Midnight (2021)
A standout South Korean film about a deaf girl pursued through the streets by a serial killer
Children of the Corn (2020)
The Stephen King short story only runs to 16 pages and explains little. This is the eleventh filmspinoff to date (which runs at about one film per 1.4 pages of story). Unlike the other sequels, this claims to be an origin story
Spy Kids: Armageddon (2023)
Robert Rodriguez revisits his juvenile spy capers franchise after a twelve year absence. Not perfect but it improves over the last couple of sequels
Cobweb (2023)
A horror film produced by Seth Rogen that gains some really creepy effect as a boy finds something is living in the walls of his home
Dark Nature (2022)
A horror film made by Canada’s indigenous Metis people that concerns a group of women on a therapeutic wilderness trek are stalked and attacked by a monster
Don’t Fuck in the Woods 2 (2022)
Don’t Fuck in the Woods was a reasonably smart slasher film that came with an attention-grabbing title. This is a sequel that introduces body-snatching parasites to the mix
The Dude in Me (2019)
A South Korean film where a tough gangster and a bullied teenager end up swapping bodies whereupon the gangster ends up transforming the teen’s life by employing gangland tactics in the school playground
Gentlemen Explorers (2013)
This advertises itself as the first live-action Steampunk film. What we get is like a Victorian version of The Librarians with two adventurers hunting mythical artifacts while armed with steam weapons
Speak No Evil (2022)
A darkly funny Danish film about a couple who accept an invite to visit another couple who seem to have no boundaries, before everything gets nasty
Significant Other (2022)
An alien body snatchers film conducted with a series of smart whiplash twists and turns – even surprisingly a sense of humour
Blue Beetle (2023)
The DC Comics superhero Blue Beetle, one of the Teen Titans, is given his own film. One of the more quickly forgettable entries among DC Comics’ attempts to compete with the MCU
The Boogeyman (2023)
British director Rob Savage made a great splash in the early 2020s with Host and Dashcam. Here he turns his attentions to the adaptation of a Stephen King short story
Chariot (2022)
A very strange surrealist film about the strange characters that populate a rundown hotel. Includes reincarnation, alien bug people and John Malkovich as a psychiatrist with red hair in a bow
The People (1972)
Quite magical Francis Ford Coppola produced film about a schoolteacher who discovers she had taken a position in a town of alien refugees
The Babysitter (2017)
McG has now become the new inheritor of the title of worst director currently at work in Hollywood, as amply evidenced in this ridiculous film starring Samara Weaving as a Satanist babysitter
Old People (2022)
German film in which the elderly abruptly turn and begin attacking the young en masse
Project Wolf Hunting (2022)
The most violent, brutal, blood-drenched films one has seen in recent memory, a South Korean entry about a monster loose aboard a prison ship
Barbie (2023)
Less a film than a phenomenon, there is something ironic about a doll that is accused of promoting negative body standards ending up leading a women’s movement. Moria has just one or two issues with this.
Talk to Me (2022)
An Australian film has been getting some great word of mouth, a teen horror that stands it head and shoulders above its contemporaries
Submersion of Japan (1973)
A thinking person’s disaster movie depicting Japan’s sinking into the ocean
Curse II: The Bite (1988)
A sequel entirely unrelated to The Curse only worth seeing for a series of entertaining entertainingly ridiculous effects where a man’s arm transforms into a mutant snake
The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968)
Film from Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale well ahead of its time in its prediction of a populace controlled by television
Devil’s Workshop (2022)
This comes with an intriguing premise in which a struggling actor consults a demonologist to prepare for a role and agrees to spend a weekend with her where she decides to exorcise him
Chupa (2023)
A directorial outing from Alfonso Cuaron’s son Jonas. This is essentially E.T. but with children befriended a cute baby chupacabra instead of a stranded alien
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)
One of a spate of recent films that adapt characters or sections from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this concerns the doomed ship voyage aboard which Dracula travels to England
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the pop culture phenomenon of the 1980s. They have not fared so well in the 2000s but this new animated film written by Seth Rogen is a promising start
Neon Maniacs (1986)
Very typical 1980s horror film steeped in an enthusiasm for the genre that makes a beeline for cheesy mutant monster effects
Dr Jekyll’s Dungeon of Death (1979)
Not a Jekyll and Hyde film but instead about Jekyll’s grandson who conducts a series of experiments in harnessing aggression. An almost sordid exploitation film
Malevil (1981)
An entry among the spate of early 1980s nuclear war films. This concerns the residents of a small French village who are sheltered in a wine cellar when the bomb drops and their efforts to survive after
The Cellar (2022)
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
Crater (2023)
A surprisingly better than expected film from the Disney Channel, a Coming of Age story set on The Moon about a group of kids who break out to go on a jaunt across the lunar surface
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
At age 80, Harrison Ford returns for what looks like being the last ever Indiana Jones film, which still has the spark of the good old adventure spirit
Beau is Afraid (2023)
Ari Aster’s third film had many audiences scratching their heads. It follows Joaquin Phoenix on an allegorical journey that becomes a dark comedy and an entirely surreal Freudian nightmare
The Last Thing Mary Saw (2021)
Strikingly directed film that conjures something of The VVitch in its depiction of the horrors present in a religiously oppressive household
4 Horsemen: Apocalypse (2022)
The Asylum build a disaster movie around the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who make amid volcanoes eruptions, locust swarms and other worldwide disasters
Age of Ice (2014)
Low-budget disaster movie from The Asylum where the Middle East is covered in a sudden Arctic conditions with the onset of a new Ice Age
Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer (2019)
Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the greatest of all directors, having made films like Solaris and Stalker. This is a documentary about his life and films made up of archival material
The Pink Cloud (2021)
Brazilian film that becomes an allegory for Covid lockdown as a toxic cloud forces people to remain indoors for years at a time
Unwelcome (2022)
Irish horror about a couple who inherit a house with faerie creatures at the end of the garden
Meg 2: The Trench (2023)
Sequel to the Jason Statham starring killer shark film. The surprise is seeing cult director Ben Wheatley deliberately making a big, dumb film
Viking (2022)
A sublimely funny comedy about a group in a habitat who have been selected to roleplay the astronauts on a Mars mission
Girl at the Window (2022)
From Mark Hartley, known for his documentaries about cult cinema, a film that borrows the premise of Disturbia where a teenage girl thinks her neighbour is a serial killer
Run Rabbit Run (2023)
Sarah Snook stars in an Australian ghost story in which her daughter seems to become possessed by the sister who went missing years ago
Hello Down There (1969)
Director Jack Arnold was one of the great voices of 1950s SF cinema. Here he turns to making a none-too-funny comedy set in an underwater habitat. Featuring a teenage Richard Dreyfuss
The Dyatlov Pass Incident (2013)
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
Moloch (2022)
Folk Horror about the discovery of a witch’s body in a bog, this is a slow burn film that falls together with great subtlety
Warriors of Future (2022)
One of the most intensive and exciting action films of recent with humanity engaged in a furious battle with plants and killer robots
Elemental (2023)
Pixar release that received uneven box-office and a critical drubbing. Despite being lumbered with a weak premise – talking elements! – it is not entirely unwatchable
Mad Heidi (2022)
The famous children’s character gets a sarcastic puncturing in this amusingly gonzo OTT exploitation take
Astronaut: The Last Push (2012)
Gravity presaged a big upsurge about scientifically realistic space films. Coming out only a few months before, this concerns a lone astronaut on a space mission to Europa that goes wrong
Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975)
Giallo film with an attention-grabbing title that proves more sensational than most of what happens in the film
Black As Night (2021)
One of the post-Twilight vampire films that have transplanted the basics into different locales – in this, a rundown inner-city New Orleans ghetto neighbourhood
Slayers (2022)
A group of social media influencers fall prey to a vampire and are required to call on the help of grizzled vampire hunter Thomas Jane
A Banquet (2021)
A fascinatingly enigmatic and beautifully made film where a girl is mysteriously affected by something that causes her to stop eating
Unhuman (2022)
From writers of several Saw films and The Collector, a film about teens under attack in the woods where it is unclear what is going on for most of the film
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
The animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse proved an unexpected success. This sequel ups the artistic quality of the original to something quite extraordinary
Enys Men (2022)
Fascinating film about a woman isolated on an island off the Cornish coast who is haunted by cryptic mystery figures, who are possibly all in her imagination, possibly not. A film that creates a fascinating enigma about what it is we are seeing
Francis Goes to the Races (1951)
The second in a surprisingly popular series of comedies about a talking mule, this involves Francis in a series of hijinks set around horse racing track
2020: Texas Gladiators (1983)
One of the numerous Mad Max imitators made in Italy. Directed by notorious adult director Joe D’Amato who pushes the material further than other entries
Omega Cop (1990)
A low-budget post-apocalyptic action film featuring the almost completely forgotten martial arts and (non)-actor Ron Marchini who must venture out into the ruined city to rescue three girls
The Whisperer in Darkness (2011)
An H.P. Lovecraft adaptation that makes exacting effort to get the mood and period setting right
Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2021)
Ana Lily Amirpour, director of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, returns with a film about a psychic girl and the eccentric grifters that accumulate around her
Justice League: Warworld (2023)
Another of the animated DC Comics films in which various of their regular characters find themselves incarnated in simulated combat arenas
Insidious: The Red Door (2023)
The fifth film in the Insidious series. This time Patrick Wilson returns to the franchise and takes the director’s chair, showing he has been taking some lessons from James Wan
Assassin (2023)
Another of the low-budget films Bruce Willis made before his retirement, this has a plot about body-hopping assassins that has surprising similarities to Possessor
Supersonic Man (1979)
A cheap Spanish-made copy of the first Christopher Reeve Superman film
Thor: God of Thunder (2022)
A low-budget mockbuster from The Asylum designed to jump aboard the bandwagon of Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder
Row 19 (2021)
Spooky Russian film about a haunted plane flight, this recalls something of The Twilight Zone’s famous Nightmare at 20,000 Feet episode
Side Effect (2020)
Another work of Russian dark fantasy where a man asks a witch for a spell to help his wife, only to get very different results than intended
The Door Into Summer (2021)
Robert Heinlein’s time travel novel gets a surprisingly faithful adaptation from Japan. This keeps the story’s double structure that tells one story and then with considerable conceptual dexterity reveals another hidden in the margins
The Black Spider (2022)
A standout Swiss-made film, an exceptionally well written work about a pact made with the devil by a mediaeval village that unleashes a plague of spiders and other curses upon them
The Little Mermaid (2023)
Disney’s original The Little Mermaid was an enormously fresh film. This is the inevitable live-action remake
They Cloned Tyrone (2023)
A wonderfully paranoid film where John Boyega discovers illicit mind control experiments being conducted on a ghetto neighbourhood and that he is a clone
Outpost III: Rise of the Spetsnaz (2013)
Outpost was a modestly effective Nazi zombie film. This was the second of two sequels, a prequel that goes back to depict the original Nazi experiments
Extracted (2012)
An undeniably imaginative SF film in which a scientist invents a device to view memory only to become trapped in someone else’s memories
Without Warning (1994)
Made for the anniversary of the Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast, a tv movie that simulates a a live newscast as alien craft arrive around the world
Long Story Short (2021)
Comedy in which Rafe Spall finds he is moving ahead through his life one year at a time every few minutes
The Outwaters (2022)
An ultra cryptic Found Footage film about mysterious happenings in the desert
The Flash (2023)
Despite a poor box-office performance and a troubled production behind the scenes, it is a surprise what a good film this is, easily outstripping the last half-dozen MCU films put together
Bird Box: Barcelona (2023)
Bird Box was a hit on Netflix and this is a sequel. The talented Pastor Brothers take the basics of the original and actually make a much better film out of them filled with fine tension
The Evil Next Door (2020)
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
Dead Rising: Watchtower (2015)
Dead Rising was another zombie survival horror videogame from the creators of Resident Evil. Although nowhere in the stratosphere of the Milla Jovovich films, this was the first of two films based on the game
Detention of the Dead (2012)
Another entry in the zombie comedy field, this is essentially a retread of The Breakfast Club but with the addition of zombies
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable – Chapter 1 (2017)
Cinematic madman Takashi Miike takes on a live-action adaptation of one of Japan’s longest running mangas
Dinosaur Hotel (2021)
A head-scratching oddity from the people behind Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey in which people enter into a reality tv show where they are hunted by dinosaurs within the confines of a hotel
R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned (2022)
A sequel to R.I.P.D. that tells an origin story of how the sheriff character played by Jeff Bridges in the original became an afterlife enforcement officer
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)
The seventh of the live-action Transformers films, the second made after Michael Bay stepped down from the director’s chair
Asteroid City (2023)
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
How I Became a Super-Hero (2020)
The title suggests either a comedic take on the superhero film or a teen film about a kid discovering superpowers. The least thing you expect this to be is a French police thriller about a unit investigating super-powered crimes
The Machine Girl (2008)
Another highly entertaining entry in the Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film about a schoolgirl who seeks revenge with her arm stump replaced by a Gatling gun
Dick Tracy (1937)
This is a standout serial based on the famous comic-book detective, featuring some of the best of all serial cliffhangers and action set-pieces, not to mention wonderfully creative super-science inventions
Robotapocalypse (2021)
Rather entertaining film from The Asylum about the machine revolution that overspills with madcap technological invention
Warhunt (2022)
A supernatural variant on Overlord where G.I.’s during WWII enter the Black Forest and encounter something supernatural
Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 (2023)
Third of the Guardians of the Galaxy films, this successfully recaptures the nature of the goofy ensemble comedy caper that made the first film such a winner but seemed to be missing in the second
The Ritual Killer (2023)
A film that stands much in the shadow of Se7en and the serial killer thriller with Morgan Freeman tracking a ritual African killer
Rampo (1994)
Beautifully made arthouse film about the real-life Japanese horror writer who becomes wound up in in enigmatic meta-fiction with his own creation
Camp Blood (2000)
The first in a surprisingly prolific series of slasher films, which has produced some fourteen sequels at current count. Made on a micro-budget, this vigorously homages the 1980s basics
Shrooms (2007)
A party go searching for magic mushrooms in rural Ireland. In between assorted drug hallucinations, someone or thing begins slaughtering the group
The Fall of Usher (2021)
Not an adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story but a film about a man in a troubled state of mind that comes filled with numerous Poe references
Deus (2022)
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