The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Historical Fantasy should be differentiated from Historical Events in Fiction, which concerns the treatment of past events in a fictional context or ones offering alternate explanations. Nor does this include Time Travel Films in which travellers visit the past.
Historical Fantasy is set during a recognisable historic era in the past. It winds fantastical elements in to the setting of a known historical era – such as centurions, samurai or pirates facing monsters, mythological creatures or alien invaders. It may feature actual historical characters or more commonly offer fantastic stories based on their lives, or else be set around entirely fictional characters.
The Arthurian Legends – the tales of King Arthur – are historical fantasies set around the reign of a mythic king amid the use of magic. One could also include the adventures of mythic figures of folklore such as Robin Hood and Mulan, as well as the comic adventures of Asterix.
Some of these historic fantasies have become their own genres – see Weird Westerns and Steampunk. Almost the entire Wu Xia genre is an historical fantasy set in a non-specific dynasty of Chinese history. Similarly Arabian Nights Fantasy is set in a mythic version of the Islamic Golden Age that intermingles magic and assorted happenings.
A CGI animated film based on the popular comic-book character Asterix. After numerous other adaptations, this was the first of the Asterix films to be written directly for the screen
Powerful film from Christopher Smith set during the Middle Ages about a group on a journey to a village where a priestess can purportedly raise the dead. The film’s skewering of faith in an unforgettable ending is stunning
A stylishly made historical horror where Boris Karloff plays an evil heir to a European province who seeks to gain power by masquerading as his good twin brother
A standout Swiss-made film, an exceptionally well written work about a pact made with the devil by a mediaeval village that unleashes a plague of spiders and other curses upon them
From regular genre director Christophe Gans, this is a head-scratching mix of French historical drama, monster movie and imported Wu Xia action moves
Billed as the Chinese Lord of the Rings, this is an historically-based fantasy film that tries to out-Hollywood Hollywood in terms of effects, design and costuming and looks stunningly epic in scale
Tsui Hark returns to form in this lush Chinese-backed historical drama where his wildly fantastical martial arts combine with the story of the true-life detective De Renjie/Detective Dee
Federico Fellini conducts his version of the life of the great lover but turns it into a fantastical film of gorgeously surreal excess, filled with extravagant sets and costuming
US film based on a real Japanese historical incident that has been oddly spun out into a Keanu Reeves-starring epic samurai fantasy film. One of the biggest financial flops of 2013
Matt Damon helps defend the Great Wall of China against invading monsters. Directed by Zhang Yimou, this should be seen for its breathtaking visuals – vast battle scenes, lavish costumes – but you wish there had been more than that
A new film based on the epic legend of Siegfried, which gives it a grounded historical realism and tells it in terms of the mud, moral ambiguity and backstabbing in-politicking of tv’s Game of Thrones
Sequel to the Russian-made horror film Viy, this is an historical fantasy with a big budget that mounts spectacular effects sequence and provides name stars, even if the results are utterly bizarre
A surprisingly good low-budget film that places zombie into the mediaeval period amid the Black Death
One of the more unusual Japanese monster movies, one that operates just as much a samurai film, concerning the stone god of a mountain that awakens to defend downtrodden peasants
Adaptation of a Victor Hugo historical novel about a man with his face surgically altered into a grin – an image that later inspired Batman’s The Joker. This has clearly been intended to imitate Lon Chaney’s grotesque performances of this era and is exquisitely made by the great Paul Leni
South Korean attempt to make a Wu Xia film with swordsmen up against a hulking monster
The Disney live-action remake of Mulan finally arrives mired in controversy but the film itself proves a solid production for the most part, although never quite soars as a work of fantasy
Disney animated film based on the Chinese legend of the girl who posed as a warrior. Unlike the similar historically-based Pocahontas, this emerges as well rounded and satisfying
A modestly effective film about a group of deserting soldiers during the Napoleonic Wars who enter a haunted forest
Robert Eggers, the director who made The Witch and The Lighthouse, makes a violent, primal Viking film steeped in Norse mythology
Tilda Swinton plays a gender-changing immortal in Sally Potter’s eccentric adaptation of a Virginia Woolf novel
Superlatively moody and well written film that winds a young Edgar Allan Poe into an occult murder mystery
Disney bases an animated film on the historical character but warps the story considerably. It feels that this is a Disney animated film made more to adhere to Political Correctness than it is a good one
The Predator series continues. Dan Trachtenberg, the director of Prey, makes an animated offering that tells three stories of encounters between human and Predator in different eras of history
Stunning work of fantasy from Hayao Miyazaki. Made on an epic-sized story canvas and with a breathtaking beauty, this is one of the few original screen works to capture something of the nature and scale of written epic fantasy
A Japanese monster movie with a difference. The second in a trilogy of films about a giant stone deity that awakens to defend villagers in trouble
Good-natured DreamWorks animated film set during the Conquistadors arrival in South America. Aztec culture undergoes some modern rewriting but this remains modestly enjoyable (*)
A dark and mysterious historical fantasy about cartographers mapping the Finnish-Russian border who arrive at a mysterious village and an enigmatic stone sauna in the forest
Beautifully made animated film that won surprise recognition at the Academy Awards. More a festival film than necessarily a box-office one
Reasonable adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s stories about a Puritan warrior, an entry in the 00s sword-and-sorcery fad that comes with a welcomely dark edge
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
Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the classic Frank Miller graphic novel about the Greek battle of Thermopylae. In replicating the look of the original’s panels, Snyder pushes what would otherwise be a standard historical film into something extraordinarily stylised and fantastic
Less a 300 sequel or prequel than a parallel story, this offers much the same as before but in 3D and with naval instead of land combat. Seeing Zack Snyder’s amazing visuals repeated all over again, all the poses and hyper-masculinity now seem to bubble with an inherent risibility.
This comes with an intriguingly original concept – that Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortes during his conquest of Mexico came up against dinosaurs
A Viking film from Nicolas Winding Refn. Rather than being made in the sense of any historical film this is almost a mystical arthouse work, a work haunted by the austerity of its primal landscape
A film based on the real-life figure of Francois Vidocq, who became the world’s first detective, which the film uses as the stepping off point to create an exquisite dark fantasy
Russian-made adaptation of a classic horror story – the same one that was the basis of Mario Bava’s Black Sunday. It takes place as an exquisitely stylised 19th Century Gothic fantasy world but is a head-scratchingly incoherent mishmash on a plotting level
The third film from Irish animator Tomm Moore, a beautiful Princess Mononoke-like tale of a girl’s friendship with persecuted werewolves in the forest