The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Occult Artefacts refer to inanimate objects imbued with the powers of evil. These can variously possess or transform individuals, unleash demonic forces, resurrect the dead, possess the user or else open gateways to other realms.
Such objects can take almost any form from books and manuscripts to items of jewellery, swords and weaponry, doorways, keys, statues and busts to mysterious boxes.
Uwe Boll gained a reputation as the world’s worst director on the basis of his videogame adaptations. Prize exhibit was Alone in the Dark, which abandons the game and is a series of action scenes without explanatory rationale
A cheap and tattily made film from regular genre director David DeCoteau concerning a revived Aztec mummy. This had nothing at all to add to the genre.
The sequel to the DCEU’s Aquaman reaches for epic effects spectacle, although the character of Aquaman undergoes a substantial shift and is now given more of a comedy playing
A possession film that takes the Found Footage approach. This takes the traditional approach of Catholic priests intoning exorcism rituals etc and fails to do anything interesting
Horror film that has the interesting idea of paying homage to the 80s phenomenon of the video boardgame. A good idea given a so-so treatment
An entry from the abortive attempt to create a DC Comics shared universe. Dwayne Johnson takes on the role of the DC’s anti-hero in a film that is far more fun than the recent Marvel offerings
Horror film with an interesting cast line-up about a group on a weekend getaway who play a boardgame that serves to bring out secrets and hidden desires
Producer Herman Cohen had great success with I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. Here he makes a teenage vampire film where a troubled teen is hypnotically regressed into becoming a vampire
Luigi Cozzi’s return to screens after 26 years, a head-scratchingly bizarre effort overloaded with ideas about parallel worlds, cosmic journeys and homage to the early cinema of Georges Melies and others
A horror version of Cinderella where she gets to stab people with the glass slipper. This also features several modernisms where instead of a pumpkin coach, the fairy godmother conjures up Elon Musk to drive Cinderella to the ball in a Tesla
Supposedly based on a true story. A film that feels written entirely by cliches taken from every other haunting and exorcism film, but you cannot deny that director James Wan generates a more than fair degree of spooky atmosphere
The third of the Conjuring films, this lacks the presence of James Wan in the director’s seat while peddling an even more highly dubious Based on a True story claim regarding a demonic possession
Adaptation of DC’s Hellblazer comic-book that gets the Hollywood treatment where all of the character’s background and look has been thrown out and the part badly miscast with Keanu Reeves
The very first film from Guillermo Del Toro, a unique take on the vampire film concerning an aging antique dealer who finds a clockwork device that rejuvenates but leaves him with a taste for blood
TV mini-series that turns the discovery of Tutankamun’s tomb into an Indiana Jones adventure. But everything is played with a constant barrage of one-liners and action sequences so silly you can’t take any of the show seriously
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
Greg McLean has made an impressive name with the Wolf Creek films and Rogue. In his first US film, he delivers a disappointing and utterly generic haunted suburban house film
Celebrated British horror anthology, which tells five ghost stories and tales of the supernatural. All are strong stories with The Ventriloquist’s Dummy segment in particular having become regarded as a classic
Solid offering from the increasingly underrated Adam Mason that takes more than a few leaves from Hellraiser with a ghostsbusting team investigating occult happenings in an abandoned asylum
Big-budget Satanism film that came out during the mid-70s occult film fad, this promptly collapses into a bad movie through many unintentionally absurd touches and a nonsensical screenplay
One of the numerous European erotic vampire films made during the early 70s. This came out not long after The Exorcist and so the vampire countess is accompanied by a coven of Devil worshippers
One of the better films from Charles Band – an uncredited homage to Marvel’s Dr Strange. The film captures a wonderful atmosphere of esotericism and Jeffrey Combs is perfect as the sorcerer superhero
Doctor Strange was one of the better MCU films. Here Sam Raimi takes over in the director’s chair. This readily delves into multiverse themes but requires a major crash course in a plethora of Marvel tv series to follow
Paul Schrader’s original version of Exorcist: The Beginning that was junked by the producers. This is a far more subtle telling of the same story that eschews shock effect in favour of a moral struggle of the soul
UK’s Amicus Films had a reasonable hit with their horror anthology Dr Terror’s House of Horrors. Director/producer David L. Hewitt jumped in with a copy with a soundalike title produced on a poverty row budget
The third film based on the roleplaying game. The previous two films were forgettable but this is surprisingly good, taking a far darker tone than the usual sword-and-sorcery adventure and adding considerable moral complexity
An adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft short story. While more faithful to the story than the earlier 1969 adaptation, the film is very cheaply made and collapses into the frequently ridiculous
US film adaptation of a cult Italian comic-book about a private eye who investigates the supernatural, this comes out like a weak episode of tv’s Angel where a potential worthwhile idea descends to lame humour
A South Korean possession film that creates a fascinatingly outlandish and original plot by dropping the usual cliches to instead draw on Buddhism to create its own mythology
A film about backwoods occult that comes with much H.P. Lovecraft influence. An inngenue film made by several unknowns who later became key figures at Industrial Light and Magic
One of at least three identically titled films coming out around the same time based around the popularity of escape rooms. This has a group trapped in a room with an unleashed demonic force
Ferociously paced low-budget hit that put the names of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell on the map, both making their film debuts here. What made the film a cult hit was Raimi’s full tilt pace and entertainingly over-the-top splatter effects
A new take on The Evil Dead films, the fifth film in the series. This comes with the selling point of being a female-led sequel and offers a much more serious and gore-drenched take than previous entries
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? popularised the idea of the toon where cartoon characters mingle with humans. This was exploitation director Fred Olen Ray’s take where a stripper is possessed by a demonic toon
The worst exorcism film ever made. A ridiculous Christian evangelical film about a God-loving American family under attack by malevolent spirits emerged from a book on witchcraft! Supposedly based on a true story
One of the best of the Amicus horror anthologies. All of the episodes are strong, well cast and well directed. The third episode offers a particularly funny comic take on the exorcism film
Film adaptation of Marvel Comics’ demon superhero emerges as better than it had the right to be. The risibility of the image of a motorcycle-riding demon hero is made to work through some vivid and way-out effects
Follow-up to Ghostbusters: Afterlife, reuniting that film’s mix of new and classic cast. However, this becomes a plotting juggle that is often straining to find somewhere to include everyone
Creaky but atmospheric British film where Boris Karloff dies but is brought back from the dead by an Egyptian jewel to stalk his heirs through a big old mansion
The fourth and final of the Ghoulies films. This one comes from B-budget hack Jim Wynorski who seems to not be taking any of the show seriously
Adapted from a Kingsley Amis novel, this BBC mini-series is a ghost story for arts audiences. Albert Finney is great as a philandering hotelier who must deal with the appearances of an 18th Century sorcerer
Utterly generic action film with Mario Van Peebles as a detective tracing a street drug that turns people psychothic before finding he is up against a body-hopping demon
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
A low-budget film about a university hazing in a haunted house that goes wrong. This overspills with genre tropes to eventually arrive at an appealing ridiculousness
Hysterically bad film where Chuck Norris turns one-man fighting machine and goes all out to save the world from the Anti-Christ calling down the Armageddon
The first of the Hellraiser sequels. This lacks Clive Barker’s original dark obsessive vision but is worthwhile in its own right, expanding the scope of the story out into a magnificent vision of Hell
After a disastrous reboot of the Hellboy franchise, Millennium Media get it right, employing the comic’s creator on script, taking the series into wild directions with Hellboy up against Appalachian folk horrors
The Hellraiser sequels begin their descent to mediocrity. Clive Barker’s original vision of dark, forbidden pleasures has been watered down and the Cenobites become little more than campy variations on Freddy Krueger
The fifth Hellraiser sequel and the only one among the last four worth watching. It brings back Ashley Laurence but abandons the Cenobites for a fascinating series of reality bending games
Seventh and worst of the Hellraiser films. Clive Barker had departed three films ago and the copyright taken by a company that specialises in cheap sequels. This blurs reality and illusion so much it makes no sense
The film that put the name of Clive Barker on the map. A work of considerable imagination where Barker delves into forbidden pleasures and fuses the film with S&M imagery for the memorable creations of the Cenobites
A valiant attempt to remake Clive Barker’s glistening and brilliant original that only emerges as a better made version of one of the sequels. This has a disappointing tameness that would never have inspired a series of sequels
Fourth of the Hellraiser films. This attempts to tell a story set in three different eras but was subject to much studio interference that waters the vision down to something forgettable
The eighth of the Hellraiser films. By now a long way from Clive Barker’s original vision and no more than a haunted house story where the Cenobites occasionally turn up. With a young unknown Henry Cavill
Fifth and best of Hellraiser sequels after Clive Barker bowed out. Scott Derrickson made his directorial debut here and infuses the series with some of the wild imagery and perverse darkness that Barker gave the original
The ninth Hellraiser sequel. Most of the others are a far call from Clive Barker’s original. This demonstrates that all hope is not lost in a wild and imaginative opening sequence that adds an injection of creativity.
The ninth of the
TV movie that combines the mid-air disaster film of Airport with the 1970s occult fad with a line-up of name actors dealing with druidic stones that exude evil in the midst of a plane flight
We are familiar with the Justice League but this gives us an alternate League whose members have supernatural abilities or are versed in dealing with the occult.
This seems to be shaping up to be yet another low-budget haunted house film of which the genre has been over-saturated in recent years, While never straying too far from this, the film does throw in some interestingly strange twists that divert the attention
Justifiably obscure work of 1980s horror that involves a group of teens deciding to party in a museum and being slaughtered in a variety of increasingly ridiculous ways after an antique lamp is opened. These days 80s horror is celebrated for its cheesy amusement value but this doesn’t even rise to that level
Fitfully amusing fanboy comedy set around the works of H.P. Lovecraft. You suspect that Lovecraft, a noted conservative, would have deplored the idea of the nerd comedy, although you have to admit that the film gets a more authentic flavour of Lovecraft’s works than most adaptations do
Effective and unusual French film in which four prisoners in a jail cell discover an occult tome in the walls and start reading its spells thinking it can offer a means of escape. The film soon develops an anything-can-happen wildness
Another in the spate of films with copycat sinister-sounding adjectives for titles we have had since Insidious. This concerns a pregnant woman finding that the fetus she is carrying has been replaced by an evil spirit.
Lucio Fulci film about a series of supernatural deaths caused by an Egyptian amulet. An Incoherent and plotless mess filled with random supernatural effects and occasional gore scenes
Low-budget action film with Dolph Lundgren as a modern-day Knights Templar tasked with preventing The Devil returning to Earth at the millennium
A sequel to Alexandre Aja’s Mirrors that abandons most of the basics of the first film and strips everything down to a series of gory, novelty deaths
Low-budget film that would very much like it if we mistook it for one of the Brendan Fraser Mummy films
Sequel to the 1999 The Mummy. Here Stephen Sommers amplifies everything in that film by a factor of ten where the constant bombardment by the spectacular reaches an point of absurd overkill
Anthology of three H.P. Lovecraft tales from directors Christophe Gans, Brian Yuzna and Shusuke Kaneko. For claiming such a quintessentially Lovecraftian title as this, you feel that it should have been more than it is
Roman Polanski makes a return to Rosemary’s Baby territory in this work with Johnny Depp as a rare book collector on the trail of an occult tome. Polanski great a great sense of sinister forces surrounding Depp but the film reaches an unsatisfying ending
The best of the Welcome to Blumhouse films set among the rivalry of two sisters at a highly competitive music school where one gets an occult text allowing her an advantage
A couple of years ago, the hauntingly eerie Absentia made Mike Flanagan into a must-watch director; this is his follow-up – the story of an evil mirror that, while slightly the lesser of Absentia, conducts some undeniably effective games of reality and illusion
An Irish film that develops an incredibly uncanny atmosphere as a blind clairvoyant deduces what happened regarding her sister’s murder
Another title jumping on the fad for ouija board films we’ve had since Blumhouse’s Ouija series, this concerning an ouija board that has a malevolent spirit trapped inside it. Routine tension by the numbers – possessed people with glowing eyes are just not that scary
Another in the spate of deliberately ridiculous killer shark films concerning a ghost shark that emerges from an ouija board
Based on the urban legend surrounding a dybbuk box that turned up on an EBay auction, although the film throws this out to conduct an utterly generic possession story. Despite the novelty of drawing on Judaic mythology, the film still trades in the same tired cliches as the Christian exorcism film
One of the less successful, nevertheless underrated John Carpenter films where he pays tribute to Nigel Kneale in a conceptually mind-boggling mix of deviltry and quantum physics
The fourth of The Prophecy films about war between angels, the first to be made without Christopher Walken
Cheaply made sequel to the remake of House on Haunted Hill that turns it into a teen film dominated by gore set-pieces
This feels like someone has simply copied the idea of a secretive law enforcement agency from
Clive Barker based work about a monk pursuing two demonic succubi through time to the present. Clive Barker watered down for the Sci-Fi Channel but worth watching for the imaginative creature effects
A multi-director horror anthology where all the directors are Latin American
Friday the 13th so changed the horror genre that within two years it produced two four parodies of its title. From Roger Corman, this is more of an occasionally amusing parody of classic monster movies than the slasher film
Dull and unimaginative Silent Hill sequel that only revisits what went before. The first film had an uncanny otherworldly atmosphere but the sequel reduces everything to no more than pop-up Clive Barker
Peter Cushing-Christopher Lee vehicle from Amicus with Cushing as a collector who obtains the Marquis de Sade’s possessed skull. One of the more over-rated Anglo-horror films, this feels more like an episode from one of their anthologies than a full film
The first in a series of vampire films from Charles Band and Full Moon Productions. Several sequels followed.
Film spinoff from the popular Tales from the Crypt horror anthology tv series but with more gore effects, this is competently done but does nothing to distinguish itself
An Australian film has been getting some great word of mouth, a teen horror that stands it head and shoulders above its contemporaries
A horror anthology featuring episodes from seven different directors. As with other anthologies, the episodes vary in quality, ranging between the so-so, the mostly quite good and one standout segment, although it should be noted that not all are horror stories
Director Daniel E. Falicki’s Alien Implant made my Worst of 2017 list. This is one of his earlier, equally terrible films about a boardgame that possess its players
Film from B-budget director Fred Olen Ray that is sold in a way that would have you believe it is a copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark but in reality is no more than a dull and cheap revived mummy queen film
Aaaaaaaargh the director I love to hate, Joel Schumacher, turns out a halfway reasonable film. An original menace where Schumacher displays a good grasp of the modern horror film
A excruciatingly unfunny film that feels like one of Abbott and Costello’s monster bashes played as a crass frat comedy
A Roger Corman produced horror parody that conducts send ups of most of the horror icons of the 1980s – Freddy Krueger, Pinhead, Michael Meyers etc – without being particularly funny
Third of the V/H/S films, all horror anthologies in the Found Footage style. While the other two were fairly hit and miss, this is extremely good. Each of the four stories sits among the very best episodes among the current crop of multi-director horror anthologies
The original i>Violent Shit films were a series of plotless, gore-drenched German films of the 80-90s. This is a very loose Italian-made remake that is more about the activities of an occult serial killer. Not very well made but there are a lot of homages to classic giallo cinema
Richard E. Grant is a witchfinder who pursues warlock Julian Sands through a time vortex into the present day. David Twohy’s script takes all the Old Wives’ tale aspects of Middle Ages superstition seriously to immensely entertaining regard
Julian Sands returns in a sequel to Warlock where the frequently unserious effects of director Anthony Hickox turn it into a silly comic-book of a film
The Wishmaster series was a franchise based around a series of novelty effects wherein a malevolent djinn turned wishes against the wisher. This third entry is the utter nadir of the series where the novelty effects have been cheaply produced and the wishes indifferently conceived