Imaginary (2024)
Blumhouse film where a woman’s return to her childhood home and awakens her imaginary companion now turned sinister
Status Update (2018)
Light fantasy comedy in which a teenager gets a magical cellphone that causes whatever he types into his status update to come true
Hellphone (2007)
A French film about a teenager who buys a demonic cellphone and is able to use it to enact comeuppances against the people in his life. A 976-Evil for the cellular era
Cosmic Voyage (1936)
An early Soviet-made film that does an extraordinary job in depicting the launch of a rocket to The Moon. Fascinating to see in terms of its incredible ambition and the things it gets right
The Undead (1957)
An early Roger Corman film that stirs a fascinating mix of elements involving hypnotic regression, witchery, time travel and appearances from The Devil
Tales of the Uncanny: The Ultimate Survey of Anthology Horror (2020)
A documentary that charts the history of the horror anthology in considerable depth, including conducting a survey on the best anthologies and individual episodes
Diabolik Chi Sei? (2023)
The third of the new series of films from the cult Italian comic-book about a masked super-thief, this offers a Diabolik origin story
Kill Her Goats (2023)
You could maybe coin the term Folk Slasher for this low-budget film where girls are pursued by chainsaw wielding figures in goat-headed masks
Dario Argento Panico (2023)
A documentary that interviews Dario Argento, now in his early eighties, along with his family and those around him, where he discusses his life, films and career
Kill and Kill Again (1981)
A martial arts film where karate champion James Ryan must reunite the old gang to take on a super-villain with a mind control drug
Mysterious Island (1951)
A serial adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic desert island survival story, which adds invading aliens from Mercury to the mix
Plurality (2021)
Taiwanese film in which multiple personalities are implanted into a prisoner’s body, one of which is a serial killer, in an effort to find a missing child
Little Bone Lodge (2023)
A thriller in which two brothers fleeing police take refuge at a farmhouse where it becomes increasingly apparent that there are dark secrets
The Price We Pay (2022)
This has the flavour of From Dusk Till Dawn, a getaway thriller that does a mid-film morph into full horror territory
Monsternado (2023)
This tries to go one up on Sharknado and offers a tornado made up of assorted animals and prehistoric life
Madame Web (2024)
Another of the films spun off from Sony’s hold on the Spider-Man copyright, this has been called the worst Marvel Comics superhero film ever
Damsel (2024)
A dragon fantasy where Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown plays the damsel who sets out to save herself. A fantasy film made for people who don’t like fantasy films
Viking Wolf (2022)
A Norwegian-made werewolf film where you have to admit the title Viking Wolf sets up some intriguing possibilities
Wolf Manor (2022)
A British werewolf film that takes place during the shooting of an old-fashioned Hammer-styled film
Stanley (1972)
From the 1970s Animals Attack genre, a blatant copy of Willard where a downtrodden man befriends rattlesnakes and uses them to take revenge
Dead Eyes of London (1961)
One of the fascinating German krimi films of the 1960s, regular police procedurals that were piled with so many weird elements they become works of the bizarre. This is adapted from a multiply filmed Edgar Wallace novel about a series of murders managed from an institute for the blind
Ghosts Can’t Do It (1989)
An erotic film starring Donald Trump – I kid you not! One of the legendarily awful Bo Derek films where she plays a widow who searches the world, guided by her late husband’s ghost, looking for a perfect body for him to reincarnate in
Methgator (2023)
Cocaine Bear proved a reasonable success. The Asylum’s response was to give us Methgator about a drug-addicted giant alligator
Cocaine Shark (2023)
Prolific Z-budget director Mark Polonia jumps aboard the bandwagon of Cocaine Bear and offers a film about a shark-human hybrid that is created by experimental cocaine
Spaceman (2024)
Adam Sandler plays a lone astronaut who befriends an alien. This falls somewhere between E.T. and Interstellar
The House (2022)
An anthology of stop-motion animated shorts set around the same house. Each episode is quite different but all three stories strike an admirably dark and absurdist tone and are beautifully made
Fertile Ground (2011)
Adam Gierasch, known for his gore-drenched horror like Autopsy and Night of the Demons, takes a change of direction into the haunted house genre
Night’s End (2022)
A film shot during Covid lockdown that creates a great sense of isolation with a man locked inside a possibly haunted apartment
The Karate Killers (1967)
One of the appealingly colourful theatrical films spun off from The Man from U.N.C.L.E., although surprisingly given the title this is not a martial arts film
The Mansion of Madness (1973)
An excellent adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether
From Hell to the Wild West (2017)
Western based around the idea of Jack the Ripper having relocated out West whereupon he becomes a standard slasher-styled maniac. Featuring Robert Kovacs, a dead ringer for Charles Bronson, as the hero
Living With Chucky (2022)
A documentary about the making of the Child’s Play/Chucky films, this becomes an oddly touching work about family connections
Poor Things (2023)
Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone conduct a revisionist take on the Frankenstein film. This ended up a critical favourite at most of the 2023 awards with Emma winning the show in an hilarious performance
Lisa Frankenstein (2024)
A modernised comedy take on the Frankenstein film with a script from Diablo Cody, this seems to hold much promise to it
Bunker (2022)
Film that draws on the basics of The Keep and takes place in a haunted bunker in the British-German trenches of the First World War as soldiers face something that preys on their fears
Fresh Meat (2012)
New Zealand comedy in which Temuera Morrison plays a modern-day Maori cannibal cultist. Everything is given a very broad playing
Shatter Dead (1994)
A film that deserves a cult reputation, this is possibly the most unique and original take on the zombie film I have ever come across
Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind (2022)
The third of the Mortal Kombat animated films
Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms (2021)
The second of the Mortal Kombat animated films
Attack of the Killer Chickens: The Movie! (2023)
Yes, a film about an invasion by space chickens, which are represented by hand puppets. Words fail me on this one. This is painful to watch. My Worst Film of 2023.
Landscape with Invisible Hand (2023)
A bizarrely funny deadpan satire about aliens that have invaded the Earth and turned humanity into an economic underclass
The Artifice Girl (2022)
One of the best of the recent spate of artificial intelligence films. A programmer creates an A.I. for the purpose of trapping sexual predators on the internet only to be faced with ethical questions about what he has created
Cross: Rise of the Villains (2019)
Third of the Cross films, a more fantastical variant on The Expendables, bringing 90s action actors back out of mothballs to form a team as they face various super-villains in present-day L.A.
Bleeding Steel (2017)
Jackie Chan starring action film that reads like an earthbound Star Wars with he up against a villain in black and his army of super-soldiers
The OctoGames (2022)
The South Korean tv series Squid Games with people forced to play deadly versions of children’s games was a surprise international hit on Netflix. This is the low-budget horror copycat
Dante’s Inferno (1911)
An extraordinary find, the first ever feature film, a depiction of Dante’s Inferno and a descent down to visit the damned in Hell conducted with an incredible ambition for the time the film was made
The Amusement Park (1975)
A recently rediscovered work that was sold as a lost George Romero film. Romero was hired to make a film about the plight of the elderly and creates a surreal allegorical work set around an amusement park
Blood (2022)
Brad Anderson, director of Session 9 and The Machinist, makes a great horror film with Michelle Monaghan as a mother trying to cope with her son’s sudden taste for blood
The Animal Kingdom (2023)
An award-winning and highly acclaimed French film set in a world that is affected by a series of mutations where people are transforming into animal hybrids
From Black (2023)
Strong and effective film about a grieving mother who is introduced to an occult ritual than can claimedly resurrect her dead son, a journey that takes her into very dark places
Knight of the Dead (2013)
A surprisingly good low-budget film that places zombie into the mediaeval period amid the Black Death
Ninjas vs Zombies (2008)
Likeable film made by fans about a ninja team formed to deal with a zombie onslaught
Lucky Bastard (2014)
A smart and boundary pushing Found Footage film in which a regular joe selected as an actor on a porn film set is pushed to a snapping point
Dogs (1977)
Another in the 1970s fad for Animals Attack films. This features David McCallum facing off against hordes of dogs that turn on humanity with killing intent
A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
The final film from the great Robert Altman set backstage at a radio variety show as an angel of death wanders through
We Need to Do Something (2021)
A horror film made as an allegory for Covid with a family trapped inside a bathroom without supplies as a mysterious catastrophe happens outside their door
I.S.S. (2023)
A film set aboard the International Space Station with the US and Russian crews are at one another’s throats as war between the two sides breaks out on Earth
No One Will Save You (2023)
A woman alone in a farmhouse fights off invading aliens. Undeniably, effective, this is an uncredited remake of the classic Twilight Zone episode The Invaders
Mutant Ghost Wargirl (2022)
A very different to the current SF boom in Chinese cinema at the moment, this is a Cyberpunk film about the construction of mutant fighters
Loveland (2022)
Modest and interesting Cyberpunk film that works as a melancholy future-set romance
Maid to Order (1987)
1980s light fantasy comedy where spoilt rich girl Ally Sheedy wakes up in a world where nobody recognises her and is forced to take a job as the maid
Schizoid (1980)
An early release from Cannon Films, a psycho film featuring a very weird Klaus Kinski as a sinister psychologist
Beauty Water (2020)
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
Play Dead (2022)
Bailee Madison takes a drug that fakes death and wakes up at the morgue – only to discover that coroner Jerry O’Connell is running an organ harvesting operation
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)
The sequel to the DCEU’s Aquaman reaches for epic effects spectacle, although the character of Aquaman undergoes a substantial shift and is now given more of a comedy playing
Hypersleep (2022)
A film of reality bending conceptual twists about a psychiatrist tending cryogenically frozen prisoners who then wakes to find he is one of the prisoners
Ms Cannibal Holocaust (2012)
An early film from Ron Bonk misleadingly sold with connection to the notorious Italian cannibal film, concerning the tenants of an apartment building under siege by a mysterious cult
The Brainiac (1962)
Bizarre Mexican film about a resurrected warlock who transforms into a bat creature to take retribution against the descendants of those who burned him at the stake
Nothing Underneath (1985)
A superior example of the giallo film. Not quite up with the works of Dario Argento, this still has considerable stylishness, along with a plot that borrows from Eyes of Laura Mars
Murder in an Etruscan Cemetery (1982)
A giallo film with occult overtones centred around the discovery of an Etruscan tomb. As a series of murders occur, the heroine may be the reincarnation of an ancient high priestess
The Atrocity Exhibition (1998)
Adaptation of the classic J.G. Ballard novel that deals with the surreal blurring and breakdown between media, architecture, celebrity and the protagonist’s disturbed state of mind
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part One (2024)
Crisis on Infinite Earths was one of the classic DC Comics titles of all time. This is an animated film adaptation
Wonka (2023)
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has become a cult classic embedded in the imagination. This offers a Willy Wonka origin story
Night Swim (2024)
A Blumhouse and James Wan co-production about a malevolent swimming pool
Just Another Pandora’s Box (2010)
Demented Jeffrey Lau comedy that seems to have no limits on how silly it is willing to be, while parodying just about every other film made around the same time
The Hybrids Family (2015)
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
Peter Cushing: In His Own Words (2019)
Peter Cushing is one of cornerstone figures in the Hammer Films story. This is documentary based on interviews he made towards the end of his life
Blasted (2022)
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
The Legend of Jack and Jill (2021)
From the people who made Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, a film where the nursery rhyme of Jack and Jill somehow morphs into a variant on The Hills Have Eyes
The Marvels (2023)
This ended up being the lowest rated of all MCU films. Fannish hyperbole or the Batman & Robin of The MCU?
Brooklyn 45 (2023)
A film of electrifying tensions set just after World War II where a group of friends gather in an apartment and hold a séance that in turn brings out what they did during the War
Re/Member (2022)
A Japanese-made variant on the oft-used Groundhog Day timeloop theme that pushes things well into horror movie territory
Premonition (2004)
Japanese horror film about a professor who receives newspaper headlines that predict deaths before they occur
The Gendarme and the Extra-Terrestrials (1979)
An entry in a popular series of French slapstick comedies with Louis de Funes as a comic gendarme. In this, the series sole genre entry, he goes up against alien visitors
Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (1994)
Pumpkinhead was one of the genuinely original monster movies of the 1980s. This was the first of several sequels
The Legacy of the Bones (2019)
The second of the films based on Dolores Redondo’s police procedurals, this heads into an admirably dark and perverse place with plenty of jolt twists
Slumber Party Massacre (2021)
The original feminist slasher film gets the remake treatment with interesting results
Dream Scenario (2023)
A film in which Nicolas Cage keeps appearing in other people’s dreams. This goes from an initial wild absurdism to something that becomes bitingly satiric
Bodies (2023)
A smart, intelligent tv mini-series that conducts a murder mystery that ranges between the 1890s and 2050s, before arriving at an ingenious and clever SF explanation
Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002)
John Barrowman fights a giant prehistoric shark in a film that gained a certain reputation as a Bad Movie
Jurassic Shark (2012)
A killer shark film that once had the distinction of being the lowest rated on the IMDB
Hell’s Ground (2007)
A Pakistani copy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Backwoods Brutality film, all served up with reasonable vigour. It is fascinating seeing the genre tropes translated between different cultures
The Shaft (2001)
The English-language remake of the Dutch film The Lift about a killer elevator. Starring a then unknown Naomi Watts in a role that would probably embarrass her now
Teen Titans Go! vs Teen Titans (2019)
Here the less-than-serious Teen Titans Go! conduct an Into the Spider-Verse-type crossover with their serious counterparts from the multiverse
Moon Man (2022)
Comedy from China about a man abandoned on the Moon, the last person left alive in the aftermath of the destruction of the Earth
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023)
The Hunger Games was one of the biggest franchise of the 2010s. Here a number of the key talents return to make a prequel to the events, telling a story from the early days of the Hunger Games
It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023)
The last few years have seen the slasher film conduct some odd conceptual crosshatches – this is a mash-up between a slasher film and It’s a Wonderful Life
Entrails of a Virgin (1986)
Welcome to the bizarre and decidedly politically incorrect world of the Japanese pinku film. Words fail me on this one, which concerns a demonic rapist that attacks a porn film shoot
Trilogy of Terror II (1996)
Sequel to the classic Karen Black-starring horror anthology tv movie with Lysette Anthony starring in a trio of horror tales
Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot (1976)
With the sensation of the Gimlin-Patterson film that supposedly depicted a Bigfoot, the 1970s gave us a spate of Bigfoot films. This was the most high-profile, a mockumentary about an expedition that sets out to find Sasquatch