. What kills the film is a painful cheapness
Remake of the classic H.G. Wells novel that comes with the novelty of being directed by Wells’s great-grandson. More disappointingly it prefers to merely remake the 1960 film rather than return to the book
Directors Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon Ho make an anthology of strange and surreal tales that take place in Tokyo
Construed as a Found Footage version of The Descent or perhaps more so of Creep about a camera crew venturing into the tunnels beneath Sydney, Australia, this follows where others have gone before and fails to produce much in the way of jolts