The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
In fantastic cinema, portals are doorways that lead to somewhere else. A portal need not be a literal doorway – it can be a gate, a window, a cave, a hole in the ground, a Time or Space Warp, or else a stargate, even a cupboard as in the Narnia films. Stories are rarely about the portal in itself but almost always about the adventure that can be found on the other side. In horror films, they can be doorways that let something else into this world.
Often portals are hidden and the key to open them or the map to their whereabouts is something that is greatly sought. Or else they can simply be discovered forgotten or unnoticed amid some corner of the everyday.
Unique anthology that offers 26 episodes from different genre directors, each ending with a death. The episodes vary wildly in quality and approach but a sufficient number ignore all good taste and/or travel waaaay across taboo lines
The Asylum’s mockbuster answer to the Tom Cruise film Edge of Tomorrow, which has very little to do with it other than both featuring an alien invasion. A film created with more ambition than budget to convey it
One of the earliest films from Charles Band. In the years following, Band went onto produce and occasionally direct a great many often enterprisingly cheap low-budget genre films – this is not one of them
A work of bizarre genius from stop-motion animator Jan Svankmajer. A surrealist take on Alice in Wonderland that is more Eraserhead than Lewis Carroll, filled with Svankmajer’s bizarre Claymation creatures
Following on from his reworking of The Wizard of Oz in Tin Man, this is a tv mini-series where Nick Willing rather fascinatingly reinterprets Alice in Wonderland in SF terms
Studio adaptation that freely mixes elements from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and features an all-star cast line-up, this works far better than the purists would have it
Disney’s animated adaptation is usually hated by Lewis Carroll purists for its free and easy treatment of the story but for everyone else comes with a splendidly demented visual absurdism
A fairly reasonable tv mini-series adaptation of Lewis Carroll – a version that excels in terms of design and in using The Jim Henson Workshop to bring the Wonderland creatures to life
Tim Burton takes on Lewis Carroll but Carroll gets lost beneath Burton doing his usual quirky eccentric thing and a plot that seems to want to turn Alice’s adventures into a modern epic fantasy
Obscure animated children’s movie adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that commits the sin of modernising and Americanizing Alice
Sequel to the 2010 Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland. This has even less in common with Lewis Carroll’s book sequel than its predecessor did – a total of two scenes. The sets and effects are just pretty eye candy
A live-action film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that conducts a passable run through of Lewis Carroll with the supporting characters populated by an all-star British cast
Bizarre family film in which Russian princess Anastasia travels through time to the present day and discovers mall culture
The Brothers Dowdle made the standout The Poughkeepsie Tapes but this is a sub-Da Vinci Code archaeological mystery that is little more than a Halloween haunted house attraction in the Paris catacombs
The culmination of one of the most ambitious cinematic exercises ever conducted, with Marvel weaving storylines through several films to finally merge here with flawless regard. The characters get far more depth than in all of their previous films
The Asylum’s response to Avengers: Age of Ultron. Not having their own superheroes, they have ingeniously created an adventure involving various fairytale princesses – a great idea that befalls miserable execution
Released at the same time as Avengers: Infinity War, this was a mockbuster from The Asylum involving a team-up between fairytale characters. The third in their Avengers Grimm series
Another animated Barbie film that leaves you quite certain that every problem in life can be solved with a positive upbeat ditty
An oddity among the animated Batman films. This seems less another Batman film – Bruce Wayne gets more screen time than Batman, for instance – than it does a homage to the 1970s martial arts film
The Asylum’s mockbuster take on Avatar: The Way of Water, which ingeniously exploits the fact that Saturn has a moon called Pandora. The rest is a low-budget body snatchers film
Excruciating sequel to The Beastmaster that transports Marc Singer’s Dar to contemporary L.A. The whole film is wrecked by an attitude that seems unable to take the proceedings seriously.
Hilariously eccentric Spike Jonze-Charlie Kaufman collaboration in which John Cusack finds an office building that has a portal that takes someone through into actor John Malkovich’s head. The wacky spins that the script places on the idea are ingenious
One of the key films of cult Italian director Lucio Fulci, a gore-drenched but plotlessly incoherent mishmash about zombies emerging as the gates of Hell are opened
A highly ambitious film about a mysterious alien portal that appears in Earth orbit and the attempts to explore what is on the other side
Rodrigo Gudiño, editor of Rue Morgue magazine, directs a horror film with strong Lovecraftian overtones about a portal opened at a mysterious cabin in the woods
Fan parody/homage of H.P. Lovecraft that comes waist-deep in references and jokes. The film is an amateur effort made with a painful cheapness in some areas; nevertheless it is clear that the team are really into making it and their enthusiasm carries the film
An Irish horror film that generates undeniably mysterious atmosphere after a family move into a new house and the teenage daughter disappears after going down into the cellar
Hilariously bizarre film with people dealing with an entity that is man with a massive mouth that is intent on swallowing an army of identical little girls
Before the films, this was an earlier BBC tv mini-series version of the C.S. Lewis book, one of a series of four adaptations. This is faithful to the story but suffers from impoverished effects
The second of the BBC’s tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, the slightest of the works where the story is reduced to two half-hour episode
This was the third of the four BBC tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books. The tv versions treats the books with quite reasonable faithfulness but suffer from extremely cheap looking effects
This was the fourth and final, as well as the best of the BBC’s tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, which works well enough despite the impoverished production values
The second of the Narnia films. Director Andrew Adamson seems so intent on copying Peter Jackson that the film becomes all epic fantasy flourishes and battle scenes to the exclusion of all else – even much of C.S. Lewis’s book
The film adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s book sought to appeal to audiences for the Lord of the Rings films but between Lewis’s heavy-handed Christian allegories and Andrew Adamson’s inexperience as a director fails to fly
Another lacklustre entry in the banal Lord of the Rings Lite franchise from C.S. Lewis’s books, a plodding run of the mill fantasy adventure for the most part. The mediocre reception killed off interest in the series
The trailer tries to build this up as a venture into a fantasy world. In reality, all that the film is is a documenting of several of Cirque du Soleil’s acts connected by a thin-to-non-existent story
One of the key films in the cult of Lucio Fulci, a zombie film driven by a series of gore-drenched set-pieces. On the other hand, there is the complete lack of a plot holding everything together
The welcome return of stop-motion animator Henry Selick, the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and at his wildly imaginative and darkly menacing best in an adaptation of a book by Neil Gaiman
The underrated Victor Salva, director of Jeepers Creepers, takes on the deviltry and occult film where with his ability to conjure eerie jumps and outlandish images produces something original and out of this world
Filmmakers have struggled to bring Stephen King’s Dark Tower series to the screen for years. Under Hollywood’s No 1 worst screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, we get an utterly mangled version that has little resemblance to the books and yet makes little sense if you haven’t read them
Australian director Greg McLean has made an impressive name in recent years with the Wolf Creek films and Rogue. In his first US film, he delivers a disappointing and utterly generic haunted suburban house film
Would be quirky, surrealistic indie film with lovers on the run in Las Vegas. Quentin Tarantino appears as the spirit of chance from an interdimensional swimming pool
It is hard to find SF films that come with a bigger conceptual grasp. This has distinct overtones of 2001: Space Odyssey and Event Horizon about an expedition to Mars to investigate a mysterious black sphere – only to find that it offers a gateway to Heaven
Scott Derrickson acquits himself well taking on one of Marvel’s magician superhero. He replicates well the psychedelic esoterica that gained the comic book a cult following and Benedict Cumberbatch anchors the show perfectly
One among a handful of animated films based on Marvel Comics properties, this conducts a passable telling of the origin story of the Sorcerer Supreme
Doctor Strange was one of the better MCU films. Here Sam Raimi takes over from Scott Derrickson in the director’s chair. The sequel readily delves into multiverse themes
Welsh director Caradog James impressed with his previous film The Machine. Here he makes a horror film concerning an urban legend about an old crone haunting those who disturb her but fails to do anything notable
Multi-director anthology about a series of mysterious portals that appear around the world, this creates a sense of something genuinely alien and otherworldly
A new film based on the role-playing game. The first film several years ago is poorly regarded and this is an attempt to reboot a film series but suffers from being handed to two comedy directors and their flip treatment
An adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft short story. While more faithful to the story than the earlier 1969 adaptation, the film is very cheaply made and collapses into the frequently ridiculous
The Dyatlov Pass Incident has gained a fascination as an unexplained mystery. Here Renny Harlin makes a Found Footage film that heads for full on conspiracy theory explanations
Syfy Channel disaster movie where Earth is suddenly transported into another Solar System and an improbable time travel is sought to reverse this
Stephen King adapted mini-series in which James Franco finds a mysterious door that leads back to 1960 and decides to set out to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy
A variant on the horror anthology film that manages to let the potential in its three stories fall through its hands. The sole note of distinction is that it is narrated by Rod Serling, creator of tv’s classic anthology series The Twilight Zone, who must’ve needed the money
A thorough embarrassment on Christopher Lee’s resume – an early Charles Band film in which Lee is a stranded alien inhabiting the cloned body of priest in a convent of nuns
A homemade New Zealand film that attempts to pull an ambitious time travel story that takes place in multiple era with temporal police intervening after a scientist invents a time portal
One of a spate of films of the 90s/00s that adapted animated tv series in live-action – in this case Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Here all we get is the animated characters emerging into the real world for slapstick inanity
Cultishly bizarre, deliberately offbeat and wacky film that was made as a vehicle for the band Oingo Boingo. More a film you admire for its determination to be strange than anything else
One of the best of the Amicus horror anthologies. All of the episodes are strong, well cast and well directed. The third episode offers a particularly funny comic take on the exorcism film
SF film with Stephen Moyer as a spaceship survivor who boards a ship with the crew mysteriously dead and becomes caught up in interplanetary politicking
Modest horror film of the 1980s where kids inadvertently open a demonic gateway. Like a juvenile version of Poltergeist this comes with the bonus of some fairly good effects
Low-budget film about a woman who inherits a British country estate to find someone has opened a portal to unleash entities. One of several low-budget films of late to appropriate Lovecraft’s name
University hazing in a haunted house goes wrong. This is a low-budget film that overspills with genre tropes to eventually arrive at an appealing ridiculousness
The first of the Hellraiser sequels. This lacks Clive Barker’s original dark obsessive vision but is worthwhile in its own right, expanding the scope of the story out into a magnificent vision of Hell
The film that put the name of Clive Barker on the map. A work of considerable low-budget imagination where Barker delves into forbidden pleasures and fuses the film with S&M imagery to come up with his most memorable creations of the Cenobites
A valiant attempt to remake Clive Barker’s glistening and brilliant original that only emerges as a better made version of one of the sequels. This has a disappointing tameness that never would have inspired a series of sequels
One of the less known films of Joe Dante. A 3D work that just predates Avatar, it is a YA horror story in the vein of The Goonies or Dante’s own Explorers crafted with care and an affection for the characters
The first sequel to House, this is largely unrelated to its predecessor and plays itself with a sense of humour to emerge as the superior film. Now a skull opens doorways in the house into different eras
The third of the trilogy of animated films from Arcana Studios based around the adventures of a young H.P. Lovecraft
Fantasy film from Hayao Miyazaki about a girl who becomes assistant to a mysterious magician is not quite in the same league as Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away but has the sublime beauty, eccentric characters and tender charms that all his work does
Blumhouse film where a woman’s return to her childhood home and awakens her imaginary companion now turned sinister
Uwe Boll strikes again! Sequel to his passable earlier epic fantasy, which is dragged down by a lack of action and the need to provide star Dolph Lundgren with a series of excrutiating witticims
I been defending the reputation of Uwe Boll (somewhat) through his last few films but this is an effort that feels as though nobody cared about what they were making. You’d have to go back to the Italian sword-and-sorcery films of the 1980s to find a more shoddy work of epic fantasy
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s gonzo, surreal comedies about a couple who buy a house that has a time portal in the basement
TV mini-series that adapts six less well known short stories by H.G. Wells into an anthology that winds in Wells as the central character. A couple of good stories, some that never quite hit the mark but mostly an okay effort
This could be Christopher Nolan’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he draws from in many respects, but where Kubrick was cold and oblique, this is a 2001 with a heart. A pleasure to see a film rooted in credible science and dealing with high concept SF
Directed by low-budget actress Marlene Mc’Cohen, this is both an alien invasion and a zombie apocalypse film. A film where those involved are making an effort but the skill gap falls well short of the basics, particularly in the story field and budget needed to make a film work
The action film has largely died off in the 2010s. This is very much a throwback with a set-up reminiscent of Predator about an action team fighting an alien in the jungle
Susanna Clarke kicks J.K. Rowling completely out of the ring. This BBC adaptation of her book concerning rival 19th century magicians is an epic plot and a beautifully staged costume drama, all written with a superb Austen-esque dryness of wit
Joe Cornish gained much buzz with Attack the Block. His follow-up film concerns a modern-day kid who inherits Excalibur where Cornish has fun translating elements of the Arthurian legends to the present-day
Modest Dutch film involving action between this and a parallel Earth that is being wrecked by an inter-dimensional portal … Much of the film is shot in First Person Shooter perspective, while the director provides a highly accomlished level of mass destruction CGI effects all by himself
Directorial outing from Freddy Krueger himself Robert Englund who makes the horror equivalent of a frat comedy where three guys rent a palatial home and throw a party as a portal to Hell opens in the basement
A cabin in the woods horror made with an ineptitude of execution on almost every level. This sets out to rip off The Evil Dead but becomes one shock effect after another that runs into an incomprehensible mass like a bad nightmare you can’t wake up from
Big screen revival of the children’s lost world tv series that is now turned into a loud and excruciating Will Ferrell vehicle that reduces the original into lowbrow farce. A majorly unfunny bomb on every level
A big flop upon release, this is one of the most underrated films in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s oeuvre, a sophisticated and witty meta-fiction that views the cinema screen as another dimension and travels inside to allow Arnold to wittily deflate himself and the action genre
An animated film based on both the Legion of Super-Heroes and Supergirl
The Disney live-action remake machine continues with this version of the hit 2002 animated film about a cuddly malevolent alien creature
Earlier less well known adaptation of the C.S. Lewis book made for tv. This is far more faithful to the original story than some of the other films but is badly hampered by crude and primitive animation that results in an exceedingly simplistic rendering of the story
Likeable children’s film about a boy befriending the monsters under his bed. Made with a gleefully malicious anarchy and some great creature effects
One of the best children’s films from Charles Band, an utterly bizarre effort about a world through a magic mirror ruled by talking ducks
Sequel to the delightfully madcap Magic in the Mirror set in a world of talking ducks
Palm Springs was one of the funniest and most delightful variants on the Groundhog Day timeloop theme. This is a French language remake that relocates the story to the Moroccan desert
This ended up being the lowest rated of all MCU films. Fannish hyperbole or the Batman & Robin of The MCU?
Live-action film based on the Mattel toy line and popular animated tv series, starring Dolph Lundgren as He-Man. Given a Cannon Films corner-cutting budget, it emerges as a cheesily absurd Flash Gordon/Conan the Barbarian knockoff
A live-action film based on the popular Minecraft videogame with Jack Black and Jason Momoa venturing into a brick-based otherworld
Resident Evil series director Paul W.S. Anderson and star Milla Jovovich return with an adaptation of another popular videogame series
Not as you might assume an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine but another cheap and tatty Syfy Channel production that grafts Wells’ Morlocks onto the formula for their typical monster movie
A Young Adult fantasy adaptation that hits the screens with a tired seen-it-all-before feeling – of a Harry Potter wannabe having been repackaged with the brooding teen romanticism of the Twilight series. Nothing about the film enthuses, while its director gives it an indifferent handling that fails to animate any of the material
A horror anthology with a mordant sense of humour with Clancy Brown doing a great turn as an octogenarian mortuary attendant who tells several stories of the bodies he has tended
Drawing very clear influence from Clive Barker and Saw, this is a delve down into perverse fetish, gateways to Hell and bizarre hallucinations. After watching the film through twice, I still remain confused to what it was all about