The Mermaid: Lake of the Dead (2018)
This is a Russian dark fantasy that has been misleadingly titled as a mermaid film in English release. It in fact concerns an avenging rusalka water spirit who haunts a small lake
The Tune (1992)
The first film from the inimitable Bill Plympton, a work of bizarre surrealist animation and strange satiric transformations as a man sets out on a journey to find the final line for a tune
Silent Rage (1982)
A Chuck Norris horror film! One of his earlier films where Chuck is pitted against a psycho who is resurrected from the dead and becomes a near-invincible killing machine
Abraham’s Boys (2025)
Adaptation of a Joe Hill story where Van Helsing has relocated to California and is trying to teach his sons about the art of vampire hunting as his wife becomes infected by a vampire bite
Scream 7 (2026)
The Scream series drags itself for another sequel but at least performs a course correction by bringing back original screenwriter Kevin Williamson in the director’s chair, along with appearances of many past cast
Scarlet (2025)
Mamoru Hosoda conducts the bizarre notion of an anime version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It is a Hamlet that Shakespeare would barely recognise, following a heroine as she makes a journey across the afterlife
The Savage Bees (1976)
There has very rarely been a good killer bee movie. This is one exception, a directorial effort from no less than the creator of Mission: Impossible that gains its effectiveness by using real rather than optical bees
Locusts (2005)
A formula Syfy Channel film variant on the bugs gone amok film, starring Lucy Lawless as a government official who fights to stop a genetically-engineered swarm of locusts miles wide
Bigfoot (1970)
The public obsession with Bigfoot grew out of a piece of amateur film shot in 1967 purporting to show a Bigfoot in the world and led to a spate of films and throughout the 1970s. This has the distinction of being the first ever Bigfoot film
Cyborg 2087 (1966)
The film that inspired The Terminator! Michael Rennie plays a cyborg who travels back in time to prevent a machine-dominated future coming about, while being hunted by two killer androids sent back to stop him
Misery (1990)
A classic Stephen King adaptation from Rob Reiner with writer James Caan imprisoned by psycho fan Kathy Bates, who gives a terrifying performance that won her an Academy Award
Cannibal Comedian (2023)
A film that fairly much sells you in its deliberately ridiculous title concept – a cannibal who sets out to find success as a stand-up comedian.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (2025)
A completely mad and all over the place film with Sam Rockwell as a time traveller (or madman) arrived at a diner to recruit six people on a mission to save the world from the development of an evil A.I.
War Machine (2026)
The military action film is a genre that does nothing for me. But this does have a furious, survival-oriented pace as it pits Alan Ritchson and a detachment of soldiery up against an alien killer robot
Ogre (2008)
A Syfy Channel film about the present-day discovery of a lost, still extant 19th Century village that has conducted a deal to preserve themselves by annually sacrificing someone to an ogre
The Secret Village (2013)
A low-budget film about a journalist’s modern-day investigation into a secret village located near Salem, Massachusetts that results in paranoia and suspicious treatment by the locals
Love Me Deadly (1972)
An obscure but fascinating 1970s film where Mary Wilcox is an heiress who has an obsession with necrophilia who is then drawn into the activities of a strange cult
Spare Parts (1979)
A German thriller about a newlywed couple in the US where the husband is abducted and the wife’s attempts to find him take her into the midst of an illicit organ harvesting operation
The Melies Mystery (2021)
A documentary that offers the best discussion of the life of Georges Melies to date. Much of the film is focused on the recent rediscovery of a complete trove of negatives of Melies’s film
Dangerous Animals (2025)
At variance to the assorted other films about survival in shark-infested waters, this features Jai Courtney in a completely crazed performance as a serial killer who feeds his victims to sharks
Beast of War (2025)
From the director of the Wyrmwood films, an Australian-made film about a group of soldiers during World War II who become stranded in a sea of sharks following a shipwreck
In the Blink of an Eye (2026)
Former Pixar director Andrew Stanton, known for Finding Nemo, Wall-E and the flop of John Carter, makes a cross-historical in the vein of Cloud Atlas that takes place between prehistory, the present and the future
The Strangers: Chapter 3 (2026)
The concluding chapter in a desultory trilogy of films based on the eerie home invasion classic The Strangers. The surprise is that this ends up being the best of the three films
Love Object (2003)
This could be Lars and the Real Girl the horror version where a sex doll comes to life (maybe?) and makes Desmond Harrington’s life a misery. An outlandish premise and a film that does become quite twisted
The Doll (1962)
A strange and fascinating Swedish film about a lonely security guard’s obsessive love affair with a mannequin, which duly comes to life. Or does it? The film sits in a place of ambiguity whether he is imagining it or not
School Spirit (1985)
In the vein of frat house comedies of the era like Animal House and Porky’s, this is an embarrassingly cringey film about a teen who is killed while trying to get laid and insists on lingering about to finish the job
Amphibious 3D (2010)
A film from genre regular Brian Yuzna that takes place in Indonesia with people at siege on a fishing platform as it comes under attack by a sea monster. One of the films made in the 3D process following the huge success of Avatar
The Sudbury Devil (2023)
Fascinating film set during Puritan witchery as men travel into the woods to confront a witch, this has many similarities to Robert Eggers’ The Witch: A New-England Folktale. Made by an historian who makes everything authentic to the era
Hallow Road (2025)
Locke as a ghost story. A really good film that takes place during a car journey as a married couple race off to help their daughter who has had an accident. A tight, twist-filled script with some great performances
Lord of the Flies (2026)
A tv mini-series remake of William Golding’s classic novel about a planeload of schoolboys stranded on a desert island and their descent into barbarism. This gets the essence of the book with a raw primality that makes for exciting viewing
Return to Silent Hill (2026)
Silent Hill was one of the best videogame film adaptations and created a genuinely uncanny atmosphere. That film’s director returns to the franchise here with more of the same but misses the mark
Battle of the Stars (1978)
The success of Star Wars saw a host of copies made over the next few years. This was one of several low-budget Italian space opera knockoffs of this period, featuring invading aliens from Ganymede
2 + 5 Mission Hydra (1966)
An Italian space opera where a professor and associates are abducted after finding an alien craft. The film’s main distinction was being redubbed in English under the title Star Pilot to be released as a copy of Star Wars
The Curse of the Clown Motel (2023)
This was the second film set around the real-life Clown Motel in Nevada. Despite which this is not another killer clown films and is focused around the awakening of vengeful Native American spirits
The Owl Service (1969-70)
A British children’s tv mini-series about a mysterious dinner service that presages the playing out of a Welsh myth, this is seen as one of the original influences on the Folk Horror genre
Hanky Panky (2023)
A gonzo comedy about an alien invasion that takes place during a getaway at a remote cabin by assorted comically dysfunctional characters including a man who is accompanied by a talking handkerchief
The Home (2025)
Petty criminal Pete Davidson is given a job at a retirement home only to discover that sinister activities are occurring all around him. From the director of The Purge films
The Rule of Jenny Pen (2024)
Rather good New Zealand made horror film set in a geriatric home with Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow engaged in a series of psychological games as a stroke-impaired Rush tries to stop a murderous Lithgow
28 Years Later … The Bone Temple (2026)
A follow-up to 28 Years Later …, made even before the first film was released. This gives a deeper exploration of the character of Dr Kelson and proves a surprisingly good complement to its predecessor
Mercy (2026)
Director Timur Bekmambetov makes a film in the Screenlife process where the screen becomes a computer screen. Set a near future L.A. where the judicial system has been replaced by an A.I
Into the Mirror (2003)
A South Korean entry in the fad for Asian ghost stories that were popular in the 2000s following the successes of Ring and Ju-on/The Grudge. This later underwent remake as Alexandre Aja’s Mirrors
Hansel and Gretel (2007)
Confusingly, despite the title, this is not an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairytale but a cryptic and often baffling South Korean horror film about people trapped by children at a sinister house in the forest
Repligator (1996)
A film about a teleportation experiment that has the unforeseen effect of turning men into woman and then into human-alligator hybrids. We are in extremely bad movie stakes here
Tales from the Hood 3 (2020)
Tales from the Hood was a horror anthology made by African American filmmakers that worked familiar horror themes in around race issues. It has developed a small cult reputation. This was the second of two sequels
Margaux (2022)
Group of young people get away to a smarthome for the weekend, which then tries to kill them. We have had a spate of films of recent about smarthome A.I.’s run amok. This is the possibly the most ridiculous
Cells At Work (2024)
A rather hilarious live-action manga adaptation that depicts the inner workings of the human body in terms of a series of talking blood cells. Not dissimilar to the US-made Osmosis Jones
Primate (2025)
Johannes Roberts is a director that has been producing some solid work since the 2000s. Here he makes a film about a rabid killer chimpanzee that ratchets up some great tension
We Bury the Dead (2024)
The zombie film underwent a major revival in the 2000s but by the mid-2020s a horde of low-budget copycats has exhausted most creative possibilities. This shows there is still some originality to be found
Dead Dudes in the House (1989)
Known under various titles including Dead Dudes in the House and The House on Tombstone Hill, a film about a group of young people who go to renovate a house but find themselves trapped inside being killed
Farmhouse (2008)
A film about a couple who break down on a country road and seek help at a sinister farmhouse, before everything turns into Torture Porn territory. And then things get weird
The Lost Missile (1958)
A film from the heyday of Cold War hysteria made not long after the launch of the first ICBM about a mysterious hypersonic missile that is possibly of alien origin that terrorises the US
The Whispering Star (2015)
The very strange Japanese director Shion Sono makes a film about an intergalactic package delivery android, although this is anything but a regular SF film. Filmed in the Fukushima Exclusion Zone.
Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970)
Mario Bava essentially created the giallo film. Here he returns to the genre and delivers an entry about an man obsessed with killing brides that comes filled with exquisitely stylish surroundings and directorial set-pieces
Osiris (2025)
Soldiers in the middle of a warzone are abducted by aliens and wake up aboard an alien facility. An interesting set up that dissolves into massive amounts of artillery fire and action
The Housemaid (2025)
An airport psycho-thriller that feels like wannabe Gillian Flynn that has been mounted as a vehicle for the talent-handicapped Sydney Sweeney. The whole plot hangs on a believability stretching mid-film twist revelation
Anaconda (2025)
Anaconda was a CGI monster movie that has subsequently gained a bad movie reputation. The idea of a comedy remake about conducting a remake of the film just seems a little too cutely meta
Doomsday Meteor (2023)
Another enterprising low-budget disaster movie from The Asylum about a meteor on a collision course with the Earth. The great Joe Roche is on script and creates an amazingly almost plausible scenario
Absolute Zero (2006)
A Syfy Channel disaster movie based around the scientifically nonsensical idea of the Earth’s pole undergoing a magnetic shift and temperatures being reduced to absolute zero
The Medium (2021)
A Thai possession film shot Found Footage. This takes place among very different cultural rituals, which makes a welcome difference to the cliches that dominate Western possession films, and builds up to something quite out there
Tarzan in Manhattan (1989)
Comedy take on the Tarzan character with Joe Lara playing Tarzan who comes to New York and promptly proves to be a fish out of water. The filmmakers were likely inspired by the then recent hit of Crocodile Dundee
A Nightmare Wakes (2020)
One of several films based on the famous writer’s workshop at Villa Diodati in 1816 and the meeting with Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and Dr Polidori that led to Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein
Mr Crocket (2024)
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
Zootopia 2 (2025)
Zootopia was one of Disney’s freshest animated works in a decade largely marked only by mediocrity. This is a sequel where the fantastically original world of the first film slips into being just another Disney IP
Greenland: Migration (2026)
Greenland was a disaster movie on the familiar theme of a comet colliding with the Earth. This is a desultory sequel where the survivors emerge from the shelters to now have to survive in a changed post-apocalyptic world
Guess What Happened to Count Dracula? (1971)
A forgotten effort made during the 1960s/70s resurgence of the vampire film. One of the first films to depict Dracula in the present-day. The answer to the title question is that he is now running a nightclub in L.A.
Dracula Rising (1992)
The 1990s brought us the darkly romantic vampire spearheaded by Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This was a Roger Corman produced bandwagon jumper on the trend
The Hound of the Baskervilles (2000)
Another adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes quasi-supernatural mystery. This is also one of the worst ever thanks to the wildly over-acted, scenery chewing performance from Matt Frewer, badly miscast as Holmes
2036 Origin Unknown (2018)
An SF film where a remote probe lands to Mars uncovers a mysterious artefact of possible alien origin on the Martian surface. And then things start getting weird.
Troma’s War (1988)
The nearest that Troma Films ever made to an epic, their biggest budgeted film ever, a satiric war film, albeit conducted with their usual cartoon splatter effects and bad taste humour
Locked (2025)
A thriller in which Bill Skarsgård is a petty thief who break into a SUV only to become trapped inside and psychologically tormented by the vehicle’s owner Anthony Hopkins
The Girl in the Trunk (2024)
A thriller that comes with an identical premise to the earlier Trunk about a girl who is abducted and locked inside the trunk of a car from where she tries to affect an escape from her abductor
Fixed (2025)
An animated film from Genndy Tartakovsky, director of the Hotel Transylvania films, that is a really quite filthy and hilarious story of a dog about to have its testicles removed who goes on one last adventure
Mother of Flies (2025)
The Adams Family have become one of the most impressive genre talents in recent years. It has been fascinating watching them explore a dark version of American folk horror – this takes them into the darkest places they have visited yet
Body Puzzle (1992)
A giallo from Lamberto Bava, whose father Mario formulated the essentials of the genre. Joanna Pacula finds a killer leaving body parts in her home, along with notes signed by her dead husband
Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972)
A modest and not bad giallo film from Umberto Lenzi, the director who created the notorious Italian cannibal film. Antonio Sabato [Sr] tries to trace the identity of a black in black who leaves a silver pendant at each murder
The Call (2020)
A South Korean film that remakes The Caller about a girl who finds she can make phone calls across time to another woman only to find that the caller is a psychopath who begins to wreak havoc with her timeline
Plus One (2013)
An interesting and unusual film where teens attending a house party find that it has been invaded by doppelgangers of themselves who are taking over their lives
The Specials (2000)
An obscure parody about a team of inept and dysfunctional superheroes that was one of the earliest works from a then unknown James Gunn (who not only writes but stars as one of the superheroes)
Time Addicts (2023)
This is an Australian film where two crystal meth addicts find a drug that transports them through time. While keeping itself contained to a single location, this emerges out into a cleverly constructed time paradox
Nefarious (2023)
A psychologist is sent in to interview a killer facing execution who makes the claim he is possessed by a demon. Despite being made by the people behind God’s Not Dead, this is actually a well-made and captivating film
Rabbit Trap (2025)
Another entry in the burgeoning Folk Horror genre, a moody work about a couple of musicians living in the Welsh countryside in the 1970s befriend a very mysterious boy who shows them the secrets of the landscape
Rituals (1977)
A quite good but little seen Backwoods Brutality film from the great era of Canuxploitation with overtones of Deliverance as hikers in the wilderness are harassed by mysterious figures who play taunting psychological games
The Naked Vampire (1970)
The second in the works of arty vampire erotica that gained French director Jean Rollin a cult following. The surreal visuals and in particular the costuming make for mind-boggling visuals
Straight on Till Morning (1972)
A psycho film (as opposed to one of their psycho-thrillers) from Hammer Films in which innocent and unworldwise Rita Tushingham arrives in London only to be lured in by ice cold killer Shane Briant
The Invisibles (2024)
This has an intriguingly original concept where milquetoast Tim Blake Nelson wakes up to find he has faded away and become invisible to other people – and then finds a secret world of other similar Invisibles
Predator: Badlands (2025)
The ninth Predator film. This changes the mix quite considerably from the usual alien huntsman vs human prey formula we have had so far. It also offers a return to the Alien universe, although not quite what we expect
The Dam (2025)
This offers the novelty of being the world’s first Ukrainian zombie film. Being made in the midst the Russian invasion, this lays into Soviet Russia and its failings with a scathing regard
Puppet Master 4 (1993)
The fourth in Charles Band’s most popular series about a group of malevolent dolls. This turns the dolls into good guys and adds an Ancient Egyptian deity who despatches a Terminator robot against them
House IV (1992)
The fourth and last in the series of 1980s horror comedies that began with House produced by Friday the 13th director Sean S. Cunningham. This brings the first film’s William Katt back to round the series out
Die Screaming Marianne (1971)
Pete Walker was one of the most underrated directors of the 1970s Anglo-horror wave. This was his first film. Compared to Walker’s later works, this is more a psycho-thriller that sits on the borderline of being horror
Tobor the Great (1954)
Cinema’s first cuddly, friendly robot that is programmed according to Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, predating Forbidden Planet’s Robbie the Robot. A modest overlooked film of the 1950s SF era
Freelance (2024)
An Australian thriller about a girl who takes an editing job because she needs the money only to realise that what she is asked to work on are snuff movies. The film follows her descent into a dark and disturbed state of mind
Darkgame (2024)
A film about a snuff site that broadcasts a torture gameshow live on the web. This is a thriller that feels as though made by people who know nothing about the internet or law enforcement procedure
Jules (2023)
Likeable comedy variant on E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial in which senior citizen Ben Kingsley befriends an alien visitor after its UFO crashes in his backyard. Few films seem to be made with such an acute awareness of the issues of aging
Wicked: For Good (2025)
The second half of the film adaptation of the musical Wicked. This essentially operates as Wizard of Oz fanfiction and substantially wrenches the characters and backstories from the 1939 film out of shape to write its own story
Please Don’t Feed the Children (2024)
Steven Spielberg’s daughter Destry makes her directorial debut with a confused mix of an imprisonment thriller and a zombie film, albeit a zombie film that only produces a single zombie
Older Gods (2023)
An original work that conjures a fantastic sense of ominous Lovecraftian cosmic horror as a man is haunted by a cult whose purpose is to wake a slumbering deity that is dreaming all of reality
H.P. Lovecraft’s Cool Air (2006)
Low-budget director Albert Pyun, best known for his kickboxing cyborg action films, conducts a micro-budgeted adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story about a scientist who fends off death by keeping their room chilled
Gawain and the Green Knight (1973)
The first film version of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the tales associated with the Arthurian legends. An obscure, little seen version starring singer Murray Head as Gawain
The Haunting of Morella (1990)
An adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story produced by Roger Corman. Alas giving it to exploitation director Jim Wynorski, who likes to add really well stacked women to everything does, kills all of Poe’s atmosphere