The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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
A killer shark film that once had the distinction of being the lowest rated on the IMDB
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
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
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
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
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
An LGBT romance featuring fantastic performances from two actors before they became better known, this also acts as an ambiguous monster movie
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Chuck Norris’s son Mike directs a ridiculous faith-based film where a miraculous child comes to heal an impoverished, drought-ridden town
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
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
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
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
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”
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.
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
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
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
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
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
Another of 2012’s Snow White films following Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman. a low-budget mockbuster copycat from The Asylum
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
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
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
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
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
Fascinating sf film interviewing people about the jobs they are forced to take in an economically collapsed Canada. Despite a minuscule budget, this has the grip of strong and intelligent science-fiction
Ridiculous sequel to the Marvel Comics adaptation with an indifferently written script assembled from cliches, forgettable action scenes and Nicolas Cage giving one of his silliest performances in ages
A beautifully shot b/w homage to exploitation films that feels like a 1950s rock‘n’roll musical injected with a host of gonzo elements including aliens, UFOs and the resurrected dead
The William Shatner documentary can be a unique beast. Here he makes a quite reasonable effort to examine what is at the heart of Star Trek fandom
This has the amusing idea of mashing the zombie film up with the Guy Ritchie gangster film, although is never quite as amusing as it sounds nor ever hits the comic-bookishly over-the-top posturing of Ritchie’s films
New Zealand comedy in which Temuera Morrison plays a modern-day Maori cannibal cultist. Everything is given a very broad playing
Tim Burton’s stop-motion animated expansion of his 1982 short film has a winning concept – a parody of the Universal Frankenstein films with a teenage boy resurrecting his dog
Supposedly a documentary about the Frankenstein story but no more than a glorified dvd extra to accompany the Danny Boyle stage production of Frankenstein. This covers the life of Mary Shelley but almost entirely sidesteps the Frankenstein cinematic legacy
Willfully cryptic and baffling South Korean film that only ends up being dull and confusing. Disappointingly, the big denouement reveals that all we have is another copy of The Sixth Sense with pretensions to meaningfulness
Featuring Simon Pegg as a paranoid writer seeing sinister happenings everywhere, this should have been a darkly funny comedy in the vein of early Coen Brothers but the film winds everything up to a shrilly hysteric fever pitch
Dark Horse Entertainment film that traipses through a tired serial killer plot that comes out resembling a weak episode of CSI before a frankly unbelievable twist ending
Modestly creepy film about a group of subjects locked in a hospital as part of a drug trial that proceeds to go wrong
An undeniably imaginative SF film in which a scientist invents a device to view memory only to become trapped in someone else’s memories
Darkly subversive film about an alienated teenage girl, this digs its teeth into family values and depicts the uncomfortableness of puberty. On the other hand, this is only rarely the horror film others have reviewed it as
Third of the Neon Genesis Evangelion reboot films. These films are frustrating – filled with stunning scenes of mecha battling cryptic alien machines but baffling as to what is going on
This gave the impression that is was going to venture deep inside Cronenbergian territory but instead, we have a darkly fascinating work set in the world of scientific research
Entirely charming French animated film from the directors of A Town Called Panic. This is a children’s film that comes with a beautiful simplicity, a duo of winning characters and some side-splitting visual gags
The amusing idea of (some chapters of) the classic Chinese legend Journey to the West retold in contemporary terms. This makes for some amusing interpolations, while also acting as a social critique of modern-day Chinese society
Rather peculiar film about a man who becomes a cannibal whenever he sleepwalks and an artist who finds inspiration at the sight of the dead bodies. This taps a rich vein of black comedy
The third film based on the roleplaying game. The previous two films were forgettable but for a throwaway effort, this is surprisingly good, taking a far darker tone than the usual sword-and-sorcery adventure and adding considerable moral complexity
A new version of the Judge Dredd comic-book. More faithful than the previous Sylvester Stallone version, this comes with a satisfyingly visceral kick, yet a low-budget means that we see little of Dredd’s satiric future
Typical Syfy Channel creature film with people encountering giant fire-breathing genetically-engineered wasps in the jungles of Belize
Hard to describe what an utter disappointment Dario Argento’s take on the oft-filmed Bram Stoker work is. Argento seems to have entirely lost the mojo and visual flair that made him a cult name. Thomas Kretschmann makes for the screen’s mellowest Dracula
South Korean anthology containing a trio of tales on the theme of the end of the world. The standout is the middle segment, a very Asimovian tale wherein a robot claims to have logically attained Buddhist enlightenment
Disappointingly, this turns out not to be about the famous pioneer expedition that turned to cannibalism but a modern slasher film that takes place near where the incident occurred
Darren Lynn Bousman, the director best known for the Saw sequels, makes a musical about a circus set in Hell through which three damned souls pass, enacting updated versions of various of Aesop’s Fables
Another Found Footage variant on an exorcism film. This was a big box-office hit but only ends up repeating the tired cliches of the exorcism and possession genre
Another entry in the zombie comedy field, this is essentially a retread of The Breakfast Club but with the addition of zombies
By the time of this third film, the Death Race series is buckling under the strain of trying to find something original to do with a very limited premise. The Death Race now takes place in the South African desert but the action scenes prove incredibly monotonous
Completely insane Japanese film about man-eating killer sushi. A film that has a whacko anything goes lunacy to it, resulting in some of the most surreally crazed monster movie scenes that this author has seen in some time
One among the vast shuffling horde of zombie films that has deluged the genre since the mid-00s. This is an average entry in the field, competently made and with a plot that you feel could have served as an entire season of The Walking Dead
Tim Burton’s slide into mediocrity continues with this comedic update of the cult Gothic soap opera tv series, which is now played at a level of cartoonish unseriousness that resembles the Addams Family