The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The 2003 Freaky Friday was one of the better Disney remakes with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan giving inspired performances as mother and daughter who swap bodies. The two reunite for a sequel here
The film where Keanu Reeves plays an angel. Directed/written by and starring Aziz Ansari as a hapless gig worker who Keanu’s angel’s tries to help only to accidentally swap the lives of Ansari and tech bro Seth Rogen
A revival of the Leslie Nielsen starring Naked Gun films, which were a parody of the hard-boiled detective film. With Liam Neeson playing Nielsen’s son. Featuring a surprising degree of SF content
Follow-up to Ghostbusters: Afterlife, reuniting that film’s mix of new and classic cast in a plot that is often straining to find somewhere to include everyone
A modernised comedy take on the Frankenstein film with a script from Diablo Cody, this seems to hold much promise to it
Like a comedy version of The Purge, where a future California lottery awards the winner millions if they can avoid every other person trying to kill them
A comedy variant on android/A.I. themes where two people use robot doubles for romantic subterfuge only for the two androids to elope together
Very loosely based on a real-life incident, this is an Animals Attack film about a rampaging bear wired on cocaine and makes a play for darkly funny humour
Wes Anderson’s quirky individualistic films can be an acquired taste. This is set in a stunningly designed retro 1950s town as various oddball characters intersect in between the appearance of an alien visitor
A bizarrely funny deadpan satire about aliens that have invaded the Earth and turned humanity into an economic underclass
Likeable comedy variant on E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial in which senior citizen Ben Kingsley befriends an alien visitor after its UFO crashes in his backyard. Few films seem to be made with such an acute awareness of the issues of aging
Not another killer clown film as you might initially assume, but a really funny Irish comedy about a group of dysfunctional clowns in the aftermath of the collapse of civilisation
I was sold on this from the title. A droll Canadian (Quebec-made) vampire comedy about a vampire girl who cannot bring herself to kill and a suicidal teenager who becomes her willing victim
Eddie Murphy – one of the funniest talents of the 1980s – has been largely absent for much of the 2010s. He returns here with a Christmas comedy in which he is the recipient of a curse given to him by an evil Santa elf
Christopher Landon, director of Happy Death Day and Freaky, makes a comedy about a family who turn the ghost in their house into a viral sensation
The second attempt to spin a film off from the Disney theme park ride, this comes in a more serious tone than the prior Eddie Murphy film but still emerges as lightweight in terms of horror
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s hilariously gonzo comedies made up a series of deadpan surreal vignettes
Australian film that is a romantic comedy take on The Quiet Earth, the classic work about three people who awake in an entirely deserted world
A laidback slacker comedy where a man is befriended by the ghost of a school friend who proves annoyingly needy and won’t go away
Imagine A Christmas Carol retold as a bromance where Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present abandon hauntings and become besties
An appealingly eccentric indie comedy directed by and starring Noah Segan as a vampire who suddenly discovers he has fathered a kid
French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet of The City of Lost Children and Amelie fame returns with an appealingly eccentric, beautifully designed comedic take on the machine revolution
Rob Zombie conducts a big-screen remake of The Munsters and surprisingly enough makes his best film yet
Comedy from China about a man abandoned on the Moon, the last person left alive in the aftermath of the destruction of the Earth
Minus Adam Sandler this time, the Hotel Transylvania series trots out a fourth entry. Here in some search for novelty the monsters are turned back into humans
At contrast to all the serious films being made about A.I, and androids, this is a wonderfully charming and really quite eccentric comedy where a man builds a robot out of junk
Likeable but lightweight time travel film where Ryan Reynolds gains the aid of his twelve year-old self after travelling back in time to the present on a mission to save the future
Norwegian comedy where two friends who were a champion laser tag duo in their teens are now in adult life where they are forced to pair back up to fight off alien invaders
A sublimely funny comedy about a group in a habitat who have been selected to roleplay the astronauts on a Mars mission
A completely madcap gonzo comedy that all takes place without dialogue, the live-action equivalent of a Looney Tunes cartoon. Possibly the most unique and creative film I have seen in some time
Comedy in which Rafe Spall finds he is moving ahead through his life one year at a time every few minutes
We have had numerous films about asteroids and meteors about to strike the Earth. This is played as a comedy where a man buys his dream home only to find it is ground zero for an oncoming comet strike
Ryan Reynolds discovers he is a character inside a videogame. This has a conceptual ingenuity and originality and is the most fun and outrightly enjoyable mainstream film seen of recent
Eccentrically oddball comedy in which a man discovers that his strange roommate may be a comic-book super-villain
Occasionally amusing comedy where a group of fans set out to rescue the heroine’s unrequited crush from a house of vampires
A shot during the Covid lockdown film. An amiable comedy set on the last day of the world where Zoe Lister-Jones and her imaginary younger self Cailee Spaeny walk across L.A. to find closure with the people in her life
Undeniably amusing Irish comedy in which a drunken dimwit ends up being transformed into a vampire
Sequel to Ghostbusters that was far better received than the 2016 reboot, giving us a new generation of ghostbusters. This succeeded largely it would seem by playing the nostalgia card for all it can
Melissa McCarthy, along with Octavia Spencer as her best friend, is a comic screw-up who obtain superpowers
Variation on the Groundhog Day timeloop theme, this has two people trapped on the same day at a wedding. Of all the copies, this is a delight that has a really hilariously madcap creativity
A really funny parody of Japanese monster movies. Sublimely silly nonsense
The two time-travelling slackers are back after nearly thirty years and the film amusingly sees them having reached uneasy middle-age. But was the wait worth it?
Comedy that comes comes with a winning concept – clueless hipsters try to get away from their social media devices for a weekend only to find the Earth has been invaded by aliens
Comedy about a shipwrecked crew that are rescued by a German U-boat that is carrying a vampire on board
Witty and really hilarious film about a high school class where teens begin randomly exploding. With great performances and writing that is a delight to the ears
We have had some standout A.I. films in the last few years. This is comedy variant where Melissa McCarthy is befriended by an A.I. who adopts the voice of James Corden
An appealingly witty comedy where two losers set out to become vampire hunters with fumblingly inept results
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s bizarrely deadpan comedies in which two amiable idiots discover a fly that is about the size of a dog
A film about a teen whose face kills anyone who looks at him, this is a film that overspills with originality, quirkiness and a really dark sense of humour.
A sleeper awakes comedy where Seth Rogen falls into a vat of pickles in 1919 and is awakened in the present-day. A decided change of pace for Rogen who plays two lead roles throughout
A rather charming South Korean comedy about a family who try to exploit the commercial aspects of having a tame zombie
Enjoyable comedy where a scientist is visited by his older self travelled back in time to beg him not to invent the time machine he is about to create
Rather funny comedy about Satanists and a virginal pizza girl who is chased as their intended victim. This comes with a bizarrely akilter sense of humour that reminds of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours
The original Men in Black was a witty parody of alien coverup conspiracy paranoia; the sequels became slapstick films about pop-up aliens and hi-tech gadgets hidden behind everyday things. This offers a new cast line-up but little else that is new
A rather funny comedy about four misfit youths on a wilderness survival course in the Scottish Highlands who run afoul of human hunters and pagan sacrifice
A gender-swapped remake of What Women Want in which Taraji P. Henson gets the ability to read men’s thoughts. Henson displays no talent for comedy and this is a spectacularly unfunny film
Amiable comedy about an annoyingly intrusive artificially intelligent mobile assistant that wreaks havoc on its owner’s life
No a fan of the Hotel Transylvania films and their reduction of the Famous Monsters to slapstick yocks. This is exactly the same as the preceding films, no better, no worse and with only minute plotting difference
Light fantasy comedy in which a teenager gets a magical cellphone that causes whatever he types into his status update to come true
Aardman’s Claymation films have become universally loved. This, a prehistoric comedy like The Flintstones or The Croods mixed up with a sports film, follows the footsteps other films and is their slightest work so far
Rowan Atkinson is back in his third outing as the inept spy. Atkinson is a talented comic but everyone agrees that these Johnny English films, which are like less sophisticated versions of Peter Sellers’ Inspector Closeau, are the least of his comedy incarnations
A werewolf comedy that takes place on the set of a zombie film. Comes with much in the way of homage to An American Werewolf in London
There have been some very sophisticated time paradox films in recent years. At complete contrast, this is a comedy that has a great deal of fun with the premise of a guy and assorted temporal copies of himself running about
As with numerous examples in the zombie and killer shark film of recent, the idea has been to parody an existing title with the addition of a monster and a pun on the original’s title. Essentially what we have is a Scary Movie-like parody of the true-life rapper tale Straight Outta Compton but with the addition of a giant snake
Simon Pegg produces/stars in a comedy spoofing the British boarding school tradition – but with the addition of monsters running around
Tyler Perry is an accomplished impressionist but his two Halloween comedies appropriate elements of the horror film while having no interest in the genre. Here all the horror elements only serve to deliver a lecture on child rearing
The director of Tucker and Dale vs Evil returns with a comedy that spoofs The Omen about an average guy trying to step-parent the Anti-Christ child
Comedic variant on Groundhog Day where Marlon Wayans wakes up naked in an elevator on his wedding and is forced to repeat the same hour over and over as he tries to get to the church.
Lazer Team was an easy predictable comedy about four screw-ups that accidentally obtain parts of an alien power suit. This sequel is all the same gags on rinse and repeat.
A sequel to Stephen Chow’s Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons. Chow hands the director’s chair over to Tsui Hark, a legend of HK cinema, who leaps in with wildly fantastic regard. On the other hand, forced to also incorporate Chow’s slapstick results in a very silly film
Revival of the Hong Kong hopping vampire film phenomenon of the late 80s as personified by the Mr Vampire films. This lacks the slapstick silliness of the originals but settles in with a goofy nuttiness, getting some winning charms out of the romance between mortal and hopping vampire girl
Your mind struggles to process the premise of Nine Lives – where Kevin Spacey finds himself in the body of a cat. It seems a variation on the earlier Oh Heavenly Dog in which Chevy Chase was reincarnated as Benji. Some cute effects but what a lightweight effort for an actor of Spacey’s calibre
There was a lot of hate centred on this for recasting a classic with an all-girl cast. It emerges mostly likeably, no better, no worse on the whole, where the new ensemble make a solid showing
The most demented premise of the year – an animated film about the lives of the talking produce in a supermarket. This is crude, rude and guaranteed to offend (as might be expected from a Seth Rogen penned vehicle); it is also one of the funniest and cleverest films of the year
The Polish Brothers make some great Midwestern dramas but seem completely out of their depth trying to make a Farrelly Brothers-type comedy about a sex robot. This comes out like an embarrassingly unfunny variant on Weird Science
Stephen Chow has proven himself a comic genius in his directorial works of the 90s/00s. Unfortunately, as he has gained mainstream acclaim, his films have started to disappear under their big-budgets. This is sort of a version of Splash! by way of the fad for madcap Hong Kong slapstick
Pee-Wee Herman is a deliberately annoying character that is either adored or intensely loathed by audiences. This third film closely follows the structure of the first film with Pee-Wee in a series of nonsense adventures on a cross-country journey
A miracle of $1.98 no-budget film-making, this Bigfoot comedy shouts out its sheer good nature from every pore. It is a film that wears its shortcomings with pride, while the director and cast have a great comic timing
Comedy about a cop from the future who joins the present-day force where he is partnered with a cop thawed out from the 1960s. This is a premise that should have been funny but emerges as something like Sledge Hammer cast with the characters from Dumb and Dumber
I don’t dislike the Tyler Perry film – the performances are skillfully accomplished. Here however Perry attempts to make a Halloween comedy while displaying almost zero interest in any of the genre elements
Kevin Smith’s follow-up to Tusk slides off the cliff somewhere between Johnny Depp’s incredibly silly performance, a nemesis you can’t take seriously and what largely becomes a vanity exercise in nepotism – Smith and Depp creating a vehicle to highlight their daughters
While the big screen is being deluged with superheroes, here is an amusing spoof from the UK. The film takes a mockumentary approach in following everyday Bob, who is rather of a twit, as he goes on a date and his frustrations id dealing with bureaucracy required to go into action
This has a witty idea – a parody of a soap opera combined with a slasher film. This is amusing, but the rest of the film consists of frenzied caricatures and a dearth of laugh out loud moments
This rather appealingly plays out as a sex-reversed version of Shaun of the Dead with Maria Thayer as a slightly clueless woman who ends up in the midst of the zombie apocalypse with the guy she spent the night with. Thayer gives a winning performance and the humour is smart and witty
Comedy that resembles something of tv’s The Office where Fran Kranz discovers that management is turning his co-workers into vampires as an efficiency measure
I had little enthusiasm for this, I tend to like my classic monsters serious rather than defanged – these Hotel Transylvania films are so watered down, Dracula doesn’t even get to drink blood
Why we needed a sequel to Hot Tub Time Machine is a big question. Essentially, Back to the Future Part II meets The Hangover, all this does is wind the original’s amiable coarseness up by a factor of ten
Japanese comedy with various humans and aliens interacting around an interstellar burger restaurant on the road from Earth, although none of it manages to be that funny
Whether you loved or hated the crude and raucous, un-PC stoner/fratboy humour of Ted, Seth MacFarlane is back with exactly the same mix here. This manages to be offensive in an amiably inoffensive, even occasionally quite funny, way
From the director of Hellraiser II, an unfunny monster comedy that plays out like it is trying to be a live-action version of the Hotel Transylvania films
Rather funny comedy about the making of a disaster-laden low-budget horror film where the filmmaking style depicted makes Ed Wood’s films seem like works of art
An excruciating fan-made parody of The Hobbit films filled with amateur actors delivering performances in ridiculous falsettos. What makes this mind-boggling is its realisation it can’t compete with Peter Jackson on effects, resulting in things like Smaug played by a drag queen
A film from the Austin, TX based comedy collective Rooster Teeth about four screw-ups who pick up power suit items from an alien spaceship only to find they are to defend Earth in a tournament. An idea more suited to a kid’s film that gets its laughs from broad, easy targets
This sets out to parody the Lord of the Rings fantasy. Or at least you think that is what it is trying to do. All suspension of disbelief is killed by a series of grating and anachronistic quips
This has a certain cuteness to its premise – of seeing a bunch of classic videogames brought to life. Beyond that, Pixels is a one gimmick film that suffers from two people whose films I hate – the perpetually banal Chris Columbus and the irritatingly smug presence of Adam Sandler
Woody Allen’s 45th film and one of his slighter – the story about rationalist Colin Firth debunking medium Emma Stone but becoming convinced of her powers amid a romance. This feels like a creaky 1930s drawing room drama, while the two leads fail to generate any sparks
Hands down, this is the best vampire comedy ever made. An incredibly witty effort that contrasts the cliches of the genre with the mundane business of a group of vampires flatting together in New Zealand. A film that comes with sly deadpan gags packed into the corner of every frame
In the vein of the various Scary Movies parodies, this offers the mildly amusing idea of a mash-up between The Hunger Games and The Hangover where the characters are forced into a death match against characters from other media franchises
The Muppets were successfully revived in The Muppets; this is a follow-up. While amiable and far snappier than the desultory 1990s Muppet films, this never truly hits any genuine laughs, leaving us with a feeling that the creative team used their best ammunition first time around
Adam Sandler does more acting than usual in the story of a shoemaker who transforms into the wearer whenever he puts on a pair of shoes. A throwaway premise that attracts a surprisingly high-profile cast