An Impossible Voyage (1904)
Georges Melies’ successor to A Trip to the Moon featuring another journey into space, this time by astronauts aboard a train. A charming whimsy with remarkably technically accomplished effects for the era
An Inspector Calls (1954)
Film version of a classic play about an inspector who calls to expose the sins of a wealthy family and their involvement in the death of a girl. Comes with a fantastical twist in the tale.
I ♥ Robots (2024)
Amateur-looking film set after the robot apocalypse that at least boasts some well-integrated robot effects
I Am … Gabriel (2012)
Chuck Norris’s son Mike directs a ridiculous faith-based film where a miraculous child comes to heal an impoverished, drought-ridden town
I Am Legend (2007)
The third film version of Richard Matheson’s book but this is depressingly only a remake of the previous version The Omega Man. Crucially this throws out the essence and paranoid mood of the book in a far less interesting piece about Will Smith fighting the mutants in the ruins
I Am Mother (2019)
A unique and original fallout shelter drama that sits in an interesting place of ambiguity. What makes the film stand out is its unique robot design, which leads to a striking and tender opening
I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016)
Unique and quite remarkable film about a teen in a nowhere town who recognises the traits of a serial killer in himself and then discovers that aging neighbour Christopher Lloyd is actually a shapechanging monster. Starts out as a slowburner but eventually develops considerable tension
I Am Number Four (2011)
Produced by Michael Bay and directed by the perpetually insipid D.J. Caruso, this is no more than a Young Adult high school version of Disney’s Witch Mountain films concerning an alien teenager with psi powers
I Am Omega (2007)
A mockbuster from The Asylum that was intended to capitalise on the release of I Am Legend and in fact gets much more of the essence of the original Richard Matheson novel than the official film did
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016)
A ghost story directed by Osgood Perkins, the son of Anthony Perkins.; The film is essentially a two-person show and comes at a funereal pace where all the atmosphere is provided by haunting voicover narration – nevertheless, when Perkins pull his punches, the film has undeniable effect
I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle (1990)
British venture into the gonzo splatter film that beyond an amusing title is just crude and heavy-handed
I Bury the Living (1958)
Fascinating forgotten film with Richard Boone as a cemetery keeper who finds he can kill by placing pins on a map of the cemetery
I Came By (2022)
Form the fine and underrated Babak Anvari, a tight thriller about a duo of graffiti artists who get more than they planned for when they break into the home of a psycho Hugh Bonneville
I Can’t Sleep (1994)
Claire Denis makes a film loosely based on the activities of a true-life drag performer/serial killer but seems unterested in developing plot or suspense
I Dismember Mama (1972)
From they heyday of 1970s exploitation cinema, this is a rather sick and nasty little psycho film. Its themes would never be able to play today without major protests.
I Drink Your Blood (1970)
Classic horror film influenced by Night of the Living Dead about hippies turned into zombies by rabies infected meat pies
I Eat Your Skin (1964)
The greatest distinction this has in movie history is that it was released on one of the most memorably titled double-bills of all time along with I Drink Your Blood. While I Drink‘s vision of rabid hippies was highly entertaining, this is a voodoo film that is dreary and uninteresting
I Frankenstein (2014)
I can’t say this is a film that didn’t fulfill my expectations of it – as being this year’s Van Helsing, an empty-headed work that seems entirely premised around the provision of CGI effects spectacle and actively resists engagement on any other level. A spectacularly ridiculous film in almost every way
I Kill Giants (2017)
The title leads you to expect a variation on Jack the Giant Slayer but instead we get a very good story about a troubled girl who believes in giants. Very similar to A Monster Calls, this is carried by a fantastic performance from 15 year old Madison Wolfe
I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)
Kevin Williamson’s follow-up to Scream. There is not quite the same witty game-playing but this is still an above-average slasher film with a reasonable cast and more-than-adequate suspense generated
I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)
In recent years, we have seen successful revivals of the Scream and Halloween franchises. Now it is the turn of another classic 1990s slasher film, a reworking that emerges with underwhelming results
I Know Who Killed Me (2007)
Widely ridiculed psycho-thriller starring Lindsay Lohan, at the height of her tabloid headline party girl phase and giving a zero effort performance, as twins. But quite what is going on in the confused screenplay is anybody’s guess
I Married a Monster (1998)
Rather tatty remake of I Married a Monster from Outer Space made for tv
I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)
Defying the sensationalistic title, this is actually a modest and fairly reasonable entry in the alien body snatchers fad of the 1950s in which wives discover their husbands have been taken over by aliens come to Earth to repopulate their species
I Married a Strange Person (1997)
Indescribably bizarre and surreal animated film from Bill Pympton
I Married a Witch (1942)
Charming and delightful film starring Veronica Lake as a witch burned at the stake returned in the present to make life miserable for her judge’s descendant Frederic March
I Origins (2014)
Mike Cahill’s follow-up to Another Earth, an intriguingly different work about how research into the human eye leads to a very unusual discovery. As much a relationship drama as SF, this is a very well made film that frustratingly ends just when it starts to get interesting
I Pass for Human (2004)
A film directed by Chris D, lead singer of The Flesh Eaters, about a heroin addict who starts to see ghosts. A strong portrait of addiction, less effective as a horror film
I Saw the Devil (2010)
Overrated South Korean revenge thriller about a detective obsessively pursuing a serial killer that has a mild level of ultra-violence going for it but otherwise fails to grip with its twists or dig into a psychological darkness
I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
An almost unclassifiably strange film about fandom for a weird 1990s tv show, this seems to be heading for Lynchian territory
I Saw What You Did (1965)
Gimmick master William Castle turns to making a psycho-thriller based around the gimmick of two teenage girls making prank calls and uttering the title phrase – only to inadvertently call a man who has just killed his wife. Okay but not one of Castle’s more inspired efforts
I Saw What You Did (1988)
TV movie remake of a 1960s psycho-thriller about two girls making prank calls and uttering the title phrase – only to inadvertently call a killer. The premise makes a lot more sense updated to the 80s
I Sell the Dead (2008)
Odd film about 19th Century body snatchers that is like a low-budget version of a Burke and Hare story. This develops a sense of humour and starts to go in some very strange directions
I Spit on Your Grave (1978)
One of the most raw and savage films ever made, this sits on a dividing line between true horror and exploitation as we experience Camille Keaton being raped with no detail spared before exacting a brutal revenge
I Spit on Your Grave (2010)
The harrowing 1970s raped woman on a revenge spree film is given the remake treatment, although is watered down in many key areas. The revenge scenes however are played up for a particular nastiness
I Spit on Your Grave 2 (2013)
These rape-revenge films leave you wanting to conduct the moral equivalent of taking a shower after watching them; to further add to confusion, this sequel (or more so loose remake) of the 2010 remake also ends up being undeniably brutal and effective
I Spit on Your Grave III: Vengeance is Mine (2015)
These I Spit on Your Grave films are hard to know how to approach – they have considerable brutal effect. On the other hand, by the time of this second sequel to a remake, it does seem just a little exploitative about watching the heroine being abused again because the previous films made money
I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu (2019)
I don’t enjoy watching these rape and revenge films. I said commendable things about the first two in the series and defended them against being exploitation. On the other hand, when people keep making sequels showing women being raped because the first films made money, a line has definitely been crossed. After 41 years, director Meir Zarchi and star Camille Keaton re-team to make a sequel to the original harrowing rape and revenge film
I Spy (2002)
Painfully unfunny big screen revival of the 1960s tv series, which on screen has been reduced to a series of plotless gags that involve Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson doing nothing except bickering with each other
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)
Sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer that misses the playful humour and twists of Kevin Williamson’s script and simply becomes a routine slasher movie
I Still See You (2018)
A Young Adult film that comes with one of the most original premises of any film of recent concerning the aftermath of a catastrophe that has left ghostly figures trapped in timeloops repeating the same moves
I Survived a Zombie Holocaust (2014)
New Zealand-made entry into the zombie comedy stakes. This has the amusing idea of having a zombie outbreak occur during the shooting of a zombie film. The film owes a big debt of inspiration to Peter Jackson’s Braindead and proves amiable if broad in its humour
I Think We’re Alone Now (2018)
Set in the aftermath of the apocalypse, a film about the oddball friendship between misanthropic Peter Dinklage and pixie-ish Elle Fanning
I Trapped the Devil (2019)
Low-budget film that absorbs you in an intensive headspace as family members visit a reclusive brother who claims to have The Devil locked in the cellar
I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
One of the key films from the legendary Val Lewton, this exploits a topical interest in voodoo. As with Lewton’s films, this sits in an ambiguous place that leaves the actuality of the supernatural uncertain
I Was a Teenage Faust (2001)
A very lightweight made-for-tv comedy where a nerdy teen signs a pact with a desperate agent of The Devil that offers him cool and the girl of his dreams
I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957)
Producer Herman Cohen had a huge hit with I Was a Teenage Werewolf and quick on its tail released this companion piece, which is actually a far more enjoyably tongue-in-cheek film concerning a Frankenstein descendant turning a teen into a monster
I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957)
This was a it in its day, doing so by tapping the burgeoning teenage market who had just realised they were misunderstood thanks to James Dean. Not a particularly great film but it is one that carries a great deal of primal ferocity
I Was a Zombie for the FBI (1982)
Obscure title that when seen is revealed to be a surprisingly well-made (in places) homage to the 1950s alien invasion genre and replication of the era’s style of filmmaking
I Zombie: The Chronicles of Pain (1998)
In the overworked vein the zombie film, one of the most unique and original voices has been British director Andrew Parkinson. This was the first of Parkinson’s kitchen sink zombie films
I’ll Follow You Down (2013)
A time travel that has the near-soporific pace of a Lifetime tv movie. Moreover, it is a time travel that suffers from conceptual cowardice where all it can decide rather than explore possibilities is that its experiment should be abandoned because of the emotional upset it caused
I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Ok (2006)
After brutalising audiences with the ultra-violent Oldboy, South Korea’s Park Chan-wook left everyone puzzled by next making this frothily surreal comedy about a girl in an asylum who believes she is a cyborg. imagine K-PAX by way of Scott Pilgrim. Not a science-fiction film despite the title
I’m Not Harry Jenson. (2009)
New Zealand film about a crime writer joining a party tramping through the bush as the group is being killed by one among their number
I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
Charlie Kaufman’s mind-bending, head-scratcher about road trips, weird dinner conversations and identity blurrings that become increasingly more surreal
I, Madman (1989)
A rather interesting horror film in which the heroine is stalked by a disfigured madman that blurs between the real world and the story the heroine is reading where the heroine there is also being stalked
I, Monster (1971)
The title and names are changed, otherwise this is an extremely faithful adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde starring Christopher Lee. Not very successful at the time, this interestingly opens the story out with the introduction of Freudian psychology
I, Robot (2004)
Disappointing adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Robot stories. The film pays token acknowledgement to Asimov’s characters and universe and mostly seems interested in spectacular effects set-pieces
I.K.U. (2000)
Described as a cyberporn fantasy, a quasi-pornographic film set in a Cyberpunk future where androids are designed to consume sexual experience
I.S.S. (2023)
A film set aboard the International Space Station with the US and Russian crews are at one another’s throats as war between the two sides breaks out on Earth
Ibiza Undead (2016)
British lad culture take on the zombie film. Think a version of Shaun of the Dead inhabited by guys around the age of 20 whose only real concerns is getting laid and wasted. The constant vulgarity of the humour becomes tiresome and as a zombie film it is negligible
iBoy (2017)
British film about a teen who gets a cellphone embedded in his head and develops the ability to tap into cellular and internet traffic. This could easily have gone the way of a light Young Adult Work – think The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes – but is played with an admirably gritty edge
Ice (1998)
A made-for-tv disaster movie about a new Ice Age that prefigures the scenario of The Day After Tomorrow
Ice Age (2002)
This begat an interminable number of sequels but the original is a likeable and appealing prehistoric animated film.
Ice Age 2 (2006)
The first in a series of interminable sequels to Blue Sky Studios’ animated prehistoric adventure. Everything has a tediousness that feels as though it is created by a script generating computer
Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
Another of Blue Sky Studios’ interminable animated sequels, this has little substance beyond a kinetic rush from one gag to the next
Ice Age: Collision Course (2016)
I hate the Ice Age films – they have been responsible for turning animation into a series of franchises, telling less original stories than spinning out ongoing adventures of the same characters. The opening sequence here and its ignorance of even basic science is the most inane thing in the entire series
Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012)
This is not a film, it is a money-making machine in the guise of a film that is aimed squarely at undiscerning family audiences, one that plays solely to familiar characters and comic routines and has almost minimal difference to the preceding three Ice Age films
Ice Sharks (2016)
Another entry in the gonzo killer shark stakes from The Asylum, the people behind the Sharknado films. The surprise is that this is one of these few gonzo killer shark films to play itself seriously and turns out a halfway reasonable story about the crew of a polar base under attacks by prehistoric sharks
Ice Soldiers (2013)
This Canadian effort about Soviet super-soldiers unfrozen in the present-day feels like one of a bunch of cheap direct-to-video copies of Universal Soldier that came out in the late 1990s. The film generates remarkably little in the way of action of excitement
Ice Twisters (2009)
Another formula Syfy Channel disaster movie based around a scientifically improbable meteorological premise. This does at least make the characters work with more of a sparring vigour than usual
Iceman (1984)
Excellent and underrated film that revisits the old revived caveman drama with modern scientific and anthropological realism
Ichi the Killer (2001)
One of the key films on which the Takashi Miike cult is based. Miike takes a nominal Yakuza plot but pushes the sadism and ultra-violence to a mind-boggling extreme
Identified Flying Object (1985)
Low-budget director Ulli Lommel makes a film about a teen who befriends an artificially intelligent rogue military helicopter
Identity (2003)
John Cusack leads a star cast line-up in what appears to be a slasher where a group of people gathered at a motel are being killed. Big conceptual twists ensue
Idiocracy (2006)
A film about stupid people that actually is funny – a raucous but often biting satire about how the stupid inherit the future
Idiots and Angels (2008)
Another of Bill Pympton’s unique animated films, a dialogueless film about a mean-spirited man who suddenly gains a set of angel wings
Idle Hands (1999)
Surely the first slacker horror film in which teenager Devon Sawa’s hand becomes possessed. A comedy that should have been a lot funnier than it is
IF (2024)
Ryan Reynolds and director John Krasinski combine to make a film about imaginary companions
If … (1968)
Anarchic fantasy where Malcolm McDowell leads an armed revolution against the petty tyranny of a boy’s boarding school
If Looks Could Kill (1991)
Way back before Austin Powers, the James Bond/spy movie parody began here with this silly effort in which teenager Richard Grieco is propelled into an international spy caper
If the Shoe Fits (1990)
Modernised retelling of Cinderella set in the Paris fashion world starring Rob Lowe and Jennifer Grey
If There Be Thorns (2015)
The third of the Lifetime Channel’s films based on the absurd Gothic incest melodramas of Virginia C. Andrews that began with Flowers in the Attic. The plotting is absurd and the film often feels as though it is not inhabited by human beings.
If You Believe (1999)
Nicely made seasonal tv movie where cynical Ally Walker has her life turned around by the appearance of her childhood self (Hayden Panettiere)
If You Were the Last (2023)
A space film set aboard a NASA space mission as two stranded astronauts debate whether to surrender to mutual attraction
Ignition (2001)
Action film set against the backdrop of a new Moon mission with Bill Pullman as a US marshal assigned to protect judge Lena Olin
Igor and the Lunatics (1985)
Another shabby Troma release about the activities of a crazed cult. Features some nasty deaths but little else
Illang: The Wolf Brigade (2018)
The anime Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade became a cult hit for its fascinating play of metaphors that mixed terrorism and Little Red Riding Rood, all taking place in alternate history Japan. This is a live-action remake from South Korea, which locates the story in the future and plays as much of a tough, hard-edged action film
Illusion of Blood (1965)
Standout adaptation of the oft-filmed kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story) Yotsuya Kaidan/The Yotsuya Ghost Story
Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976)
The first of the sequels to the notorious Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. The dispenses with the first film’s unpleasant use of the Nazi concentration camps as a source of exploitation grist and is an altogether better film
Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1974)
One of the most tasteless films ever made, a sado-sexual work set in a Nazi concentration camp with Dyanne Thorne as a sadistic commandant torturing and having sex with prisoners.
Ilsa, The Tigress of Siberia (1977)
Third of the notorious Ilsa films featuring a hyper-sexed Dyanne Thorne torturing the prisoners of a Soviet gulag
Images (1972)
Fascinatingly enigmatic Robert Altman experiment where the identities of five people begin to blur
Imaginaerum (2012)
A film based on the album by Finnish symphonic metal group Nightwish. Most of the film takes place inside the allegorical mental terrain of a dying rock star. Before one can say Pink Floyd – The Wall, most of this collapses into the over-inflated amateur symbolism of a music video
Imaginary (2024)
Blumhouse film where a woman’s return to her childhood home and awakens her imaginary companion now turned sinister
Imagine That (2009)
Eddie Murphy in a script from the Bill and Ted writers should have been a riot but what we get is another of the lame flops that marked Muprhy’s career in the 2000s in which he is a broker who gets stock tips from his daughter’s security blanket
Immaculate (2024)
A horror film where Sydney Sweeney stars as a virginal nun who appears to be experiencing an immaculate conception. This is only a slightly better version of The Nun
Immoral Tales (1974)
One of the key films from cult director Walerian Borowczyk, a quartet of exquisitely photographed and art directed erotic tales, including one about Countess Bathory
Immortal (ad vitam) (2004)
Comic-book creator Enki Bilal creates a visually extraordinary film about Ancient Egyptian gods awakening in a future New York
Immortal Sins (1992)
Roger Corman produced erotic horror with Cliff De Young inheriting a Spanish castle and being tempted by a witch
Immortals (2011)
A venture into Greek myth retelling the story of Theseus and the labyrinth. Tarsem Singh, a director with a visually extraordinary eye, overcomes a moribund script by lavishing everything on the sets and costumes. Slow but this is one film of the 3D overkill fad that demands to be seen in 3D