The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Boogeymen (and occasionally women) – which can also be spelled boogie man, bogeyman or various combinations and concatenations thereof – are figures that are human or human-like in nature that have attained a fearsome mythical status. They boogeyman originates out of folklore and childhood tales – they are shadowy beings that will appear to punish children for misbehaviour.
There are some films that deal with such childhood boogeymen. The screen tradition of the boogeyman however concerns various humans that have become supernaturally avenging monsters such as Freddy Krueger, the Candyman or the Slit-Mouthed Woman. They can also be just regular humans who have attained a mythic, feared reputation as is the case with Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees.
A film about childhood boogeymen that takes place as a work of psychological horrors, where everything could be happening in the imagination of a stressed mother’s collapsing mental state. An extraordinarily assured directorial debut
Adapted from a Young Adult series of books, this is a bland and utterly superficial film about a secret society of monster-hunting babysitters
Colm McCarthy, who previously directed the standout The Girl With All the Gifts, returns with a film about a man being haunted by a boogeyman out of his childhood that snatches children in a bag
An overlooked Mike Flanagan film about a kid with the ability to bring his dreams to life, this reads like a cross between an A Nightmare on Elm Street copy and the Joe Dante Twilight Zone – The Movie episode
Quite a good whodunit that takes place in the aftermath of a standard slasher set-up where police pursue the killer to an all-night diner and realise that one of a group of people there is the killer
A film that has been construed almost entirely as a series of spooky jumps and hyped suspense scenes with nothing in the way of rhyme, reason or connecting rationale. Produced by Sam Raimi
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
Film based on an urban legend film about a boogeyman that kills everybody that speaks its name. Director Stacy Title creates one or two haunting and unusual scenes but in every other aspect this emerges as exceedingly generic
A Clive Barker adaptation capped by a magisterial performance from Tony Todd. This was greeted as a horror masterpiece when it came out and went on to spawn two sequels. Not too bad if it falls short of the classic status
A Jordan Peele-written/produced revival of the Candyman series. Director Nia DaCosta lights it up with a new contemporary social relevance but fails to recapture the eerie horror the original held
The second and so far final of the Candyman sequels, a routine entry with Baywatch starlet Donna D’Errico as a descendant of Candyman who is pursued by Tony Todd
The first of the Candyman sequels, this goes back to add a Candyman origin story but mostly rehashes the first film. Director Bill Condon’s constant straining for effect becomes maddening
J-horror film based on the Japanese urban legend of a boogeywoman with a face slit from ear to ear who appears to kill people
The first film from Jon Watts, director of the Tom Holland Spider-Man films, and produced by Eli Roth, about a clown costume that possesses the wearer. You have to admire the film for the ballsiness with which it was made
An incredibly eerie and haunting killer clown film from Victor Salva. This is one of the few films that capture something of the spooky suspense of John Carpenter’s Halloween
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
An extension of The Conjuring universe with a film based on the Mexican legend of the crying woman La Llorona. This killed by the director’s constant straining for effect
David Slade seemed a promising directorial name several years ago with works like the charged Hard Candy, before making Twilight films and being lost in tv. Here he returns with a film set around a small town’s deadly Halloween rituals
This comes with an original idea where a troubled girl starts drawing a graphic novel that mirrors her own life only for the characters to emerge into the real world. Less horror than a dark allegorical fantasy
Formulaic horror film about an avenging supernatural hag known as the Tooth Fairy. Much of the premise is borrowed from A Nightmare on Elm Street
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 as it takes on instant celebrity and Cancel Culture
The long promised crossover between the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street films, this seems caught in a juggling act that fails to satisfy the requirements of either franchise
The sixth of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films, sold with the gimmick of a 3D release. New director Rachel Talaly refuses to take the material seriously and turns the show into an absurd cartoon
Another 1980s horror remake that had much potential. However, this proves to be just another Friday the 13th film by the numbers, albeit with a bigger budget, and widely misses the mark
The second of the Friday the 13th films. This was the point where the formula of the series slipped into place and Jason emerges to become an invincible killing machine
Third of the Friday the 13th films, shot in the brief fad for 3D films in the early 80s. This is also the one where Jason adopts his trademark hockey mask
The fifth and arguably the worst of the Friday the 13th films. Jason is resurrected and engaged in much butchering, before an end reveals it was someone else altogether
The seventh of the Friday the 13th films, this tries to add some novelty with a heroine who has psychic powers but is mostly the same thing as before
The eighth of the Friday the 13th films that offers the novelty of taking a revived Jason to New York City. Actually, one of the better entries in the series, which plays his encounters with New York locals for some amusement
The fourth Friday the 13th film, called the final chapter in an effort to kill the series off, only to be such a success this was rescinded in the next film. Joseph Zito directs with more style than usual
A film about Grimcutty, a boogeyman that lurks inside an internet meme and thrives on causing parental fears. This sits on the edge of being almost interesting
John Carpenter’s all-time classic, the film that created the slasher film and has been much imitated, not to mention multiply sequelised and remade. None of these however come anywhere near recapturing Carpenter’s eerie spookiness
Another inferior entry in the mid-00s fad remake of 70s/80s horror films. Whereas John Carpenter gave us Michael Myers as evil incarnate, Rob Zombie gives us Michael Myers as a misunderstood and unloved kid
40 years later, Jamie Lee Curtis returns to pay homage to Halloween in what is a direct sequel to the original, erasing the continuity of every other sequel. This fails to conjure what made the original a classic
The first sequel to Halloween, with Michael Myers pursuing Jamie Lee Curtis through a hospital. John Carpenter’s suspense is replaced by slasher hackery but in retrospect this is a lot better than the subsequent sequels
Rob Zombie’s follow-up to his Halloween remake is a better film and closer to what the previous film should have been but his approach is still based on callous brutality than John Carpenter’s eerie suspense
Following John Carpenter’s departure from the Halloween series, the sequels begin their progression into a series of interchangeable slasher films in which Michael Myers is inevitably released to kill anew
The fourth of the Halloween sequels where the series is by now is no more than a crudely directed slasher film, a far cry from John Carpenter’s eerily suspenseful original
David Gordon Green and Jamie Lee Curtis return to round out their highly underwhelming Halloween reboot trilogy. By now, this feels like a Halloween film in name only
The seventh Halloween film, made for the original’s twentieth anniversary. This erases continuity to the other sequels and has Jamie Lee Curtis alive and pursued by Michael Myers again. Better than most of the other sequels.
Sequel to the 2018 reboot/sequel to Halloween from David Gordon Greene, this is more scrupulous about paying homage to the original and recapturing something of John Carpenter’s original stylism
The eighth Halloween film. This tries to throw in some novelty by combining Michael Myers with a reality tv show being filmed in his family home but is still the same uninspired thrills of the other sequels
The sixth of the Halloween films, the fifth with Michael Myers. By now John Carpenter’s original eerie suspense has been reduced to crude slasher movie payoffs. This tries to add some nonsense about druidic cults
A Spanish horror film that develops some reasonable effect in its story about a writer who moves to a small town only to find the locals are keeping sinister secrets
A uniquely original film. Almost an arthouse take on a slasher film where we are placed in the hulking killer’s shoes and the rest of the show takes place in abstract brushstrokes
High hopes for this third film from Juan Carlos Fresnadillo emerge as no more than Boogeyman with shallow artistic pretensions and is a disappointingly middle of the road work
Undeniably effective horror about a deadly shapeshifting phantom that gets passed by sexual contact. Imagine Ring by way of a Larry Clark film. This creates rather good unsettlingly uncanny atmosphere
Film with a class of teenagers a class of teenagers on a field trip is pursued through a haunted carnival by a mythical boogeyman
The ninth of the Friday the 13th films and the most variant and fun of the series. This cheerfully turns expectations on their head and readily punctures the series cliches
The sixth and one of the better Friday the 13th films. This time the usual formula of the series is conducted with an undeniable sense of humour
The tenth Friday the 13th film. This tries to add novelty as Jason is thawed out in the future aboard a space station to slaughter anew. Featuring no less than David Cronenberg as a victim
Having been promised for a long time, this is the third of Victor Salva’s Jeepers Creepers films. Filled with some unworldly jumps, this is also the slightest of the Jeepers Creepers trilogy
Creepy film about a brother and sister who are pursued on a road journey by a supernatural creature that drives a truck. This became a word of mouth hit and was followed by several sequels
This was Victor Salva’s first sequel to his hit Jeepers Creepers. This is an intensely uncanny and much superior work to the first that heads into outlandish places
The Jeepers Creepers films created a highly original boogeyman with some creepy effect. Mired in controversy, the fourth entry in franchise emerges from Finnish director Timo Vuorensola
Directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury made the brutally extreme Inside. Here they return with what feels like an unofficial copy of Candyman about a vengeful boogeywoman
The James Wan produced (as opposed to directed) film is a dubious prospect. You cannot deny that this film about creatures in the dark does make an audience jump but I felt that I’d seen everything before
At the time of reviewing Rodney Ascher’s sleep paralysis documentary The Nightmare, I commented it would make fascinating material for a horror film. This Canadian micro-budgeted feature is one of the first to try and is interesting, even if it never truly grapples with its ideas
A horror film about the screening of a lost horror film whose director is reputed to have killed people for real. Now the killer emerges from the screen to slaughter the attendees in the theatre
A wonderfully grotesque and sinister film about a failed children’s show host who returns from Hell as a boogeyman come to snatch children away from bad parents. Think Death to Smoochy meets A Nightmare on Elm Street
This was the fourth animated film from Pixar and is a winning and delightful Maurice Sendakian tale about the monsters in the closet and their friendship with a young girl
Pixar’s creative decline has been the point they started making these sequels to their hits. This is a disappointing prequel to Monsters, Inc. that largely recycles the cliches of the Revenge of the Nerds films and seems lacking in any of the wacky humour or moments of cuteness we expect of a Pixar film
From the same people who made Demonic Christmas Tree, this is a supernatural retribution film that was sold as a Krampus film
A Halloween horror from a director with a reasonable genre association, this establishes its genre bona fides but then shoots itself in the foot
This has an interesting set-up about a woman pursued by a boogeyman figure from her nightmares where others cannot be sure whether she is delusional at the same time as the figure starts eliminating them – but the film’s low-budget gets in the way of adequate treatment
One of the most influential horror films of the 1980s, creating a series of dream horror copycats. Before the campy, makeup effects driven sequels kicked in, Wes Craven’s original creates a genuinely unearthly series of nightmare jumps
Yet another in the fad for 19870s/0s horror remakes, a merely efficient revival that reduces the wild, outré scares of Wes Craven’s original to conveyor belt shocks
The point where Robert Englund’s Freddy went from a boogeyman into the equivalent of Wile E. Coyote, popping up like a malevolent jack-in-a-box to quip a one-liner and dispatch victims
Fourth of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films. Under Renny Harlin’s hand, the unworldly atmosphere of Wes Craven’s original is replaced by moments of incredible silliness
The first and worst of the A Nightmare on Elm Street sequels. The dream logic becomes incoherent, while the film is twisted out of shape to become a bizarre gay Coming Out parable
The fifth of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films offers up the same old thing but director Stephen Hopkins enters at an inspired level that transforms the set-pieces with a genuine weirdness
The concept – sort of akin to
Clearly influenced by A Nightmare on Elm Street, this is a film about an executed killer who returns as a dream boogeyman who transforms from a flow of sand
Slender Man is the fascinating idea of an internet meme that has crossed over to become an urban legend in the real world; this is the film version. This held the potential to be something very uncanny but chooses to play everything incredibly safe and middle-of-the-road
This is essentially Candyman rewritten for the internet generation about a boogeyman that appears to kill the person on the other end if you type a phrase three times
A French police procedural where detectives are plunged into a series of bizarre murders involving a child sacrifice cult and a folk boogeyman. From the directorial duo who started the whole French Extremism movement with Inside
The Slender Man film proved instantly forgettable. This copycat is an incredibly spooky show that should have enjoyed that film’s success
An Indian horror film about a folk tale of a witch spirit the Stree, this was a popular success that was then built out into an Indian version of The Conjuring Universe
An anthology of Halloween-themed horror tales, all from different genre directors, including some interesting high-profile names. The results are uneven with the film providing a couple of amusing segments but nothing truly standout
Pascal Laugier returns with this fascinating effort about a small town subject to child abductions by a possible boogieman. A film that is as blatantly manipulative as it is ingenious in its way-out twists and turns where everything we assume is going on at the outset is eventually turned completely on its head
In an era where horror has become safe and mainstream, where content is specifically marketed to PG-audiences, this film about a killer that strikes on Halloween comes with a ferocious gore-drenched enthusiasm
Seventh of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films where Wes Craven returns to direct the most remarkable of all the sequels, an extraordinary meta-fiction that takes place in the real world
Low-budget British film about a mysterious killer lurking in the house