The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Alex Garland directed-written tv mini-series that grasps at big ideas about the meaning of it all concerning a computer that can track every particle and predict past and future. This emerges as the finest SF work of the last few years
Osgood Perkins emerges as a top director in this dark and extremely adult interpretation of the fairytale. There is nothing about this that can be viewed as a children’s tale any longer
The third film from Irish animator Tomm Moore, a beautiful Princess Mononoke-like tale of a girl’s friendship with persecuted werewolves in the forest
Mike Flanagan follows up the hit of The Haunting of Hill House with a mini-series that adapts another classic work The Turn of the Screw out into a similar kind of cross-generational ghost story. The results are extraordinary
Charlie Kaufman’s mind-bending, head-scratcher about road trips, weird dinner conversations and identity blurrings that become increasingly more surreal
A film receiving great acclaim at award season. Anthony Hopkins is a dementia-ridden senior and we experience his state of mind subjectively in a constantly shifting sense of what is real
After delays, Christopher Nolan’s unique time travel film is with us, a dense challenging work that plays like an intellectual version of a James Bond film
You might be inclined to dismiss on the basis of its title as some of lunatic fringe YouTube conspiracy video. But what we actually have is a strong and powerfully written alternate history mini-series based around the idea of Charles Lindbergh becoming US President in 1940 and the country’s subsequent slide into fascism
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.
This may be the most claustrophobic film ever made about a woman trapped inside a labyrinth of narrow tunnels and crawlspaces that house a series of death traps
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
James Franco’s younger brother Dave makes a very impressive directorial debut in a taut psycho-thriller of sharp adept twists about two couples whose weekend getaway is torn asunder by guilty secrets and a lurking psycho
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
An adaptation of the Olaf Stapledon novel that depicts the future evolution of humanity billions of years into the future. This defies every rule of good filmmaking and is still a spellbinding film
A film I went into with no expectation that quickly creates a fascinating future and offers some ingeniously original treatments of cloning and Virtual Reality themes
Beautifully understated film set in a world where a plague is causing people to lose their memories
Strong intelligent SF film where a cosmonaut returns from a space mission with an alien parasite attached. On one level, not too different to a host of Alien copies but the difference is all in the approach
Wonderfully Kafka-esque film about a man who takes a job laying cable for a new internet company only to find himself in a system of nightmare rules and regulations
Excellent British tv mini-series that tells the story of true-life serial killer Dennis Nilsen with David Tennant giving an electrifying performance in the title role
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a foundation stone for much of modern horror. This is a BBC mini-series retelling that deconstructs and widely expands on sections of the book to create something relentlessly modernistic, sometimes in ways that take you aback
Charming anime from Hayao Miyazaki’s son Goro about a young girl adopted into a witch’s strange household. The occasion where Studio Ghibli made the switch over to computer animation
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
The second film from Brandon Cronenberg, a fascinatingly original work about body-hopping assassins
Unexpectedly excellent film where an elderly Satanist couple abduct a pregnant woman in order to incarnate their grandson in her unborn child. This deflates the cliches in a series of alternately funny and wild twists
Standout Russian SF/horror that undeniably captures something of The Thing with scientists encountering a monster in the depths of a deep drilling project
BBC mini-series about two lovers on a killing spree that works through some great performance and engaging character arcs
May the Devil Take YouThe Evil Dead. Here Timo Tjajjanto makes a sequel and goes absolutely demented
Videogamers fight a demonic entity unleashed from a 1980s game. A film that is far more fun that you expect and comes loaded with videogaming in-jokes
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s bizarrely deadpan comedies in which two amiable idiots discover a fly that is about the size of a dog
Throwback to late 80s/early 90s films like The Abyss and Sphere with the crew of a sub-oceanic station fighting off a monster. Generic in plot terms bit directorially this is an intense and claustrophobic ride
A charming and delightful South Korean zombie film about the friendship that grows across the gap separating them between a nerd trapped in an apartment and a girl in the building opposite during a zombie outbreak
The first film to go into wide US release during Covid lockdown with Russell Crowe snapping and turning psycho after a road rage incident. Much better than the lukewarm reception it received, this is a quite reasonable variant on Duel
Essentially a US version of Attack the Block with vampires instead of aliens, this is a smart, fun effort that adapts the vampire film to local hood culture
Robert Rodriguez appears to have gotten the oversized non-event that was Alita: Battle Angel out of his system by making another of his seat of the pants home movies – this is less Spy Kids than Superhero Kids – and brings back one element Alita forgot, a sense of fun
A sweet and quite lovely anime where a girl befriends the boy she pines after being offered a mask that transforms her into a cat body – only to then have her own body stolen
The Asylum’s mockbuster version of Moonfall. This plays a ridiculous premise with an often ingenious and highly entertaining absurdity and actually proves a far more entertaining than its bigger budgeted model
A solid and well-made film that creates quite a reasonable tension as a family that live in the woods deal with a lurking wolf. What is going on sits in an interesting ambiguity.
Solidly effective Belgian film about a woman fleeing through the woods from a killer who wants to make snuff movies. One of several films about people hunted in the woods to come out around the same time
Russian dark fantasy and horror has emerged as one of the most exciting genres in recent years. This incredibly spooky little film is a Russian equivalent of The Blair Witch Project
Controversy-laden film that involves a variant on human bloodsports plot of The Most Dangerous Game but where liberals hunt conservatives. A film with a darkly satiric bite that sets out to offend people on either side of the political fence
An appealingly witty comedy where two losers set out to become vampire hunters with fumblingly inept results
Unexpectedly rather funny comedy that combines Mafia on a witness protection program and zombies
Film about a small Utah town facing a series of werewolf attacks that works surprisingly well due to a series of witty and well-rounded characterisations
Wu Xia film with exquisitely polished blend of CGI and visuals, this rather intriguingly operates as a blend of Wu Xia and murder mystery
Another multi-director horror anthology – in this case a quartet of horror stories from Bollywood directors that comes with one standout episode in particular
A documentary about Hugo Gernsback, the man who coined the term science-fiction and shaped the genre in its infancy
The director of The Troll Hunter returns with a stunningly shot film about a mystery man with godlike powers
Fine animated film that traces Superman’s early years – Superman: Year One if you like – as we see pieces of the mythos coming together
Suffering superhero fatigue from screens overwhelmed with Marvel and DC adaptations? This is one of the most original superhero treatments in some time, concerning a drug that give the user superpowers for five minutes only
A very different take on the Superman story that asks What if Superman had grown up in the Soviet Union rather than in the US and become a paragon of Communist virtue
A horror film about a pair of possessed jeans!
This has been conceived as the ultimate modern exploitation film featuring Nazi zombie piloting flying sharks. Think Iron Sky by way of Sharknado. The results are highly entertaining
A biopic based on the life of horror and mystery writer Shirley Jackson, best known as the author of the novel that became The Haunting/The Haunting of Hill House. Elisabeth Moss goes mad with entertaining regard
Troma launch into their parody of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, producing what may be their bad taste masterpiece to date
Chloe Grace Moretz stars in a quite reasonable WWII-set story about gremlins amok aboard a plane
Not the classic Irwin Allen bad movie but a work of disturbed psychology about a woman who develops an unhealthy obsession with feeding locusts blood and turning them into a killer swarm
Horror film about a downtrodden man tending a dementia-ridden mother who encounters a video friendship service where Wil Wheaton proves a cheery but increasingly disturbing new best friend
A beautiful slow burn of a film that avoids almost any labels one tries to apply. It could be a film about dementia, it starts out seeming like a work about a haunted house but refuses to adhere to any of the tropes and instead heads for a remarkable and unique place of its own
A documentary that charts the history of the horror anthology in considerable depth, including conducting a survey on the best anthologies and individual episodes
An animated film revival of the Mortal Kombat videogame franchise. This does a quite reasonable reworking of the basics, while leaving you blown away with the ultra-violent excesses of the action
TV mini-series that borrow much from The Wicker Man in a complex and fascinating story about the discovery of folk religion on a small island
Yeon Sang-ho makes a sequel to his international breakout zombie film hit of Train to Busan, appropriating the basics of Escape to New York to good ends
This must have been a marketing nightmare for Disney – a film about a kid who operates as a private detective along with his polar bear imaginary companion. The result has an oddball charm
The great and underrated Steven Kostanski makes another of his homages to the 1980s VHS era. This has a winning concept where kids befriend an intergalactic dark lord
The 22nd animated film from Pixar and also the least successful (being released only a week before theatrical chains closing down due to Coronavirus). This has an appealingly quirky and original concept not unakin to Bright that takes place in an alternate reality where magic creatures live in a world akin to our own
A really funny parody of Japanese monster movies. Sublimely silly nonsense
The best of the Welcome to Blumhouse films set among the rivalry of two sisters at a highly competitive music school where one gets an occult text allowing her an advantage
Modestly effective Iranian horror film where a married couple become trapped in a hotel of shifting realities. One of the few films that favourably compares to the mood of The Shining
In the best tradition of George Romero’s Martin, a kitchen sink vampire film focused around a family trying to protect a sickly sibling
Amusingly dark Christmas film where a kid hires a hitman to kill Santa after receiving a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking. Featuring Mel Gibson as a grumpy Santa struggling with modern economic realities
Fine little film about an invasion of dog-like alien robots and an outbreak of mass insanity that drives people to kill themselves, this does great things on next to nothing
A spinoff from Full Moon’s Puppetmaster film series, this stirs killer dolls, mad scientists, psychics and Nazi zombies together in an undeniably entertaining mix
One of the better in the fad for Artificial Intelligence films we have had since the 2010s with Theo James trying to place his late wife’s consciousness into an android body
You don’t think the mix of cartoonishly over-the-top action and a Groundhog Day timeloop scenario would work but this proves your assumptions wrong in highly entertaining ways
Spiritedly entertaining vampire film, this transplants the basics of the genre to rural Northern Ireland with wry and highly amusing results
TV mini-series adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopian novel. Developed by Grant Morrison, this freely adapts the novel but does a strong and intelligent job of reimagining it in contemporary terms
Bollywood conducts a reasonable attempt to make its own equivalent of the zombie film in this mini-series about people at siege from undead British colonial soldiers awakened
This is a surprisingly good film that generates quite a degree of spooky eeriness concerning a child on the autism spectrum and the sinister entity inside his tablet that just wants to be his friend
The early 2020s saw some strong,d intelligent variations on body-hopping themes. This is one variant filled with a series of wildly disorienting spins that frequently jerk the carpet out as Toby Kebbell becomes possessed by an entity
Essentially Home Alone as a horror film where Lulu Wilson gives a standout performance as a child who fends off a home invasion by escaped criminals led by Kevin James in a surprisingly effective villainous turn
The sequel to DreamWorks’ animated prehistoric film. For a very low expectation effort – the modern animated sequel – this emerges as far more colourful and entertaining than one expects
An enigmatic and undeniably effective film about mysterious happenings where those who journey into a bay start to be affected in disturbing ways
Bryan Bertino has become a Must Watch director ever since The Strangers. Here he makes an uncanny slow burn film about a family gathered to tend a dying father as something evil waits to claim his soul
This revival of the classic children’s character who can speak to animals took a critical battering but I kind of liked it. It has a completely madcap slapstick tone and more crucially returns to the stories and banishes any bad memory of Eddie Murphy
South Korean-made anime that takes a dive into horror grotesquerie in the story of a beauty product that offers to reshape flesh and a girl who becomes obsessed with it
The Ghost Story is a genre has felt overused and its clichés churned to a point of exhaustion. All of that said, this Swedish film delivers the goods and conjures an extremely spooky mood
An interesting slow burn film about an ex-soldier who accepts a job as a handyman with a woman and her ailing mother that soon heads off in some very strange directions
This highly charged work about race issues received a very mixed critical reception but I liked it for its clever M. Night Shyamalan-esque twistiness that messes with storytelling convention
After the genuinely terrible Deep Blue Sea 2, all it took to turn the Deep Blue Sea series into something halfway watchable was a better director
The first A Quiet Place was No 1 on this site’s Best of 2018 list. John Krasinski still pulls off great set-pieces a second time but reveals the pitfalls of trying to extrude a premise to make a sequel
Well constructed thriller where a wheelchair-confined teenager discovers that her mother is up to sinister purpose and attempts to escape despite her lack of mobility
Rebecca Hall gives a standout performance in an eerie ghost story about a woman possibly haunted and discovering disturbing things in the aftermath of her husband’s death
After a disastrous fan reception of its initial trailer, the film of the videogame arrives on screen. The surprise is that for such a zero expectation film and one that defies the engagement of any of your braincells it is as much fun as it is.
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
Fascinating film that conjures something of Primer in which a scientist creates a machine that splits his personality into ten parts
George Clooney starred in Gravity and now directs/stars in his own scientifically grounded space film about the last man trying to communicate with a surviving space mission following a catastrophe event on Earth
Film about a psychiatrist dealing with a boy who appears to be able to cause things to happen. All before things get really weird
Director Charlie Steeds creates a modest film set in 19th Century England about people at an inn as it comes under attack by werewolves
Director Benh Zeitlin made an extraordinary debut with Beasts of the Southern Wild. In his follow-up, he does striking things in making a modernised Peter Pan and transplanting the story to Louisiana
A visually extraordinary True Crime film based on the story of a Spanish woman who may or may not have abducted and killed a string of children in the 1910s