The Sleeping Woman (2024)
A Spanish film that comes with overtones of I Walked with a Zombie and Patrick where a comatose wife starts to take control of the mind of the nurse who is tending her
The Yeti (2026)
A monster movie based around The Yeti, this starts out as a B-budget adventure film with an expedition to Alaska in search of missing explorers who become trapped by a ferocious Yeti
The Magic Faraway Tree (2026)
Adaptation of a book by famous children’s writer Enid Blyton about a series of adventures in a magical tree. Blyton would be turning in her grave at some of the changes and modernisations
Redux Redux (2025)
A strong and intelligent multiverse film filled with some great twists where a woman travels across multiple worlds to track down and kill different versions of the man who murdered her daughter
A Taste of Evil (1971)
TV movie psycho-thriller produced by Aaron Spelling (plus assorted Anglo-horror veterans) where heiress Barbara Parkins thinks she is going crazy. Barbara Stanwyck goes the Baby Jane route
Dawn of the Dragonslayer (2011)
From the people who made the Mythica films, this is a modest and well made fantasy film about a young farmboy thrust into the role of dragonslayer that does good things on a limited budget
Beautiful Teacher in Torture Hell (1985)
An imprisonment thriller with a difference, a work of Japanese BDSM erotica where a young teacher is imprisoned and erotically tortured. Quite out there and different to anything Western erotica turns out
Stream (2024)
Horror film with a substantial cast of genre veterans where Jeffrey Combs imprisons guests in a hotel and livestreams as a group of killers compete to rack up the most creative kill
Death Streamer (2024)
A film from low-budget producer/director Charles Band about a trio of horror podcasters who come across a vampire that livestreams its kills on the internet, only for their attention to bring it after them
Altered (2025)
From Iron Sky director Timo Vuorensola, Tom Felton stars as a wheelchair-ridden hero battling a genetic dystopia. This emerges as a bizarre melding of Gattaca and Upgrade
Obsession (2025)
A nerdy guy’s wish to have a girl love him goes badly wrong turning her into something deranged. This became a word of mouth box-office hit and signals Curry Barker as a major new genre director
Amsterdamned II (2025)
Amsterdamned with a detective pursuing a frogman serial killer prowling the canals of Amsterdam was a hugely underrated action film. 37 years later the director and lead actor reteam for a sequel
Latency (2023)
A film about an agoraphobic videogamer confined to their apartment who is given a Virtual Reality headset to test that soon starts to warp their sense of reality
ClearMind (2024)
This starts out as a seeming improv piece about several couples gathered for a weekend where the bickering becomes increasingly darker, all before it reaches an SF twist
Pulse 2 (2008)
This was the first of two sequels to the Wes Craven scripted Pulse, the English language version of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s intensely spooky film about ghosts from the internet
The Last Loner (2019)
A homage to Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic Stalker about people venturing into a mysterious alien zone. This is rather fascinatingly filmed inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
Solvent (2024)
An Austrian film shot entirely using a GoPro camera where a team investigating an abandoned farm uncover Nazi artifacts and an evil that seems to possess the lead character
Compulsion (2024)
Director Neil Marshall once had great promise but his recent work has become fairly tatty. Here he and lead actress, the controversy-laden Charlotte Kirk, have fun making a throwback to the 1990s erotic thriller
Bone Lake (2024)
A psycho-sexual thriller that is being heralded as a throwback to the 1990s erotic thriller a la Basic Instinct but suffers from an utter tameness that would have been ridiculed in the 1990s heyday
Masters of the Universe (2026)
A reboot of Masters of the Universe, this fully embraces the mythology of the animated series and gives them great life. But is also a work that is constantly deflating any chance you are taking it seriously
The Sheep Detectives (2026)
This has one of the most off the wall premises in some time – talking sheep team up to act as detectives and solve the murder of their shepherd. Think Babe meets Agatha Christie. The results are hilarious
Ape vs Mecha Ape (2023)
Ape vs Monster was The Asylum’s mockbuster take on Godzilla vs Kong. This is a sequel that takes a few leaves from Godzilla’s Mechagodzilla and pits the giant ape up against a giant robotic ape
Atlantic Rim: Resurrection (2018)
When Guillermo Del Toro made Pacific Rim, The Asylum switched US seaboards to make Atlantic Rim. With the release of the Pacific Rim sequel, The Asylum followed in kind
Dead & Breakfast (2004)
A sometimes amateurish film about people at a B&B surrounded by zombies. This takes a horror comedy tone and gets very gory. Not to mention features an amazing cast
Santo and Blue Demon vs Dracula and the Wolfman (1973)
One of the better films from Santo the Mexican wrestling superhero, quite an atmospheric work where Santo and his friend Blue Demon faces Dracula and his werewolf acolyte
Michel Gondry: Do It Yourself (2023)
A documentary focused on the unique and distinctive French director Michel Gondry, tracing his emergence through music video and to the success of films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Doctor Plague (2026)
A British thriller where detective Martin Kemp has to deal with a series of murders conducted by someone in a plague doctor mask, which supposedly replicate the Jack the Ripper killings
Primitive War (2025)
Essentially Platoon meets Jurassic Park. A surprisingly watchable film that places a unit of soldiers in the midst of the Vietnam War up against dinosaurs where things get bloody and ferocious
Citizen Vigilante (2026)
Uwe Boll makes a return to filmmaking. The side of Boll that most people never appreciated was him angry at social issues. With a charismatic Armie Hammer in the lead, Boll gets angry about the European refugee crisis
The Slasher … Is the Sex Maniac! (1972)
A giallo film about a killer who is murdering adulterous women. Standard material but some of the film’s dated sexual attitudes cause quite a double take today
The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972)
A giallo film where a family curse about the vengeance of a red queen starts being enacted with a mystery figure bumping off relatives following the reading of a will
Licensed to Love and Kill (1979)
One in a series of British spy films made in imitation of the James Bond series. As evidenced by the alternate title The Man from S.E.X., this takes things further than the Bond films do
The Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyssey (1988)
The hugely underrated Vincent Ward makes a film about Mediaeval pilgrims travelling through time to the present. Shot in an series of extraordinary images that show how bewildering the modern world would be to them
The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil (2019)
The tough hard-boiled Korean gangster film is a genre of its own. This uniquely has a detective and a crime kingpin deciding to join forces to track down a serial killer. Slated for remake by James Wan
Crackcoon (2024)
This is another of the low-budget films that take their inspiration from Cocaine Bear with a drug-addicted raccoon amok. This sits right between bad movie stakes and passable amusement
Catnado (2022)
We’ve had Sharknado. Now comes Catnado, an anthology about storms of cats. This contains episodes so pitiful and ineptly made that this enters into the unwatchable
Apex (2026)
Charlize Theron is on a wilderness adventure in the Australian Outback when she is hunted by Taron Egerton. A variant on The Most Dangerous Game with Egerton seemingly cast as Mick out of Wolf Creek
Afterburn (2025)
Action film with Dave Bautista as a treasure hunter retrieving items in a post-apocalyptic world. Directed by a former stuntman, this plays much to the action element with little else of substance
Seeding of a Ghost (1983)
A completely deranged film from Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers involving the resurrection of a dead wife to exact retribution. Full of ghost sex, gore and madcap creature effects
The Ghost Snatchers (1986)
Hong Kong supernatural film about a new tower block that is haunted because its feng shui is out. This goes well beyond the initial fantasy it starts out as being into moments of out-and-out dementia
One Million AC/DC (1969)
A lost Edward D. Wood Jr film. Clearly made as a parody on the hit Raquel Welch-starring One Million Years B.C., this is adult work depicting the sex lives of cave people
Helldriver (2010)
A mind-bogglingly wacky entry in the gonzo Japanese splatter film featuring a crazed bloodbath as Japan is overrun by zombies. This goes frequently nuts featuring vehicles and plans made up of zombie bodies
The History of Time Travel (2014)
An ingenious mockumentary about the development of a time travel machine. This takes place as a ‘documentary’ discussing the invention but the cleverness is in seeing how small details keep changing in the background
Troll 2 (2025)
Not the notorious bad movie but a sequel to Troll, the Norwegian-made effects spectacular about the revival of a giant troll. This is more of the same but with the effects pushed to a more spectacular level
Hokum (2026)
Irish director Damian McCarthy impressed a good deal with Oddity. In his equally spooky follow-up, writer Adam Scott travels to a hotel in Ireland only to become trapped in a haunted suite
The Astronaut (2025)
Kate Mara plays an astronaut returned from a space mission strangely changed. Before you can say The Quatermass Xperiment, ‘something’ mysteriously appears to be entering the house at night
The Amityville Harvest (2020)
Another film masquerading with some relevance to The Amityville Horror, although this extends no further than the title. This is an almost interesting effort where a film crew interview a possible vampire
Amityville Cult (2021)
Another film that appropriates the Amityville name for an otherwise unrelated film concerning a man who inherits a house in the town, digs into the past and soon finds a devil worship cult all around him
Madame White Snake (1956)
Lushly beautiful Japanese film adapting a Chinese folklore tale about a mortal who marries a snake goddess. One of the earliest Japanese films in colour with fantastical touches away ahead of their time
Right At Your Door (2006)
One of the fear-fraught films made in the aftermath of 9/11, a tense thriller concerning the detonation of a dirty bomb in L.A. and the panic that descends as one man tries to barricade his home
The Man in the White Van (2023)
A fake True Crime film. This is loosely to the point of almost non-existently based on a serial killer who stalked victims in a van in 1970s Florida. This is blown up into a Duel wannabe with the van prowling everywhere
The Occupant (2025)
A woman survives a helicopter crash and must make a harsh wilderness trek through the Caucasus Mountains before discovering that the helpful voice on the other end of the radio may be something not human
Animal Farm (2025)
Actor Andy Serkis directs an adaptation of George Orwell’s satiric talking animals fable. However, the decision to update the story comes unstuck in spectacularly awful ways
Sangre Del Toro (2025)
A documentary about Guillermo Del Toro made on the occasion of an exhibition of props and artwork from his collection. Interviewed, Del Toro talks candidly, granting us an extraordinary insight into his influences and process
Violent Blood Bath (1974)
A Spanish thriller about the investigation into mysterious payment made to an executed killer, which is then followed by a series of copycat killings that mimic those conducted by the dead killer
Vengeance of the Zombies (1973)
One of the few films to come out after George Romero where zombies are still associated with voodoo. Spanish horror star Paul Naschy writes and plays three roles in a film that comes with a wild mix of cross-cultural ideas
Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949)
From the early days of Hammer Films, one of several films based on Dick Barton, a popular radio hero. A progenitor of the spy movie with the title hero trying to prevent foreign agents unleashing a deadly sonic ray
The Greenaway Alphabet (2017)
A documentary about arthouse director and regular genre contributor Peter Greenaway. This takes an alphabetical look through Greenaway’s themes and offers some peculiar insights into him as a person
Out of Darkness (2022)
A film that follows a group of cavepeople who set out on a journey to find a new land to only to be hunted by mysterious unknown, possibly supernatural threat
Piglet (2025)
Another of the horror versions of children’s stories, this has a in-name-only connection to Winnie-the-Pooh’s Piglet and is otherwise a variant on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre about a growth-hormone enhanced killer
Alice in Terrorland (2023)
Following Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey and its trashing of a classic children’s character, a horror version of Alice in Wonderland where the heroine has dark, hallucinatory visions of the book’s characters
Mortal Kombat II (2026)
A sequel to the 2021 revival of the film series based on the videogame and a much more satisfying film than its predecessor. The first film was all origin story, but this plunges us into the actual kombat itself
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026)
Blumhouse conduct not a reboot but a new mummy film – that has no actual mummy in it and instead seems to have taken most of its moves from The Exorcist. And naturally the title leaves you asking “Lee who?”
Insanitarium (2008)
Horror film where Jesse Metcalfe has himself committed to an asylum to rescue his sister but comes up against Peter Stormare conducting mad science experiments turning inmates into zombies
Hellmaster (1992)
Typical 1990s video release with mad scientist John Saxon creating zombie experiments amid entertainingly gooey meltdowns and a title intended to make you think this is a Hellraiser film
Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon a Time (2021)
This was the fourth film in the Neon Genesis Evangelion reboot film series and concludes the saga. Rather than offering any answers or solution to the cryptic world we are in, this opts for a major letdown of a wrap-up
The Rocking Horse Winner (1949)
Classic adaptation of a D.H. Lawrence story where a boy’s rocking horse has the ability to predict winners at the racetrack. Shot in stark black-and-white and set amid the grim economic realities of post-War Britain
New Life (2023)
A thriller about the hunt for the carrier of a deadly mutated form of Ebola. This is a not uninteresting film but it seems stuck in pre-Covid depictions of plague and pandemic
Hold Your Breath (2024)
This has quite a few similarities to the underrated The Wind with Sarah Paulson as a mother in the 1930s Dustbowl seeing possible supernatural figures amid the dust storms, which could just as easily be fraying sanity
Project Hail Mary (2026)
A popular hit based on a book by Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian, where Ryan Gosling is a scientist who undergoes a space expedition and makes alien contact in an effort to save the Earth
Cold Storage (2026)
David Koepp is a high-profile screenwriter of Jurassic Park and other works. Here he adapts his own novel about a deadly fungus that overruns a storage facility into a wonderfully snappy and fun horror show
Chronicles of an Exorcism (2008)
This has the distinction of being the very first Found Footage possession and exorcism film. This has become commonplace since but is quite different in its treatment than subsequent efforts
The Devil’s Doorway (2018)
Irish made Found Footage film where the investigation into a seeming miracle at a Catholic orphanage uncovers a case of possession and assorted deviltry taking place
Porno Holocaust (1981)
From cult director Joe D’Amato, this throws together hardcore erotica and gory zombie film in a conceptually bizarre mix that leaves you scratching your head
The Quiet Earth (1985)
Evocative New Zealand-made Last People on Earth drama. Although the film reaches a frustrating ending that leaves much unanswered, the earlier scenes showing a man alone in a deserted world have an uncommon poetry
A Dark Song (2016)
This is an absolutely fascinating film about the efforts to perfect an occult ritual. It feels as though the filmmakers have dispensed with Hollywood cliches and has researched the real thing
Worldbreaker (2025)
The greatly underrated Brad Anderson makes a film about a father and daughter trying to survive in a world overrun by monsters. A film that reaches for something epic but lets it fall through its hands
Ready or Not: Here I Come (2026)
Ready or Not was a reasonable hit with audiences. Now Samara Weaving and the same creative team are back with a sequel that expands the game and polishes the black humour to a point of perfection
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026)
Sequel to the animated The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which was the second highest grossing film of 2023. From the people behind the Despicable Me films, this exists as little more than eye candy for five-year-olds
Nix (2022)
From the director of the Sharknado films. This concerns a family dealing with tragedy caused by a lake monster. Unlike Sharknado, this a work that is taking itself seriously
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (1976)
A hit Brazilian film with Sonia Braga as a widow who remarries only for her wayward late husband to reappear as a ghost after she finds she is missing his passion. Charming and whimsical
The Sonata (2018)
A film where a violinist is drawn in to the mystery of a piece of classical music with occult properties, this is a classy and well-made production above the mill of the average horror film
We Are Zombies (2023)
A zombie comedy from the Quebecois trio who were responsible for Turbo Kid, this takes place in a world where zombies are less a horde than an annoyance who have been relegated to the fringes of society
Miss Zombie (2013)
A remarkable little Japanese zombie film about a family who adopt a zombie maid. This is shot kitchen sink style and becomes a study in the way her blank presence begins to affect everyone around her
Influencers (2025)
Influencer with Cassandra Naud as a psycho who targets and then impersonates social media influencers was a modest hit, filled with a series of sharp whiplash twists. This is a sequel
Hoppers (2026)
The 30th film from Pixar, a strange take on Avatar where a young conservationist enters a robotic beaver body in order to venture out among the animals. Directed with a good deal of likeably snappy humour
Exit 8 (2025)
Enigmatic adaptation of a Japanese videogame where the protagonist is trapped inside a railway platform tunnel and must walk through the same corridor that repeats itself with minute variations to find the exit
From the Dead of Night (1989)
A tv mini-series where Lindsay Wagner has a near-death experience and is then haunted by people come back from the dead to kill her. From the author of The Howling
Relentless (1989)
A popular thriller in its day about a cop tracking a serial killer (played by Brat Packer Judd Nelson). This prefigures The Silence of the Lambs in some interesting ways. Several sequels followed
Night Watch (1973)
Called the only horror film Elizabeth Taylor ever appeared in (although one would dispute that somewhat), this feels like a Hammer psycho-thriller made with an A-list cast
A Knight’s War (2025)
An unusual, visually fascinating fantasy film where a knight enters into the realm of demons to save a girl, while being granted a talisman that allows him to continually be killed and resurrected
Darken (2017)
A film that comes with an interesting sounding premise where a woman ventures through a doorway into a labyrinth world of interconnected rooms and ends up in a fight against the ruling theocracy
Sweeney Todd: Slice & Dice (2025)
Another version of the Sweeney Todd legend. Rather than a musical, this is a straight horror version, produced on low-budget. Here we learn that Sweeney is on a mission to kill off members of the aristocracy
Bulk (2025)
Ben Wheatley has gained a cult following in recent years with films like Kill List and High Rise. Here he sets out to make a deliberately low-tech multiverse film that becomes a real head-scratcher
Witchboard (2024)
A remake of the 1980s horror Witchboard. The original was just a VHS release and here is given a better budgeted workover, but disappears among a host of ouija-titled films of recent years
The Blood Rose (1970)
Influenced by the classic Eyes Without a Face, this is a work of French Gothic about an aristocrat trying to find the right woman to use her face for his disfigured wife
Ditto (2000)
A South Korean film that came out around the same time as Frequency and has an almost identical premise about two people who start talking by radio while separated in time by twenty years.
Jekyll & Hyde (2021)
An enterprising low-budget adaptation of the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story, which has been filmed numerous times. This offers the most radical spin on the story of any adaptation to date
Timecut (2024)
A time travel film produced by Christopher Landon that has a number of similarities to Totally Killer in which a girl travels back in time to 2003 to prevent her sister being murdered by a serial killer
Omni Loop (2024)
A timeloop film with a difference where Mary-Louise Parker takes pills that help her go back and relive the previous five days as she seeks to find ways to travel back even further
