The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Vigilantes refers to people who enact justice by extra-judicial means. Police and the judicial system (irrespective of whether one agrees with the rightness of their methods or whether a system is corrupt) are the designated enforcers of the law in any given society – for which see Law Enforcement in Fantastic Cinema.
Vigilantes are private individuals or groups that enact a personal sense of justice according to their own moral code. Police will usually arrest a suspect based on evidence that determines their guilt, while a vigilante will in many cases have no concern for evidence other than their own suspicions; where police will try a suspect in a court and send them to jail, a vigilante may well simply execute them. There is the frequent sense in many of these films that the justice system has become too liberal or inefficient and there is a need for people to right wrongs by their own hand.
The vigilante film took off with the Charles Bronson hit Death Wish (1974), which led to a number of sequels and imitators. The vigilante film has largely remained in the province of the Action Film where a vigilante is seen as a tough, individualistic hero who operates by their own sense of right and wrong. One noted variant was Day of the Woman/I Spit on Your Grave (1978), which gave birth to the Rape Revenge film in which a raped woman goes on a bloody spree of Revenge against those responsible.
The Superhero Film also sits with one foot inside the vigilante film given that most superheroes operate without the sanction of any law enforcement agency. Many of the Batman films from Batman (1989) onwards paint him as a grim vigilante. This was something that gained its strongest iteration with the various films and tv series based on Marvel’s ultra-violent The Punisher.
Sequel to the hit multi-director anthology has a less high-profile line-up of directors, nor hits the astonishingly perverse heights of its predecessor. As always some entries never do much but the film finds its stride in the last few episodes
Lush, beautifully produced version of the Agatha Christie murder mystery from the BBC to celebrate Christie’s 125th anniversary. The story is a chamber mystery with guests in an isolated house being bumped off – sort of Big Brother with dead bodies
Uwe Boll makes a big issue film about the subprime mortgage crisis. The film is packed by Boll with messages but comes down to being a variant on Death Wish with its blue-collar hero on a shooting rampage against bankers
Tim Burton borrows from the dark brooding graphic novels of the era and gives us a beautiful, stunningly designed film that digs deep into the psychological recesses of the masks and funny faces
The first of a two-part animated adaptation of the classic graphic novel ever written. The film lacks the same impact because, firstly, it is an incomplete story, and secondly, Frank Miller’s ideas have now become so much part of the modern Batman
The second of the two-part animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s classic graphic novel. The film is staged as a series of epic confrontations between iconic DC characters and written with a dark bite to emerge much more satisfying than the first part
It took DC Comics the better part of a decade to catch up with the massive success Marvel Comics are having on screen in crossing their characters over. Zack Snyder comes to the party offering up THE biggest headline double-bill in superherodom
Israeli film about a parent who abducts and tortures a man they believe responsible for killing their child. This proves immensely entertaining with its whiplash plot reversals and hilarious pepperings of black humour
Canadian horror comedy that feels like a warmed-over rehash of Oliver Stone’s The Hand. A film made in wilful bad taste that feels like it came along twenty years too late for the mid-80s heyday of Troma
From the generic title, this seems no more than another film about a girl seeking revenge for years of captivity a la I Spit on Your Grave. On the other hand, things are quickly turned on their head in unexpected ways
Not to be confused with Robin of Batman fame, this is an indie film about a teenage vigilante. Not always the most accessible film but eventually works in a quietly effective way
Neil Jordan teams up with action producer Joel Silver to make a vigilante film where Jodie Foster starts toting a gun against thugs on the streets after the murder of her fiancé
Uwe Boll makes a return to filmmaking. The side of Boll that most people never appreciated was him angry at social issues. With a charismatic Armie Hammer in the lead, Boll gets angry about the European refugee crisis
Japanese director Shusuke Kaneko turns his attention to the pyrokinesis theme. Thanks to Kaneko’s expertise with effects, this becomes the best film on the firestarter theme yet
One of the better films to emerge from Full Moon, the story of a female demon who escapes to Earth and becomes a vigilante defender of the innocent. Rather well done with Angela Featherstone being particularly otherworldly
Frank De Felitta was mostly known for writing the novel that became Audrey Rose. He directs this tv movie where intellectually handicapped Larry Drake is killed by a lynch mob only to return from the dead as a scarecrow
Maybe the smartest and wittiest of the modern Marvel Comics adaptations, this takes every opportunity to deflate its own seriousness, not to mention frequently breaks the fourth wall with side-splitting results
A mockbuster copy of Death Wish that gains its novelty from the casting of Robert Kovacs, an actor who could be a dead ringer for the late Charles Bronson, who is naturally cast as a lone man with a gun cleaning up the streets of scumbags
Although the character names have been changed, this is based on the book sequel to Death Wish. Saw director James Wan goes for broke on the grim vigilantism and turns in an immensely satisfying work
The original vigilante film that spawned several sequels. This is crudely aimed at one’s red-blooded nature – to get one enraged at the lowlifes that would attack a man’s family and then cheer on seeing said lowlifes being blown away
Eli Roth’s remake of the classic Charles Bronson vigilante film is an ugly affair. In an era where school shooting are a weekly scourge in the US, do we really need another fantasy about one man becoming empowered and sorting things out with a gun?
The first of several sequels to the hit Charles Bronson vigilante film, the first under Cannon Films. While the first film had some interesting things to say, this mostly repeats the original while taking some turns to the nastily exploitative
This starts as a Death Wish-styled vigilante film of interesting ambiguities, before abruptly turning into a psycho film. The latter half generates some undeniable tension but the film feels it needed more than that
Alfonso Cuaron’s son Jonas makes a film about Mexican illegal immigrants being hunted by a white vigilante in a Most Dangerous Game scenario. The film came out just after Trump’s famous wall campaign speech
A bland Canadian police procedural with detective Alexandra Paul investigating a woman who is killing the men who bullied and harassed her
A film where four girls on a weekend getaway undergo a home invasion. It soon becomes apparent that this is a film homaging I Spit on Your Grave
Rather ridiculous action film where Jeff Speakman breaks into a prison to take revenge against a serial killer because he received too liberal a treatment from the justice system
Vigilante film with a cult reputation that was banned in places because of its ultra-violence. The film is a mix of Taxi Driver and Death Wish, mostly centred around a series of gory despatches
Not to be confused with The Final Girls that came out earlier this year, this is an extremely original work, neither quite slasher nor a vigilante film, yet turning the expectations of either on their heads
Black comedy in which Rod Steiger sets up a private prison to execute the guilty that get away. Halfway between a vigilante film and a gonzo comedy, this never settles on what it wants to be and only comes out a frenetic farce
Amid the plethora of zombie parodies and gonzo title mash-ups, this British comedy is appealing. Rather than grim battles for survival, this is down-to-earth in its humour and quite affecting by the end
A British version of Gran Torino featuring Michael Caine as an aging man who becomes fed up with youth crime in the neighbourhood and takes up arms to go all Charles Bronson on them
A clear winner for the Worst Film of 2016. Made by people who have given up any attempt to make a good film and have instead inserted a wilful inanity that is agonisingly unfunny
Another of the Grindhouse mock trailers gets it own film. This hits in with a wonderfully enthusiastic B movie energy and buckets of gore that remind of early Peter Jackson
An outrageously demented low-budget film guaranteed to offend nearly everybody. This takes inspiration from Hobo With a Shotgun with a Catholic priest wielding a gun seeking revenge
A wonderful little largely unknown film where the seniors in an apartment building due to be demolished group together to take revenge on the real estate developers
A variation on The Most Dangerous Game that comes with a nasty feminist agenda where women are hunted by men who feel a disappearing sense of entitlement
These I Spit on Your Grave films have considerable brutal effect. On the other hand, by the time of this second sequel to a remake, it does seem exploitative watching the heroine being abused again because the previous films made money
A British film about a teen who gets a cellphone embedded in his head and develops the ability to tap into cellular and internet traffic. The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes with an admirably gritty edge
A much better sequel that gives the characters a thorough workover while making clever play out of the contrasts of masked superhero and reality that ran through the first film
One of several films around the same time about wannabes without powers playing at being superheroes. Matthew Vaughn delivers a film that falls between witty deflation of and a celebration of nerdy fantasy
English language adaptation of an anime. The original was controversial for its copious sex and violence; here we get an anodyne action movie that is no more than The Punisher cast with a teenage girl
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
Vigilante film where Gerard Butler exacts revenge against the justice system while imprisoned in a jail cell. The dispatches become entertainingly improbable to the point that Butler almost becomes a Batman villain in all but name
Classic 1970s exploitation film about a new kid in high school who takes violent reprisals against bullies. The film comes with surprising levels of allegory.
There is an irresistible appeal to this film – Katie Holmes as a perfect, sweetly smiling Miss Manners dressed in Sunday Best who, in between correcting people’s manners and punctuation, is also a gun-toting vigilante in the best tradition of Charles Bronson
In his second film, Abel Ferrara turns the rape-revenge film on its head with a mute Zoe Tamerlis taking revenge on men after being raped
Outrageously whacked Hong Kong film that prefigures The Toxic Avenger in having a downtrodden hero jump into a pool of oil and emerge as an avenging superhero made of oil. Crudely made and pitched, the film’s novelty all lies in the bizarreness of its title character
British vigilante film that strains at issues of social relevance but only ends up parroting Death Wish cliches
Mel Gibson produced film where a Hollywood actor becomes fed up with paparazzi and begins eliminating them
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
Dark and gripping thriller from Denis Villeneuve about child abductions and a distraught parent who decides to torture a suspect to find their whereabouts.; Superbly well written thriller that raises some big contemporary issues about the legitimacy of torture. Both Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal give utterly convincing performances
Dolph Lundgren’s The Punisher is minus his trademark t-shirt and the film takes considerable liberties with the source material but this is a hugely entertaining action comic-book of a film with hilariously tongue-in-cheek dialogue
Amid the huge surge of Marvel Comics adaptations in the early 2000s, there came this version of The Punisher. Cast with Thomas Jane, the film is tepid and singularly lacking in the grim, dark avenging violence of the comic-book
The Punisher (2004) with Thomas Jane was a dud among the 2000s Marvel Comics adaptations. Here the role is recast with Ray Stevenson and director Lexi Alexander gets the dark, violent tone of the comic-book right
Another woman seeks vengeance film, sort of a female version of The Crow where the heroine wears PVC catsuit, fishnets and cat ears. A film made with a cod-grindhouse aesthetic hoping to get by on a certain trash movie sensibility
The title sounds like a cheesy 80s killer android film but this is actually about a comic-book artist who becomes a costumed vigilante. A strange mix of superhero with no powers, a splatter film and Death Wish
Underrated and quite brilliant film about a series of true-life Australian serial killings, this has an extraordinary dangerousness in the way it observes highly disturbing things with calm detachment
Fascinating documentary portrait of a series of individuals who dress up in costume and set out to be real-life superheroes
Possibly the best film made by Martin Scorsese. A disturbing vision of urban psychosis set in a morally festering New York City where the psycho, Robert De Niro’s title character who spills over with pent-up violence, actually becomes the hero of the show
Typical of the hard-boiled thrillers/action films Charles Bronson made during the 1980s for Cannon Films. This borrows the basics from Dirty Harry with Bronson as a cop required to bend the rules to stop a psycho
Film made by several Sam Raimi associates about a crazed cult with Raimi making an acting appearance as the cult’s leader. This wades in much gory enthusiasm
A couple abduct and torture a paedophile who killed their son. Hard to tell if this is an edgy out-there film or the most tasteless concept that Torture Porn cinema has tried so far. Alas, a banal tv movie handling kills any possibility of the former
A Found Footage film that gets political – in this case, featuring a group of American vigilantes torturing Mexican illegal immigrants. Not quite full on Torture Porn but holds a darkly barbed bite
Inspired by an autoccorrect error, this is deliberately ridiculous film about a priest who transforms into a dinosaur to fight evil, A film made with a full awareness of its own absurdities where the ineptitude of the shoestring effects adds to the charm.
Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore’s groundbreaking graphic novel is exceedingly faithful to the original. Often called unfilmable, Snyder articulates the material in ways that quite surprise
An animated adaptation of Alan Moore’s classic, genre defining comic-book, this is the most faithful treatment to date
The second part of DC Universe Animated Original Movies’ adaptation of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel, the most faithful screen adaptation yet
Becky was a modest effort with Lulu Wilson as a thirteen year-old violently fighting off home invaders. This is a sequel with her up against white supremacists