The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
In the vein of films like I Spit on Your Grave and especially Baise-Moi, two girls go on a killing spree against rapists and asshole men. Undeniably interesting but this gets sabotaged by the film’s gaping moral blindspots
This feels like a post-Silence of the Lambs thriller with Amanda Seyfried as an abduction survivor trying to find her missing sister. The film never rises above the cliches of the genre
The world’s first Irish alien invasion film – and a sideplittingly funny one too. Imagine a conceptual crosshatch between Tremors and the characters from Father Ted
Grave Encounters was an unremarkable Found Footage film. This much smarter sequel takes its lead from Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 in being a meta-fiction that investigates the phenomenon of the first film
Oliver Stone’s son Sean makes a Found Footage horror film. The haunted asylum has become a thoroughly overused cliche. That said, Sean Stone wrings some undeniably spooky jumps out of the material
Another of 2012’s Snow White films following Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman. a low-budget mockbuster copycat from The Asylum
A zombie film (of sorts) from Mexico, although it could just as easily be about a man infected with a flesh-eating bacteria. A zombie film in which almost nothing happens, we just sit watching a man getting ill
Web-series, later released as a film, made as promotion for the Halo 4 videogame. While the games have a massively detailed backhistory of the universe, this is disappointingly only a low-budget military recruits in training scenario
Backwoods Brutality Chilean style. This has the look and feel of a lost 1970s film that some people insist on calling grindhouse. Not the most polished work but this does deliver assorted brutality, gore and cannibalism
Aliens come to Earth and form a bluegrass band. The film’s basic idea holds an undeniable appeal but the film itself seems caught between wanting to be a B-movie parody and an indie film that takes itself seriously
A Non-fiction film about Alfred Hitchcock and the making of Psycho. The script does a superb job of nailing the psychological undertows between the players and the parts are brought to life with several tour-de-force performances
Peter Jackson returns to J.R.R. Tolkien and the epic-sized adventure he does well in the first of his Hobbit films. The visual sweep is there but the film feels over-extruded and over-burdened by its own self-importance.
Genuinely mind-screwing effort from French director Leos Carax. Imagine a version of Cosmopolis as hijacked by Alejandro Jodorowsky, a series of surreal vignettes that arrives at an ending that leaves everyone going “huh”
A variant on the much more charming Mad Monster Party?, an animated film featuring cute cuddly versions of the Famous Monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, wolfman etc) with Adam Sandler voicing Dracula
Psycho-thriller that plays out like a creaky old deranged relative in the cellar film retooled as a teen romance until an absurd mid-film conceptual twist irredeemably kills the film off
Low-budget psycho-thriller about amnesia that tries hard in many areas but fails to generate enough contortion in terms of plot twists to make the show work with adequate tension
A hugely popular Young Adult box-office hit that does little more than competently shuffle around ideas from a body of other SF films. Jennifer Lawrence makes an impressive showing but the film also soft-pedals the moral reality of its scenario
Chuck Norris’s son Mike directs a ridiculous faith-based film where a miraculous child comes to heal an impoverished, drought-ridden town
This is not a film, it is a money-making machine in the guise of a film that is aimed squarely at undiscerning family audiences, one that plays solely to familiar characters and comic routines and has almost minimal difference to the preceding three Ice Age films
There is a great idea here – of a device that allows people to enter an author’s imagination – in this animated film from Peru but it serves as no more an excuse to have a bunch of children having adventures inside the stories of a thinly disguised facsimile of Jules Verne
A film based on the album by Finnish symphonic metal group Nightwish. Most of the film takes place inside the allegorical mental terrain of a dying rock star. Before one can say Pink Floyd – The Wall, most of this collapses into the over-inflated amateur symbolism of a music video
South Korean film that replays the same story three times with slight differences, all featuring Isabelle Huppert as a different woman. Told with a rather charming sense of humour and an undeniable playfulness when it comes to the meta-fiction
Based on a best-selling non-fiction book in its day, this is a documentary that explores Bram Stoker and the creation of Dracula, Transylvania and Vlad the Impaler. Narrated by Christopher Lee, while in the flashback scenes we get to see Lee playing both Dracula and Vlad the Impaler
Canadian-made home invasion thriller that reminds of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. A film that seems set to brutalise a middle class couple’s sensibilities only to slip into utter tameness as soon as it gets out of the starting gate
This is maybe the worst Found Footage film made to date. An effort involving something (it is never clear) stalking people around disused cellars of a building where direction consists of a handheld camera vaguely waved in the direction of what is happening
Finnish fan filmmaker Timo Vuorensola of Star Wreck fame returns with this conceptually wild film about invasion by Nazi flying saucers from the Moon. Stunning quality effects on a minuscule budget that rival the work of professional houses, although Vuorensola lets the comedy elements become broad caricature
Imagine This is The End with four hipster couples instead of a bunch of Hollywood celebrities barricaded in a house. A likeable, if never side-splitting, End of the World comedy with a finely tuned ensemble cast
An LGBT romance featuring fantastic performances from two actors before they became better known, this also acts as an ambiguous monster movie
Rather funny parody of tv’s Jersey Shore by way of a shark attack film. A film that one watches with zero expectations but proves hilarious by planting tongue entirely in cheek and offering up some wittily deadpan jabs at caricatures
While the film bombed at the box-office, it emerges as a fairly good and faithful adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ swashbuckling planetary adventure that is lavishly produced and written on an epic canvas
Phantasm series director Don Coscarelli returns with this mind-expanding effort that seems a conceptual collision between Donnie Darko, Limitless, a slacker version of Supernatural and Marvel Comics’ Dr Strange. Maybe the best mind-tripping fun it is possible to have without the use of illegal substances
In their few attempts to touch SF material, Bollywood has always had bizarre results. Imagine (sort of) a version of Shyamalan’s crop circle/alien visitors film Signs , a few dashes of The Mouse That Roared , all played as a comic farce and with much singing and dancing
Supposed adaptation of Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island that gives the impression that none of the screenwriters have read the book … a consistently silly and nonsensical film that operates at the level of a children’s cartoon
A killer shark film that once had the distinction of being the lowest rated on the IMDB
A relative disappointment among the mostly excellent animated DC superhero films, this offers up far too diagrammatic and dramatically underdeveloped a pitting of each Justice League member with a matching super-villain only to seemingly kill them off
An obscure Japanese film about a backwoods motel where things get very strange – the hosts slaughtering the guests, a zombie wandering around. The film comes with a decided WTF element to it, the least of which is actually trying to work out what is going on
If you’ve never seen any of the Kirikou films, you should rush off and do so immediately. They are utterly delightful tales about the native ingenuity and plain-speaking wisdom of a young boy winning out over adult pomposity and foolishness. All are animated with a simplicity that is quite magical
The vampire film feels like a genre that has been creatively played out of recent. The story here is an overly familiar one, nevertheless it is propelled into the decidedly watchable by the provocative and stylish direction of Xan Cassavetes (daughter of director/actor John Cassavetes)
Christopher (Creep, Triangle, Black Death) Smith has become one of the most underrated genre directors so I was anticipating his first venture into tv but this disappointingly feels like only a commercial project. The cross-historical quest for the Holy Grail story reads like warmed over Da Vinci Code
Film spinoff from a YouTube channel that features two comedians giving absurdly over-the-top survivalist tips. The general observation with these YouTube spinoff films is that what works as a series of short clips has difficulty in extending said gags to sustain a dramatic plot
Rue Morgue magazine editor Rodrigo Gudiño makes his directorial debut with an old-fashioned ghost story that rests in ambiguous psychological spaces. A slow, moody single-person drama that eventually achieves something decidedly haunted, if arriving at a difficult to decipher twist ending
Group of youths walk through the woods lost then discover why they are there in a genre twist ending you can see coming an hour before. A film that seems to have escaped being about nothing and a hackneyed ending by being slapped with the arts label
Cult Japanese director Takashi Miike makes a film about a teacher who goes on a shooting rampage through a school. Miike takes an unrestrained glee in the carnage. Given the outrage at recent school shootings in the US, this seems to be Miike once again setting out to cross taboo lines
The death of Graham Chapman put paid to any idea of a Monty Python reunion. Not to be deterred, a group of Python fans have brought Chapman’s autobiography to life as an animated film in the absurdist Python style with most of the remaining Pythons returning to provide voice work
Amiable Canadian entry in the oversaturated market of the zombie comedy that emerges sort of as a Judd Apatow film with zombies and produces the occasional smile if never any true laughs
Luc Besson written action-prison film that blatantly borrows from Escape From New York and emerges as an entertaining comic-book of a movie, even if its depth exists no further than Guy Pearce tossing off flip one-liners
From Rian Johnson, time travel film that is sometimes uneven but is mostly conducted with considerable cleverness and intelligence. One of the few multiplex films of the year that is driven by plot rather than action and you are never able to predict its twists and turns
Another Dr. Seuss adaptation that emerges as occasionally cute but little that rises above formula. Like the original story, this holds a pro-environmentalist message that is laid on with a trowel in the film
In this homage to the 1970s occult film, Rob Zombie surprises and aims for something different – he tones back the constant posturing shock effect of his earlier films and creates atmosphere. Eventually though, Zombie creates a film that feels coiled to unleash something bad but falters at ever opening the box
Bigfoot film made by two brothers using a non-professional cast and crew, which emerges better than you might expect and generates passable tension with likeable characters. The film does arrive at a puzzling ending
It is hard to find enthusiasm going into this – the Madagascar series was a cute idea first time around but has been stretched more than its worth by the sequels. Nevertheless, the film works at you with a colourful light-heartedness and energy that is hard to resist
RZA of rap group Wu-Tang Clan fame (with the aid of Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino) makes a dual acting/directing appearance with this homage to Shaw Brothers martial arts films … not quite the genuine article but a solid effort where RZA certainly doesn’t embarrass himself
Controversial remake of the 1980 psycho film. The remake’s unique take is that everything is shot in first-person from the point-of-view of the killer. If this were a work not so determined to push the modern gore envelope, it would almost be a psycho film filtered through an arthouse aesthetic
Quebecois (French Canadian) sf film that offers up a beautifully designed vision of the future and some impressive effects … At the same time, it is sad to see so much artistry lavished on something that is completely nonsensical and utterly woolly-headed in terms of its ideas
Another instance of a computer game or film franchise turning to anime to conduct a spinoff. While Mass Effect has an impressive reputation on the console screen, the film here is a dull piece that only comes in around the level of a production line animated tv episode
Paul Thomas Anderson’s loose biopic of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard is a film composed of great acting and great individual scenes more so than it ever coheses as a story or delves in to interrogate its characters. Far too elusive as a story to quite be the masterpiece it is readily being hailed as
Fifth in a popular series of satiric Hong Kong animated films. Kicks in with an amusingly sarcastic bite that resembles a Beavis and Butt-Head in its story of a talking animal children’s choir but alas by about the halfway point takes itself seriously and starts to get mawkish and sentimental
Low-budget psycho film that nevertheless comes out as interestingly twisted. Keith Collins makes for a disturbing central character, obsessed with seducing women, boasting to us about his methods, then imprisoning them and serving up their flesh as meat for he and his aunt
A surprisingly good variant on The Hitcher (albeit set in urban environs) where Samuel L. Jackson does the unique Samuel L. Jackson sarcastic badassery with demoniac results as a psychopathic stranger who takes hapless family man Luke Wilson for a ride leaving a trail of bodies
Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a festival favourite and one genre director whose work is least categorised as such. As with any of Weerasethakul’s films, this has some intensely haunted moments but is severely lacking in plot or any kind of dramatic inertia
One hardly greets the attempt to generate another entry out of this franchise with any enthusiasm. This mostly consists of tired and familiar gags, where maybe the most generous compliment you can pay is that it is better than Men in Black II was
Film adaptation of the Salman Rushdie novel set against the backdrop of a late 20th Century history of India. While this is what arthouse audiences have come to see, the film also plays out as a superhero film of sorts about individuals with unique powers conducting a secret war behind the historical events
Tarsem Singh makes a Snow White film. Tarsem’s sets, costumes and visuals are expectedly exquisite and extravagant but all is unwound by a campy, unserious approach
Imagine a weird mix between the basic premise of Saw and Waiting for Godot. A South Korean film about a man inexplicably chained up in a park that is less interested in his escape than it becomes a surreal existential allegory for life
Very cheaply made film about a deadly mold going amok at a laboratory, which is only notable for some gory meltdown effects and the filmmaker’s laughable lack of knowledge about contamination procedures
Beautifully made children’s film that is a refreshing change from most of the formulaic product released in the US mainstream. Comes with a sweet simplicity and an enormous freshness, while the animation is rendered with a considerable beauty that makes it just as much a film for adults
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
About the ninth film version of Jules Verne’s desert island survival story. This doesn’t add the giant animals/insects other versions do, although we still get a number of wild sf elements the original book never had. Problem though is that the film never adds enough to make proceedings very interesting
Hands down the best film ever produced by The Asylum. How could one not like an entertainingly madcap concoction that features mad scientists, zombie stormtroopers, Nazi UFOs and Adolf Hitler preserved as a head in a jar attached to a robot body?
This jumps aboard the zombie bandwagon borrowing the title of George Romero’s classic but has almost nothing in common with it
This second English-language film from Japan’s Ryuhei Kitamura came with a good deal of promising advance buzz but upon being seen emerges as a strictly average psycho film that never offers anything outstanding in terms of twists or suspense, nor pushes its audience in any way
On one level, this sets out to be a warm-hearted fantasy about the appearance of a magic child to a childless couple. On another possibly unintentional level, it is a rather unlikeable film about how two parents continually force a child to conform to the social expectations of those around them
An Australian Backwoods Brutality comedy, which amusingly inverts the genre’s clichés, not dissimilar to Tucker and Dale vs Evil
This surely takes the cake amid the fad for wacky zombie films in which Osama bin Laden is resurrected as a zombie. Imagine a mash-up between Zero Dark Thirty and a zombie film
Outpost was a solid and reasonably effective rehashing of the Nazi zombie theme; this was the first of two sequels. The first had a formula that seems difficult to mess up but this does – it’s over half the film before we get zombies after which we get Just the Same As Before and little more
Modestly effective film about a haunted suburban house. Debuting director Nicholas McCarthy produces a number of accomplished and eerie scares that stand him as a promising new name. The film weakens in the last act when trying to tie everything together with an improbable rationale
The Paranormal Activity series has had a better run than most horror franchises up until now but the cracks are starting to show through here. This feels like it is straining to find some new way to do the familiar moves but fails to provide anything unexpected or original
Stop-motion animated children’s film from Laika that demonstrates a willingness to be scary. The film starts to move out of the amiably likeable after around the halfway point when it begins to play a number of horror tropes against expectation to deliver a reasonable message about fear and prejudice
Low-budget directorial effort from a makeup effects artist about a parasitic creature loose in a nightclub after hours
This comes with a good premise – people must escape from a biological containment facility after the release of a virus that turns the infected homicidal. Essentially a low-budget version of The Crazies, this is a film that would have been improved by a studio budget
One of the numerous ‘vs’ films that came out after Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, this is actually a B-budget fantasy adventure made for cable. This is not particularly bad, just routine and uninspired on all counts where the budget cramps any of its imaginative horizons
A fascinating documentary about animator Richard Williams that principally focuses on the tragic failure of Williams’s lifework The Thief and the Cobbler, which would have been the most ambitious hand drawn film ever made
This Syfy Channel production can’t seem to decide if it is a sequel or a remake of the 1984 film. Michael Paré turn up in both versions but goes from being the hero to a menacing heavy. The original had its moments but this is generic and routine in all ways
Sequel to the Piranha remake. Much the same as before but up one cup size. Well not really, the sequel is more like a joke that was funny the first time that becomes belaboured in the retelling
Amid the spate of deliberately ridiculous monster movies of the 2010s, we have also seen a fad for absurd hybrid creatures. In actuality, the piranhaconda is just a giant snake – and served by some incredibly bad effects in this negligible effort from B-budget hack Jim Wynorski
Amiable effort from England’s Aardman Animations that doesn’t quite scale the heights of their other films but still has an entertainingly nonsensical charm that is far more enjoyable than most Hollywood competition
A rare Indian venture into the horror film, this is a haunted house film of modest effect that suddenly becomes a whole lot more watchable when it pulls a major M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist on us
Based on the urban legend surrounding a dybbuk box that turned up on an EBay auction, although the film throws this out to conduct an utterly generic possession story. Despite the novelty of drawing on Judaic mythology, the film still trades in the same tired cliches as the Christian exorcism film
Ridley Scott’s promised prequel to Alien. The first half creates epic mystery but the answers provided are not nearly as interesting as promised, while the latter half disappointingly settles for doing the Alien standard with decidedly lesser effect
Low-budget film that was clearly trying to ride on the coattails of Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel Prometheus. This tells an almost interesting story about a timeloop and gets full marks for winding in the Greek myth of Prometheus
This has the great idea of pitting Edgar Allan Poe against a serial killer imitating his stories but instead produces a desultory murder mystery that has done only the most cursory reading about Poe and is ill-informed about the historical period
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Third entry in the hit Spanish Found Footage series. Not the origin story it promises to be, is the one entry in the series that decides to have fun. The Found Footage look is abandoned soon in, nevertheless it turns out the gore-drenched goods and is peopled with a range of amusingly eccentric characters
Unknown, no-name film that proves an unexpected surprise. Three friends go camping on an island are are stalked by cloned doppelgangers of themselves. Economically constructed, full of twists and undercurrents and a fine set of double performances
The idea of remaking John Milus’s ridiculous 1984 survivalist fantasy about a Communist invasion of the USA maybe counts as one of the most absurdly unnecessary of all remakes. The film laughably tries to deal with the absence of a Soviet Union by creating a boogeyman out of North Korea
Strong, well-written film from Buried director Rodrigo Cortes about investigators of psychic frauds encountering a possibly real example. This takes a welcomely sceptical, rationalist perspective, has a great cast and fine build-up but alas falls apart in a lame twist ending
The second of the Resident Evil anime films. This is set before the release of the T-Virus and focuses on origin stories for some of the characters
Another unnecessary entry in a creativity-handicapped series, the continuing popularity of which is baffles. This shuffles through the familiar moves, brings back several familiar characters but only leaves me asking why I have invested some nine hours of time following this series
Starting out as a gritty intervention drama, for some time this is not even a horror film. In the background are suggestions of increasingly more disturbed happenings until the film becomes something eerily cryptic – sort of The Evil Dead by way of The Picnic at Hanging Rock
The concept – sort of akin to
The Asylum have not delved into the zombie film as much as they have the gonzo killer shark, which they practically invented. This is one occasion on which they did and is unexpectedly a serious film with a reasonable name cast (including Danny Trejo as a zombie)