The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Cloning refers to the ability to create a genetic duplicate of another person. Cloning is essentially creating a twin of an individual – just one that doesn’t happen to be born at the same time as the original.
Cloning has been demonstrated in the real world, although has yet to be done with a human being.
Science-fiction however is awash with numerous depictions of clones – of identity puzzles where people find their lives being taken over by clone duplicates or the realisation they themselves are clones.
Other works depict armies built up out of cloned individuals or futures where cloned bodies are a commonplace means of the individual transferring their personality after death. There is also an assortment of comedies and deliberately ridiculous films based around cloning premises.
Huge flop comedy for Eddie Murphy in which he plays a nightclub owner on The Moon. There is an almost good SF film hiding inside and depiction of a surprisingly detailed Lunar culture but the unnfunny comedy elements kill it
Disappointingly watered down live-action adaptation of the cult animated series. Karyn Kusama creates some interesting visuals but eventually everything lapses to Hollywood formula
Another in the recent spate of works about A.I. This is a nicely subdued film, quite different to all the others where Colin Farrell discovers that his android had a secret emotional life
The fourth of the Alien films. French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet comes on board and delivers a comic-bookish run through of a Joss Whedon script that overspills with too many ideas
Another of the DC animated films, based on a work that reinterpreted Superman. This is somewhat bitsy in condensing a 12-issue series to a 73-minute film but holds some moments of great writing
A modest and quite well written children’s film about a gifted twelve year-old (Martha Byrne) who gradually discovers that she is a clone
Third of the Austin Powers films and the point where the amusements of the other films topples over into a pandering indulgence to Mike Myers’ mugging, which is allowed to overtake the whole show
The second of the Austin Powers films is less sharp in its parody of the James Bond film and more focused on a series of broad scatological gags. Mike Myers owns the show in a trio of entertainingly gregarious performances
Roger Corman jumps aboard the Star Wars fad and offers up a version of The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven located in space. Corman has thrown a reasonable budget at the film for once and it emerges as colourfully enjoyable
French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet of The City of Lost Children and Amelie fame returns with an appealingly eccentric, beautifully designed comedic take on the machine revolution
From the director of Trump vs the Illuminati, gonzo animation where Bigfoot and several resurrected historical figures fight off invading aliens that include Stalin, Aleister Crowley and Anubis
Big-budget thrillers with Nazi villains were popular in the 70s. This pits acting legends Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck on opposite sides in a conceptually ingenious plot about the attempts to clone Hitler
Follow-up to the 2000 tv mini-series adaptation of Dune, this adapts Frank Herbert’s two books sequels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. The production lacks the depth of its predecessor
The almost indescribable second film from Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet of Delicatessen fame, a Dicekensian street urchin fantasy that takes place in a stunningly designed almost-familiar world filled with eccentric characters
One of the earliest film treatments on the subject of cloning, this comes with an intelligent and well written script in which Art Hindle creates twelve copies of himself. The original Orphan Black if you like.
SF neo-noir that suffers from a painfully low budget (particularly when it comes to its CGI) but transcends this with a consistently intelligent story and a world created with a reasonable sense of verisimilitude
One of the very first films dealing with cloning. This starts off well with a man’s discovery that a double has stolen his identity but thereafter becomes a long drawn-out pursuit thriller
Bruce Lee popularised the kung fu genre but then died. Welcome to the Brucespolitation phenomenon where for several years we had Bruce lookalikes appearing in copycat works. Several Bruce imitators appear here as his clones
A cross-historical epic from The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer. An uneven film driven more by its determination we view it as an epic. Surely a studio publicist’s nightmare, it grasps at the meaning of it all yet eludes telling audiences what it is about
Biochemistry professor Peter O’Toole tries to clone his late wife. A sublime film that has a way over-the-top eccentricity and sparkles with an exuberance of life
At face value, this seems to be no more than a Lorenzo Lamas action film for video release, but it surprises one and becomes a quite reasonable Cyberpunk film that conducts a smart airing of the tropes
This gets full marks for an attention grabbing title – outside of that it has the cheap shabbiness of a Troma film, substituting a gonzo sarcasm and plentiful bad taste and gore for many of the filmmaking basics
This has an insane plot about Satanists stealing the Shroud of Turin to clone a body to incarnate The Devil and a priest possessed by the archangel Michael wading into action with a glowing sword
Film in which a dying Karen Gillan has a clone made of herself only to make an unexpected recovery and be forced into a televised duel to death with the clone for ownership of her life
A novel take on the story of Bluebeard who forbids his wives to enter a room and kills them when they do. Here Bluebeard is a scientist who keeps cloning the same wife over. A sophisticated and intelligent film full of sharp and intriguing twists
A thorough embarrassment on Christopher Lee’s resume – an early Charles Band film in which Lee is a stranded alien inhabiting the cloned body of priest in a convent of nuns
Ang Lee dips his feet into the action genre in a conceptually fascinating work where assassin Will Smith facies a younger clone of himself. Smith’s performance and the effects used to de-age his double are top-notch
This involves girls abducted into a sex trafficking operation, along with mad science and possible cloning. Quite what it is all about is a good question
Film about a couple going to an institute where Robert De Niro promises a clone of their dead child. The film goes off the rails in an absurd and blatantly manipulative script that tries to turn this into a ghost story
Not an adaptation of the oft-filmed story from Jewish legend about the creation of a creature of clay but a Polish SF film set in a slightly dystopian future featuring the possible creation of artificial people
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.
A compilation of shorts from anime directors set in the Halo videogame universe. The first two episodes have a breathtaking scale but the others are bitsy stories but nothing standout
From SF writer Jim Munroe who made the impressive Ghosts With Shit Jobs, a micro-budgeted work set in a post-cyberpunk future where the fascination lies in the casually littered assumptions around the edges
Roland Emmerich produced comedy about a group of crusaders abducted by aliens where their bumbling ends up accidentally winning a space war. A promising idea rendered as idiotic knockabout farce.
Extraordinary Brandon Cronenberg film about a fictional country where those convicted of crimes can have clone copies executed in their place, leading to an tourist underworld where all crimes are permissible
What should have been a modest conceptual SF story about people coming to discover the true nature of the world they live in is killed by having its surprise given away by the publicity department and by being turned into an loud and over-inflated Michael Bay action vehicle
Doctor Who writer/producer Steven Moffat’s modernised revamping of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is one of the best versions of the story to date. Moffat reworks the story in fascinatingly radical ways, the writing has a blackly funny brilliance, while James Nesbitt gives a gleeful rafter-rattling performance
The film adaptation of the cult comic-book gets everything wrong. The designs and costumes look great but the film misses the comic’s satiric sense of humour and simply becomes a thudding Sylvester Stallone action vehicle
Fifth of the Jurassic Park films, a direct follow-on from the previous entry Jurassic World. Industrial Light and Magic do their usual excellent job but this time there feels like there are no new cards in the deck and the film is just recycling the same thing as before with minimal change
Another of the animated DC Comics films in which various of their regular characters find themselves incarnated in simulated combat arenas
A film I went into with no expectation that quickly creates a fascinating future and offers some ingeniously original treatments of cloning and Virtual Reality themes
Robert Rodriguez escalates his earlier Mexican-themed action film into an insanely creative comic-book overflowing with science-fiction devices (and homages). The casting alone is side-splitting and Rodriguez’s nonsensical absurdism wins the day
Parasite director Bong Joon Ho makes an ambitious SF film with Robert Pattinson as a clone(s) on a planetary colonisation expedition
Cutley appealing DreamWorks animated film that brings together a bunch of oddball creatures clearly intended as an affectionate homage to various 1950s sf films
SF film with Sam Rockwell as a lone man stationed on The Moon discovering the truth of his existence, this gained much word of mouth when it came out
Harold Ramis followed up the hit of Groundhog Day with this amiable comedy in which Michael Keaton is an overworked husband who creates several clones of himself to help with the workload
Film that assembles interesting a number of SF elements and twists but is killed by its delivery as a pretentious indie film
This has a similar scenario to Michael Bay’s The Island but also at 180 degree remove – where Bay was loud and bludgeoning, this approaches the idea as a subtle British childhood pastoral
Dismissed at the time, I have always though this George R.R. Martin adaptation was an underappreciated work. Not without its problems, it creates a great sense of cosmological grandeur and has an interesting story that makes it different to the usual Alien clones of the day
This falls short of being a great science-fiction film by a hairs breadth. Not the big space/action film it was sold as, more a Philip K. Dickian conceptual breakthrough film that seems to have borrowed large chunks of its set-up from Moon
Spanish film about a lone girl on a space mission who has never met another human being and her sudden awakening to the real nature of her world. To say more is to give the film’s on big surprise away. Alas after revealing this, the film seems at a loss what to do next
Disney Channel film about a cloned kid. The result indifferently slung together and the basic premise dealt with in a hardly serious way
Imprisonment thriller where Melanie Laurent wakes up trapped inside a cryogenic capsule, this expands out to become an excellent SF film
The film that had its entire plot ripped off as Michael Bay’s The Island. Without Bay’s action overkill, this is by far the better film, working as a fascinating mystery set-up that eventually leads to an ingenious conceptual breakthrough twist
The first film spun off from the popular Pokemon phenomenon and animated series, this is largely incomprehensible to anyone who is not familiar with the series
A low key but modestly effective film where an amnesiac man comes to the gradual realisation that he is a clone
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
Comedy released under the National Lampoon banner in which a nerdy student accidentally creates a clone of his object of desire. This feels like a mash-up between Weird Science or Multiplicity and one of the frat rat comedies inspired by National Lampoon’s Animal House
Halfway reasonable Jean-Claude Van Damme film in which he plays the clone of a serial killer who is brought to life in attempt to track down the original
Whatever you want to say about his acting ability, Keanu Reeves represents a cool and has smarts in the projects he takes on. So when he takes a producing role as here, you feel it is a project you should pay attention to. Instead, the cloning film that he makes is absolutely laughable and should contend for an award for the SF film with the least plausible science in it
Four films in and clear evidence that the Resident Evil series needs to be retired. This consists of tediously borrowed action moves now presented in 3D and a plot of random dead ends that make little sense
Third of the Resident Evil films. This expands the scale of action to show the entire world destroyed by the virus but for all that and a decent budget, director Russell Mulcahy fails to push the elements to a suitable head of steam
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
The Resident Evil films are designed for people who were introduced to drama via the Xbox, action sequences that can be assembled in random order and where it doesn’t matter what happens. I watched this, the sixth and final entry, with next-to-no enthusiasm but then quite unexpectedly it starts to work
This has the distinction of being the first film to depict cloning. An edgy conspiracy thriller where Senator Bradford Dillman wakes in a secret medical facility that clones important people
Another of the films from the Mexican wrestling superhero Santo where he and his friend Blue Demon encounter assorted Famous Monsters raised by a mad scientist
A low expectation effort, a space opera about the crew of a salvage vessel, that ends up being quite a bit better than the B-budget film it is
Quite good Korean film about a clone with vast psychic powers, this mounts to a climax that captures something of Akira
South Korean tv mini-series about the investigation of a moonbase with illicit experiments and something possibly alien unleashed
Arnold Schwarzenegger revisits something of Total Recall in this modest and clever action film in which he discovers that a clone has stolen his life
From Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame, an anime that seems a mix of Biggles and Never Let Me Go, all taking place in an alternate world. The film is exquisite in its detail
An hilarious Woody Allen film in which he plays a contemporary man cryogenically unthawed in the 22nd century. This satirisises SF cliches and contains some side-slitting comedy sequences
This has an irresistible premise – of doing for 1970s tv SF what GalaxyQuest did for Star Trek – parodying the sets, costumes and cliches. On the other hand, the superb conception fails to ever play out as comedy and the film centres around a series of singularly dull personal dramas
The last of the films spun off from Star Trek: The Next Generation and a dismal flop that killed the film series off. Tom Hardy as a bad guy Romulan is a cardboard threat while the uninspired plot rehashes The Wrath of Khan
The second of George Lucas’s Stars Wars prequels is no particular improvement. The romance is stiff and awkward, badly written while the effects sequences seem to be running out of new things to do and so just up the scale of what has happened before with so much going on it reaches a point of visual overload
The last of George Lucas’s Star Wars prequel trilogy and the last opportunity for him to get it right, which he generally does. The effects are expert but are not allowed to dominate as much as they did previously and the focus has come back onto the story and Anakin’s transformation into Darth Vader
The third of the films based around Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s Genesis II concept where a cryogenic sleeper awakes in a post-apocalyptic world
James Gunn’s almost completely successful reboot of the cinematic Superman, the first film perhaps that comes with a total confidence in the comic-book source and where Gunn is not afraid to be goofy
A condensed animated adaptation of the top-selling DC comic-book of all time The Death of Superman that comes with some massively exciting animated action set-pieces
SF film in which a terminally ill Mahershala Ali has a clone copy created to take his place but then begins to have second thoughts
Strange film where Tilda Swinton creates three copies of herself
A wonderfully paranoid film where drug dealer John Boyega discovers illicit mind control experiments are being conducted on a ghetto neighbourhood and that he is one in a series of clones
A clone of Donald Trump battles The Illuminati and the Egyptian god Anubis on Mars before travelling to Hell to sort out The Devil. The sheer dementia of the premise alone has one sitting down to watch
Supposedly an Airplane-styled movie parody that takes on 2001: A Space Odyssey (although this soon gets forgotten), this is one of the most painfully unfunny films ever made
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
B-budget director offers up a copy of Mad Max 2 and peppers it with plentiful tongue-in-cheek exploitation elements stirred with undeniable vigour
A sex-changed version of My Stepmother is an Alien in which Garry Shandling is an alien come to Earth to breed with a woman. Despite being directed by Mike Nichols this is as lame as it sounds and stumbles through tired routines that were not even funny the first time around
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
The finest film made yet on the subject of cloning. A beautifully directed film that deals with the tricky ethical issues when Eva Green decides to give birth to a clone of her lover Matt Smith and raise him as her son.
Modest and surprisingly well thought out SF film set in a future where swapping bodies is commonplace only for a man to find his original body has been stolen
Kevin Smith’s follow-up to Tusk slides off the cliff somewhere between Johnny Depp’s incredibly silly performance, a nemesis you can’t take seriously and what largely becomes a vanity exercise in nepotism – Smith and Depp creating a vehicle to highlight their daughters