A Haunted House (2013)
Marlon Wayans treads the same territory as his older brother Keenen Ivory’s Scary Movie films in this parody take on Paranormal Activity. Most of the film is pitched as a series of crude lowest common denominator gags
A Haunted House 2 (2014)
Sequel to A Haunted House where writer/star Marlon Wayans conducted a riff on his brother’s Scary Movie films. This is marginally more amusing than its predecessor
A Haunting at Silver Falls (2013)
Another supposedly based on a true story ghost story, although the absurdity of plotting makes this a nonsense. The film quickly slides to the irredeemably banal without a single spooky moment
A Horrible Way to Die (2010)
Adam Wingard has been a director on the rise in the last few years, although his films often feel as though they could have been more than they are. This mumblecore serial killer film is his most satisfying and fully achieved work so far
A House of Dynamite (2025)
Kathryn Bigelow makes a strong return to form with a film about the lead-up to an imminent a nuclear attack on the US. Made with a documentary-like urgency that convinces you this is the way that the real thing would play out
Da Hip Hop Witch (2000)
One of the worst films ever made – a parody of The Blair Witch Project that mostly consists of various rappers (including Eminem and Vanilla Ice) incoherently improvising a series of monologues about said witch
H & G (2013)
This Canadian film is a modernised telling of Hansel and Gretel where the witch becomes a man with possibly paedophile intent. A film seems to want to go into dark places but gives them an utterly tepid treatment
H (2002)
A South Korean copy of The Silence of the Lambs where detectives find that a serial killer imprisoned in a cell is somehow causing others to continue his trail of killings
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
H.P. Lovecraft’s Monster Portal (2022)
Low-budget film about a woman who inherits a British country estate to find someone has opened a portal to unleash entities. One of several low-budget films of late to appropriate Lovecraft’s name
H.P. Lovecraft’s The Deep Ones (2020)
A low-budget adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth. That is if you can imagine Lovecraft’s story about fish people mating with humans relocated to a California AirBNB
H.P. Lovecraft’s The Old Ones (2024)
Another low-budget film that appropriates H.P. Lovecraft’s name above its title. From low-budget director Chad Ferrin who previously ventured into Lovecraft with The Deep Ones
H.P. Lovecraft’s Witch House (2021)
A low-budget adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story Dreams in the Witch House about a student who moves into a house with occult geometry and stirs dark forces
Habit (1997)
Larry Fessenden film in which he also plays a man who gets into a relationship with a vampire woman. Low key and with an emphasis on kitchen sink realism, leading to some quite striking scenes
Habit (2017)
Undeniably effective film set in Manchester where a young man is drawn into a secret world of people that live on the periphery of society and enjoy eating human flesh.
Habitat (1997)
Baffling mix of teen drama and eco-SF film set in an ozone depleted future with Tcheky Karyo engaged in a series of human-plant mutations that transform him into a swarm of insects
Hack House (2017)
Not a film about computer hackers living together as you initially think but a slasher film set in a halfway house for violent offenders. An original setting but the film does nothing terribly interesting
Hack-o-Lantern (1988)
A bizarre film involving Halloween killings and devil worship that seems to have been made without a clear script. Everything is wrecked by a astonishingly awful performance from Hy Pike
Hackers (1995)
Film that wants to be an expose of the lives of hackers but seems an absurd agglomeration of cliches that stumbles over its own feet trying to establish its counter-culture cool
Hagen (2024)
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
Hail Mary (1984)
A controversy-laden Jean-Luc Godard film that offers an irreverent modern-day retelling of the Immaculate Conception. An amusing idea that vanishes under Godard’s pretensions
Half Moon (2010)
Adult actress Tori Black plays a straight role as a hooker who goes to a meet with a client in a motel room where claims that he is a werewolf
Halley (2012)
A zombie film (of sorts) from Mexico, although it could just as easily be about a man infected with a flesh-eating bacteria. A zombie film in which almost nothing happens, we just sit watching a man getting ill
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
Halloween (1978)
John Carpenter’s all-time classic, the film that created the slasher film and has been much imitated, not to mention multiply sequelised and remade. None of these however come anywhere near recapturing Carpenter’s eerie spookiness
Halloween (2007)
Another inferior entry in the mid-00s fad remake of 70s/80s horror films. Whereas John Carpenter gave us Michael Myers as evil incarnate, Rob Zombie gives us Michael Myers as a misunderstood and unloved kid
Halloween (2018)
40 years later, Jamie Lee Curtis returns to pay homage to Halloween in what becomes a direct sequel to the original, erasing the tangled continuity of every other sequel. This fails to conjure what made the original a classic
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Following John Carpenter’s departure from the Halloween series, the sequels begin their progression into a series of interchangeable slasher films in which Michael Myers is inevitably released to kill anew
Halloween 5 (1989)
The fourth of the Halloween sequels where the series is by now is no more than a crudely directed slasher film, a far cry from John Carpenter’s eerily suspenseful original
Halloween Ends (2022)
David Gordon Green and Jamie Lee Curtis return to round out their highly underwhelming Halloween reboot trilogy. By now, this feels like a Halloween film in name only
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998)
The seventh Halloween film, made for the original’s twentieth anniversary. This erases continuity to the other sequels and has Jamie Lee Curtis alive and pursued by Michael Myers again. Better than most of the other sequels.
Halloween II (1981)
The first sequel to Halloween, with Michael Myers pursuing Jamie Lee Curtis through a hospital. John Carpenter’s suspense is replaced by slasher hackery but in retrospect this is a lot better than the subsequent sequels
Halloween II (2009)
Rob Zombie’s follow-up to his 2007 Halloween remake is a better film and comes closer to what the previous film should have been. That said, his approach is still based on callous brutality than John Carpenter’s eerie suspense
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
Unrelated to the Michael Myers saga, John Carpenter tried to use the Halloween name to launch an original horror series. The plot is a baffling mix of Celtic magic and hi-tech but Tommy Lee Wallace creates some way out effects scenes
Halloween Kills (2021)
Sequel to the 2018 reboot/sequel to Halloween from David Gordon Greene, this is more scrupulous about paying homage to the original and recapturing something of John Carpenter’s original stylism
Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
The eighth Halloween film. This tries to throw in some novelty by combining Michael Myers with a reality tv show being filmed in his family home but still offers the same uninspired thrills of the other sequels
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)
The sixth of the Halloween films, the fifth with Michael Myers. By now John Carpenter’s original eerie suspense has been reduced to crude slasher movie payoffs. This tries to add some nonsense about druidic cults
Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn (2012)
Web-series, later released as a film, based on the Halo 4 videogame. While the games have a massively detailed backhistory of the universe, this is disappointingly only a low-budget military recruits in training scenario
Halo Legends (2010)
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
Halo Nightfall (2014)
At last a good film spun off from the Halo videogame (and produced Ridley Scott!). A harsh story of planetary survival as stranded soldiers fight to escape aboard a two-person ship
Hamlet (1996)
Kenneth Branagh emerged as an director with his dynamic cinematic Shakespeare adaptations. In this lavish production, he attempts no less than a definitive version of what is regarded as Shakespeare’s greatest play
Hamlet (2000)
The always interesting Michael Almereyda conducts a modernised version of the Shakespeare play where Ethan Hawke’s anguish at inheriting a corporation plays out against a barrage of modern media
Hamlet (2011)
After some 150 other films, you have to wonder what another version of Hamlet has to offer. This Canadian adaptation does little other than updating the setting to the 1940s
Hammer Horror: The Warner Bros Years (2018)
Documentary about UK’s Hammer Films that focuses on the handful of films that were produced in collaboration with Warner Brothers. Each is discussed in thoughtful detail
Hammersmith is Out (1972)
One of the few flops that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor made, a broad satire where Burton is a Devil figure who escape from an asylum, leaving a trail of bodiesas he makes his way up to control the presidency
Hancock (2008)
This offers the appealing idea of Will Smith as a cynical burned out superhero. The film tells a comic tale of his redemption before suddenly losing the plot altogether in its second half
Handling the Undead (2024)
A film adapted from a book by the writer of Let the Right One In concerning the resurrected dead, this goes some way to divorce itself from the zombie film and develops its horrors with striking slow burn effect
Hands of a Stranger (1962)
Fourth film version of The Hands of Orlac about a pianist who receives hand transplants from a murderer and believes they are possessing him. Compared to the first two versions, this is dull and prosaic
Hands of the Ripper (1971)
Classic effort from Hammer Films in which a psychologist discovers a troubled patient responsible for a string of murders is Jack the Ripper’s daughter. Made with much class
Hangar 18 (1980)
In the aftermath of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, this was made by a company specialising in sensationalistic tabloid documentaries. Spielberg’s light show is dropped in favour of conspiratorial government coverup view of UFOs
Hangman (2000)
A serial killer thriller with Lou Diamond Phillips as a detective investigating a killer who challenges the police to games of hangman
Hangman (2017)
A dreary revival of the 1990s serial killer thriller. The surprise for a work that has no ambition beyond cable filler is that it has attracted a name like Al Pacino who mugs and showboats through the worst performance of his career
Hangover Square (1945)
Big man Laird Cregar gained a sudden fame as the killer in The Lodger and was quickly repackaged as another psychopathic killer in this vehicle where he plays a mentally disturbed composer
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
Hanna (2011)
A film about a genetically tinkered teenage girl assassin that never lives up to its potential. Saoirse Ronan is great in the title role but director Joe Wright never gives the action scenes the kick they need
Hannah, Queen of the Vampires (1973)
A Euro vampire film that exists under several different titles. Andrew Prine goes to an island after the death of his father only to disturb the tomb of a vampire queen
Hannibal (2001)
The immediate sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. Anthony Hopkins is back but Jodie Foster is not. Ridley Scott takes the director’s chair and creates a slick film but it lacks the compulsive grip the original held
Hannibal Rising (2007)
Building on the successes of the Hannibal Lecter films, this is a prequel that goes back sets out to tell an origin story of how the young teenage Hannibal came to be who he was during World War II
Hans Crippleton: Talk to the Hans (2014)
A painfully unfunny endurance test created by star Kevon Ward centred around the deformed, imbecilic hillbilly he played at Halloween shows. The film is little more than people playing morons in silly voices
Hansel & Gretel (2013)
Amid the 2010s spate of fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasies, this was a quite good mockbuster copy from The Asylum. From the director of Sharknado, this is Hansel and Gretel by way of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Amid the early 2010s fad for adult fairytale reinterpretations, this has an anachronistic absurdity that invites you not to take it seriously. A series of action movie poses, CGI and splatter effects are transplanted into the fairytale.
Hansel and Gretel (1987)
One of a series of cheaply produced fairytale adaptations made by Cannon Films. This adapts the Brothers Grimm fairytale with tatty banality
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
Hansel vs Gretel (2015)
Sequel to The Asylum’s spendidly grotesque Hansel & Gretel, this pits the two characters against one another for contrived reasons to justify its title but is just cheaply made
Hanussen (1988)
Excellent film based on the real-life figure of Erik Jan Hanussen, a clairvoyant and hypnotist who found fame in Nazi Germany. Featuring a magnetic performance from Klaus Maria Brandauer
Haphead (2015)
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
Happily N’Ever After (2006)
Another in the spate of animated fairytale parodies that came out in the wake of Shrek, this subjects Cinderella to an excruciating barrage of pop-culture jokes and one-liners
Happy Accidents (2000)
Clever and intelligent comedy where Marisa Tomei finds the perfect man (Vincent D’Onofrio) who also claims to be a time traveller from the future. The film sits in an appealing state of ambiguity about whether this is true
Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
Slasher film from the 1980s heyday directed by the once great J. Lee Thompson. This drags drearily where the only going for it are some novelty splatter effects and a twist ending that makes no sense whatsoever
Happy Birthday! (2016)
Two guys’ trip across the border into Mexico goes wrong as they end up imprisoned and tortured by cartel. This dives into a dangerous world with an askew sense of humour and becomes more bizarrely twisted as it goes on
Happy Death Day (2017)
A Christopher Landon film released by Blumhouse. This has been conceived as a mash-up between Groundhog Day and a slasher film with a girl who wakes up every day to be pursued by a masked killer
Happy Death Day 2U (2019)
Happy Death Day seemed a gimmicky marriage between Groundhog Day and a slasher film. This sequel is a far better film that places some funny and quite clever spins on the previous film
Happy Feet (2006)
George Miller of Mad Max fame makes a motion-capture animated film about a young penguin who sets out to fulfill his dream of tap-dancing. This ends up being a film of unexpectedly winning charms
Happy Feet Two (2011)
George Miller had a charming and delightful hit with his dancing penguin film Happy Feet. He returns to make a sequel here that merely tries to repeat the same
Happy Hunting (2017)
Solid, well made variant on The Most Dangerous Game human hunting scenario with an alcoholic man fighting for his life in a small border town that holds an annual hunt to eliminate the socially worthless
Harbinger Down (2015)
After being hired by The Thing remake and having his work replaced by CGI, makeup effects artist Alec Gillis made his own homage. With modest resources, he does a far better job of capturing the outlandishness of the original
Hard Candy (2005)
Brilliantly nasty film where Ellen Page is a 14 year-old who is lured by a paedophile Patrick Wilson and promptly turns the tables, preparing to castrate him. Filled with razor sharp dialogue and career-best performances from Page and Wilson
Hard Labor (2011)
Brazilian film about a haunted supermarket, which becomes a metaphor for post-Recession economic stress. While the film sets up a host of haunted house elements, it fails to ever reach a resolution
Hard Luck (2006)
Mario Van Peebles directs a beyond ridiculous getaway thriller that turns into Torture Porn. Cybill Shepherd gives a performance that seems determined to trash her image
Hard Revenge, Milly (2008)
Ferociously entertaining Japanese film about a cyborg-enhanced heroine on a revenge trail. Mostly a series of ridiculously over-the-top action moves combined with copious degrees of blood
Hard Revenge, Milly: Bloody Battle (2009)
Full-length follow-up to Hard Revenge, Milly and the same mix of ferocious action and over-the-top splatter. Despite a large budget, this is marginally the lesser in sheer entertainment
Hard Rock Zombies (1985)
Deranged entry in the 80s fad for heavy metal horror films where a band are resurrected from the dead to play an all-important concert, while fighting off conservative townspeople and a very much alive Adolf Hitler
Hard Target (1993)
John Woo made his US debut with this Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle, which is essentially an urban version of The Most Dangerous Game. Woo’s stylised action set-ups give a slight script a dynamism that blows his contemporaries away
Hard Target 2 (2016)
Hard Target was one of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s better films, featuring an on-fire John Woo as director. While most have forgotten it, we get a sequel here that copycats Woo’s moves to a point of tedium
Hard to Be a God (1989)
Adaptation of the Strugatski Brothers’ book about human observers becoming involved in the affairs of a barbarous alien society. Essentially a Star Trek Prime Directive story, the Strugatskis didn’t much like this version
Hard to Be a God (2013)
A modern cinematic masterpiece? A plotless three-hour work that rubs our face in the squalour of the Middle Ages while feeling like people crowded into a narrow room all trying to do cryptic things at cross-purpose
Hardcore Henry (2015)
An intense kick of pure adrenaline. Imagine a version of The Six Million Dollar Man shot First Person Shooter style by hyper-adrenalised parkour junkies dragging the audience through a series of death-defying stunts
Hardware (1990)
Richard Stanley film where killer robot invades and takes over a girl’s apartment. Stanley transforms the film into an astonishing vision of pure unfiltered Cyberpunk. One of the most visually dazzling directorial debuts of its day
Hardwired (2009)
This has the promising idea of a corporate-ruled future where people receive advertising implants but soon dissolves into the equivalent of a B-budget hacker thriller
Harlequin (1980)
Fascinating Australian film in which Robert Powell plays an enigmatic stage magician who may or may not have real powers who comes to influence a politician’s family
Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991)
The novelty of a Cyberpunk biker film, this is an efficient actioner and assemblage of paper-thin cliches and poses with almost nothing of substance beneath them
Harmony (2015)
Anime set in a disquiet utopia where the populace is monitored by cyber implants. Almost completely eschewing the usual action scenes of sf anime, this tells a strong, intelligent and character-driven story
Harold’s Going Stiff (2011)
Amid the plethora of zombie parodies and gonzo title mash-ups, this British comedy is appealing. Rather than grim battles for survival, this is down-to-earth in its humour and quite affecting by the end
Harrison Bergeron (1995)
Adaptation of a Kurt Vonnegut story about a future where everyone must be average wherein Vonnegut’s farcical satire is completely misjudged and played straight
Harry and the Hendersons (1987)
Likeable effort from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Productions in which a Bigfoot is befriended by a family. The star of the show is Kevin Peter Hall in the amazingly expressive Bigfoot makeup from Rick Baker
Harry Brown (2009)
A British version of Gran Torino featuring Michael Caine as an aging man who becomes fed up with youth crime in the neighbourhood and takes up arms to go all Charles Bronson on them
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
The second of the Harry Potter films and better than its predecessor. Chris Columbus has his tendency to overblown effects more in check but that does leave the film more dependent on J.K. Rowling’s contrived deus ex machina plotting
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010)
The penultimate chapter in the Harry Potter series surprisingly strips out most of the effects and is much slower, more character driven, while moving the saga towards an epic conclusion
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011)
I’ve never been a huge fan of the Harry Potter series but the final chapter rounds out the boy wizard saga in rousing style, mounting an epic-sized battle and finding characters depths that hold some of the best writing of the series
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
Fourth of the Harry Potter films and one that feels much more seamless and sure of itself as a story. The problem is the absurd contrivation of J.K. Rowling’s weak story that wheels out every sports movie cliche in the book