The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Surprisingly warm and genteel story about the relationship between an aging cat burglar and a robot. For once, no cliches about robots becoming intelligent or discovering feelings but simply a credible piece extrapolated from contemporary robotics
Imprisonment thriller where a woman finds herself confined by deranged husband and wife Bill Moseley and Lucinda Jenney
Documentary where people offer up various crackpot theories about the hidden meanings of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Fascinating in a bizarre freakshow way, an undeniable cult film in the making
The Little Miss Sunshine directors follow their hit up with a film about a writer who brings his ideal woman to life. Scriptwriter Zoe Kazan sparkles in the title role but the film never pushes its central concept too much beyond being a quirkily sweet indie romance
Not that the title gives you any reason to expect it but this is actually a vampire film, one of the rare entries in a genre that is looking very anemic these days. An original and quite interesting smalltown take that resembles George Romero’s Martin and Let the Right One In
The original Ring was a classic, an eerie ghost story that was a success that spawned a series of copies right around the Asian region. Here the Ring cycle has been rebooted in a heavy letdown that abandons all of the creepy atmospherics of the original for a series of pop-up CGI effects
Quirky indie film about a possibly deluded man who advertises for a time travel companion. The actuality of the time travel element is kept ambiguous and this plays out as a relationship drama that overflows with charm and freshness
This was made just before Sharknado turned the killer shark film into something deliberately ridiculous and is an entertainingly tongue-in-cheek B movie that has a perfect sense of its own limitations
The best of an otherwise lightweight, throwaway series. Roel Reiné directs some good action scenes, even if the hackneyed plotting never lets the show rise to anything more than average
This starts out as a socially conscious drama about East European sex slavery. As directed by a makeup effects artist, the film seems to tepidly avoid the raw and brutal impact the material holds, before finally revealing its true nature as an imprisonment and revenge horror
Another formulaic Syfy Channel B-budget disaster film. The film’s sole distinction is a more outlandish premise than usual – where the storm appears initially to be caused by a UFO that has been shot down
Ghost story BBC mini-series adapted from a novel by horror writer James Herbert that unfolds between two different eras. With an amazing cast of Before They Were Famous names.
The End of the World seems the least likely backdrop for a romantic comedy. Newcomer Lorene Scafaria seems less interested in depicting social collapse than in making an insipid romcom road movie with two leads who fail to strike up any connection
Modest name cast, including a highly entertaining Val Kilmer, in a film about a group of strangers brought together at a mysterious backwoods house
Killer shark film from The Asylum in a plot where a druglord forces people to fight various sharks – sort of Survivor but with sharks instead of elimination rounds
The third film from Ben Wheatley who here makes a black comedy about two tourists on a murder spree, eliminating those they don’t like. A film that digs into British class and provincial small-mindedness with scabrous regard
Dull and unimaginative Silent Hill sequel that only revisits what went before. The first film had an unsettling and uncanny otherworldly atmosphere but in being made for 3D, the sequel reduced it no more than pop-up Clive Barker
This is a very loose and somewhat desultory remake of Silent Night, Deadly Night that seems to imagine it is being far more hardcore and controversy defying than it is
Scott Derrickson film that is badly underwritten in terms of proper explanatory rationale. That said, you cannot deny that Derrickson manages to produce the scary goods on a number of occasions
A horror film set around a haunted house attraction that is made with near-total amateurishness. The film seems to have multiple plots happening all at once and becomes impossible trying to figure out what is happening
Not to be confused with the Woody Allen film, this is a modern slasher film that pays homage to its 1980s counterparts – in particular, the sorority house slasher as a maniac who deep-breathes down the phone stalks assorted co-eds. Unexceptional in all regards
A documentary about the slasher film, which interviews various directors and actors behind the films about the genre’s origins and rules
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
The second of 2012’s Snow White films after Mirror Mirror, this turns the fairytale into an epic fantasy. Well produced but ultimately a film that lacks anything unique nor pushes far enough into the dark fantasy it promises to be
The title and the description of a space station crew dealing with a mutating runner duck gives the expectation of something wacky – what we get is more like a variant on Dark Star, a comedy set around the boredom of life on a space station and a 1970s era episode of Doctor Who
The importation of anime director Shinji Aramaki to helm the latest Starship Troopers film provides dazzling animation and hardware, along with some hard, furious military action that easily outstrips all the other films. On the other hand, the film never goes beyond being about soldiers shooting up bugs
I must admit to being drawn in by the title, but this proves to be a massive cheat. What we get is a painfully cheap future action film
British effort that proves to be no more than another copy of Alien – set in a warehouse of storage lockers. The film never consists of anything beyond a crashingly ordinary regurgitation of the moves used by an endless number of Alien copies
Probably the next logical move after Zombie Strippers! Alas, where we should have had a fast, funny and sarcastic genre entry, the humour in this British entry becomes painfully belaboured in its constant unfunny efforts to get laughs
French animated film that is about as far from children’s entertainment as it is possible to get – a mordantly dark comedy that operates in similar territory to The Addams Family in its tale of a family that operates a shop selling items of despatch to the suicidally minded
This adapts What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way?, the highly acclaimed graphic novel that was written as a response to 9/11. Unfortunately, I am not sure condensing the story into a 76 animated film fully does justice to the complex debate of the original
Sequel to Stephen Fung’s Taichi Zero. The first film was distractingly self-conscious and hyper-active; by contrast, this is much less so, allowing it to settle down and start being the fantastic martial arts film it sets out to be. Even so, classic Wu Xia directors leave everything Fung does for dead
From the high-profile release this had, I was expecting it to be a Wu Xia epic – instead we get what feels like a martial arts film by way of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World where instead of amazing us with the fight scenes the director seems in love with self-conscious cuteness of his own visuals
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
Comedy about a foul-mouthed talking teddy bear. This gets its laughs from much scatological, decidedly non-PC humour that occasionally manages to be funny, especially when it comes to some of the 80s pop culture jokes
An obscure Canadian film that ambitiously attempts to conduct an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula on a low-budget. This introduces some elements of the story that other versions ignore, cuts some and expands other. Not uninteresting but the budget eventually gets in the way
Fascinating Norwegian film about the discovery of a mysterious girl who it gradually becomes apparent is not human … The first 20 minutes are a superb piece of scene-setting but the rest of the film consists of not much more than people sitting around a cellar waiting for something to happen
Low-budget film about a girl who starts to find bruises on her body that progress until every part of her body is rotting and falling apart. A minimalist film where everything other than the slow observation of the girl’s physical decay has been stripped away – with incredibly raw effect
Another of David DeCoteau’s bizarre homoerotic horror films featuring a trio of former 80s Scream Queens who are were-cougars
The Hamiltons was an unusual film about a strange family who were eventually revealed to be vampires. By the time of this sequel, all the interesting elements of the original have been eliminated and all that we have is a film of tired poses that fails to add anything to the overworked vampire genre
Eddie Murphy’s presence is not enough to lift the lame premise of this comedy where he is given a curse where he has a thousand words to say before he dies … a film that has a soggy marshmallow heart rather than one that lets Murphy loose to do what he does best
Another film amid Woody Allen’s European renaissance, four tales all set around the gorgeously shot location of Rome. The stories are on the slight side and it is lesser Allen but there is great casting and moments where Allen is on good form
Indie film that seems a mix of A Field in England and The Picnic at Hanging Rock. The first half contains some very realistic scenes of people getting wasted on drugs but the second as characters set out along a path in the woods that leads to Hell proves frustratingly elusive
I was never a particular fan of the Schwarzenegger original and this improves on it somewhat. This is far better conceived as an action film with some amazing Cyberpunk designs. On the other hand, the two decades interim has made the story’s Philip K. Dick-ian reality bendings seem commonplace
Time travel, Nazis in UFOs and a Nazi-ruled alternate timeline, giant robot spiders – ok, I’m sold. A surprisingly good little film where the fact that this is also made on a low budget and with a good deal of conceptual constraint makes it all the more creative an effort
This is a killer shark film that is not taking itself too seriously. In their pursuit for the most absurd monster movie title, The Asylum have managed to get the balance of cheap effects and tongue-in-cheek treatment down near perfectly. The first in a series from The Asylum where each sequel added more heads.
Film about a woman who moves into a new apartment and is haunted by a little ghost boy. Follows the plotting for the ghost story genre to a completely tried and true formula and with wholly unremarkable results
A film about children and monsters under the bed. You expect this to be a kid’s film but the surprise is that it is played adult the whole way with undeniably effective results
Yet another entry that nobody asked for in a conceptually threadbare series that nobody seems to like … passably better than the last two sequels due to some ok action moves but still empty-headed in terms of ideas
Sixth entry in the series, this throws out all the themes the previous sequels operated by and feels like a Universal Soldier film written by Philip K. Dick with utterly fascinating results. John Hyams hits in with a brutal intensity that shows he is one of the most exciting up and coming action directors
Rather appealing British comedy set in an afterlife that is conceived as a dreary world of social services agencies and encounter groups. A frequently extremely black and funny but eventually charming film that gets lit up by the eccentricity of its performances
The frustration of a film that has a scientifically nonsensical premise – two planets where gravity is oriented in opposing directions – that is also surprisingly imaginatively made. This creates some genuinely amazing visuals and designs of the two worlds and showing the people on them interacting
This may quite possibly be the worst vampire film ever made – a children’s film about a boy and a cute vampire dog. Being a children’s film, the vampire dog is not allowed to drink blood so has to have a ravenous hunger for red jelly! The slapstick is excruciating and the film painful on every level
Acclaimed Lithuanian film involving a venture into a person’s dreamscape a la The Cell and Inception. Some nicely cool visuals, a strong character arc and some potentially edgy sexual content but the film still remains in the shadow of Inception without quite finding enough original ideas
An anthology of five short Found Footage horror films each from a different director. As with any anthology these are variable in tone but are on the whole mostly effective and contain a number of alternately unearthly and spooky moments
Sequel to the H.G. Wells novel that imagines a fascinating alternate history that might have occurred following the Martian invasion. The clear appeal has been creating a series of scenes showing humanity tackling invading tripods in giant Steampunk manned robots
An uninspired comedy about a neighbourhood watch encountering alien invaders that falls somewhere between Ghostbusters and The ‘Burbs. The film’s virtues lie less in the weak premise than in the director allowing the stars to freely improvise with occasionally funny results
Despite the title, this South Korean film is less a werewolf story than it is a love story about a feral child. The film seems overburdened by the need to pitch the film to the teen demographic and play the violins and heartstrings as a Twilight wannabe
How interesting can a film be that consists of nothing more than two people talking? The answer is surprisingly good. Boasting that it is Jordan’s first SF film, this produces an extraordinary series of conceptual reversal twists while never venturing beyond being a man and a woman talking on a beach
A low-budget film that prefigures the big-budget Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters in turning the fairytale brother and sister into witchslayers
Mamoru Hosoda proves himself as one of the major directors in anime with this tender, lovely and enormously affecting work about a mother raising two werewolf children.
The revived Hammer Films visit the classic British ghost story tradition. This is impeccably mounted but the film offers nothing more than a series of disappointingly superficial boo moments of zero impact
The old party game about choosing between two difficult decisions is spun out into a rather lame attempt to make another Saw. Given a generic commercial handling, the film fails to get inside the psychological tension of its life and death decisions
Sequel to the Clash of the Titans remake. Much the same as before except with bigger monsters and more explosions … flash and spectacle that washes over you with all the substance of the light from a disco ball
One of the best Disney animated films in ages. Has the winning concept of the secret lives of the characters inside videogames. Imagine Tron by way of Toy Story. The animators have clever fun with the idea, while the film creates a character arc that become the strength of the film
Quentin Dupieux’s follow-up to the hilariously culty Rubber, an absurdist film about a man setting out to find his missing dog. You keep expecting something as mind-bendingly hilarious as Rubber but this is more of a mild amusement in the David Lynch-ian deadpan surrealist vein
Martial Arts/Wu Xia fantasy with various people involved in a competition while hunting for a fabled sword
You have to admit the title gets your attention but this is otherwise a slasher film of sorts about a group in search of Stephen King’s home