10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Sequel in name only to Cloverfield, this takes place in a survival shelter where an unspecified catastrophe has happened outside but we cannot be certain what or even if anything at all. Okay but films like Take Shelter and The Divide did this much better
10 Rillington Place (1971)
One of the best true crime films, a chillingly good account of British serial killer Reginald Christie with an excellent Richard Attenborough in the role
10 to Midnight (1983)
Typical of the hard-boiled thrillers/action films Charles Bronson made his bread and butter during the 1980s usually for Cannon Films. This borrows the basics from Dirty Harry in having him as a cop required to bend the rules of a liberal justice system to stop a psycho
10,000 BC (2008)
Roland Emmerich leaves epic mass destruction behind to make a prehistoric film, one that soon collapses into a remarkable silliness
10.5 (2004)
Disaster mini-series based around the great belief that a super-earthquake will come and pitch most of California into the ocean. Despite devoting some four hour of screen time to it, the drama feels painfully padded at times, while the special effects sequences come out as not very special
13 (2010)
The English-language remake of the Georgian 13 Tzameti about underground Russian Roulette gambling. This has an impressive cast line-up but lacks the stark tension of the original
13 Demons (2016)
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
13 Eerie (2013)
A zombie film from the director who subsequently went on to make the WolfCop films. The one thing this has going for it are some convincing zombie makeups and exxxxtremely gory splatter effects
13 Fanboy (2021)
Slasher film that comes with a great hook – one where various real-life actresses from the Friday the 13th films are stalked by a masked maniac
13 Ghosts (1960)
One of the films from gimmick master William Castle, a more routine ghost story that eventually opts for a mundane ending. This was later remade as Thir13en Ghosts
13 Going on 30 (2004)
Essentially a rehash of Big in which a tormented teen wishes she was thirty and wakes up as Jennifer Garner. Amiably average without ever finding the wistful charms that Big had
13 Sins (2014)
I was very impressed with Daniel Stamm’s previous film The Last Exorcism; this was his follow-up – a brutal English-language remake of a Thai film where people are offered the challenge of engaging in increasingly more malicious and extreme acts to win large sums of money
13 Tzameti (2005)
Starkly effective Georgian-made film about a young man in need of money being drawn into an underground gambling ring that bets on games of Russian Roulette
13/13/13 (2013)
The Asylum made 11/11/11 and 12/12/12 and released them on said dates. Despite running out of exploitable months in the year, they then released a third film here
1313: Cougar Cult (2012)
Another of David DeCoteau’s bizarre homoerotic horror films featuring a trio of former 80s Scream Queens who are were-cougars
2 + 5 Mission Hydra (1966)
An Italian space opera where a professor and associates are abducted after finding an alien craft. The film’s main distinction was being redubbed in English under the title Star Pilot to be released as a copy of Star Wars
2 Lava 2 Lantula (2016)
Lavalantula with Steve Guttenberg facing giant fire-breathing spiders was a modestly enjoyable creature feature. This sequel feels like a Sharknado wannabe with shittier effects and an unfunny sense of humour
2-Headed Shark Attack (2012)
This is a killer shark film that is not taking itself too seriously. In their pursuit for the most absurd monster movie title, The Asylum have managed to get the balance of cheap effects and tongue-in-cheek treatment down near perfectly. The first in a series from The Asylum where each sequel added more heads.
20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)
One of the film from legendary stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, featuring one of his finest creations The Ymir, an alien monster from Venus that rampages throughout Rome
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
Disney’s adaptation of Jules Verne’s novel is a lavishly produced period adventure. This became the definitive version of the book and inspired a string of imitators
200 Degrees (2017)
A thriller in the vein of films such as Phone Booth and especially Buried with Eric Balfour locked in a room in a warehouse with heat lamps that are slowly turning the temperature up to the title level. This ratchets suspense well, Balfour is good but things fall apart at the denouement
2001 Maniacs (2005)
Eli Roth-produced remake of the Herschell Gordon Lewis splatter film Two Thousand Maniacs, this plants tongue in cheek, is fairly and squarely aimed at a frat boy audience and unapologetic about piling on copious amounts of gore and naked breasts
2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams (2010)
Sequel to the outrageously gory 2001 Maniacs, although here the horror comedy balance spills over into absurd farce and cheap gore effects. Crucially, the film seems cheaper and less polished, more messy and random in terms of its arrangements
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
The greatest science-fiction film ever made? Stanley Kubrick goes against all convention – the film is slow, has no clear story and reaches an enigmatic ending and yet it is a work of brilliance, both visually and in terms of effects technology, groundbreaking in a number of ways,
2001: A Space Travesty (2000)
Supposedly an Airplane-styled movie parody that takes on 2001: A Space Odyssey (although this soon gets forgotten), this is one of the most painfully unfunny films ever made
2010 (1984)
2001: A Space Odyssey did not need a sequel but this fits the bill surprisingly well. A warmer and much more human film than Stanley Kubrick made, this has some of the very best effects of its era.
2012 (2009)
Roland Emmerich mass destruction spectacle loosely based around the supposed Mayan prophecies about the end of the world. Mostly just an excuse for massively scaled disaster sequences.
2012: Ice Age (2011)
One of several disaster movies set around the supposed year 2012 apocalypse made by The Asylum. Bad science abounds as a giant adrift glacier ends up creating a new Ice Age
2019: After the Fall of New York (1983)
One of the more cheesily entertaining among the Italian-made ripoffs of Mad Max 2 during the 1980s (as well as more than a few dashes of Escape from New York). The film works up a moderate head of steam
2020: Texas Gladiators (1983)
One of the numerous Mad Max imitators made in Italy. Directed by notorious adult director Joe D’Amato who pushes the material further than other entries
2025 Armageddon (2022)
A crossover between all the menaces in The Asylum’s films, which are brought to life as part of an alien invasion plan
2036 Origin Unknown (2018)
An SF film where a remote probe lands to Mars uncovers a mysterious artefact of possible alien origin on the Martian surface. And then things start getting weird.
2046 (2004)
An exquisitely dreamy Wong Kar Wai film as a man remembers his liaisons with various women. Only peripherally a science-fiction film concerning a story the protagonist is writing.
2067 (2020)
Australian film in which Kodi Smit-McPhee heads through a time portal to save a polluted world resulting in a time paradox that ties back to his childhood. This had promise but badly lets down on its premise
2103: The Deadly Wake (1996)
Low-budget SF film about a ship at sea carrying a cargo of convicts, toxic waste, a deadly virus and a killer android
24 Hours to Live (2017)
An action film variant on the thriller D.O.A. where Ethan Hawke plays an assassin who is resurrected from the dead and has 24 hours to bring down the corrupt corporation who betrayed him
247°F (2011)
In the vein of films like Phone Booth and Buried, a Conceptual Containment Thriller with a group of people trapped in a sauna with the heat being turned up. From the director who later made Landmine Goes Click in this same vein
28 Days Later (2002)
Danny Boyle’s sleeper hit presaged a big return for the zombie film during the 2000s/2010s. Not a bad film even if Boyle is conducting major borrowings from other works like The Day of the Triffids and Day of the Dead
28 Weeks Later (2007)
I was cautious about hailing 28 Days Later as a modern classic; this sequel is in fact a much better film. Newcomer director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo draws it out into a series of superbly sustained suspense sequences
28 Years Later … (2025)
28 Days Later was the work that started the modern zombie film revival. Twenty-three years later, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland return to make a third film and still wring some creativity out of the set-up
28 Years Later … The Bone Temple (2026)
A follow-up to 28 Years Later …, made even before the first film was released. This gives a deeper exploration of the character of Dr Kelson and proves a surprisingly good complement to its predecessor
2:22 (2017)
Michiel Huisman is an air traffic controller who discovers that small inconsequential things are repeating themselves every day and that he is being drawn to reenact a fatal incident. A beautifully made film that arrives at an ending that leaves you scratching your head in puzzlement
3 from Hell (2019)
Rob Zombie is back,, making the third in his trilogy of Firefly films following House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects. It is all fairly much the same as before where Zombie’s sympathies are cleanly with the family of psychopaths and their murderous rampage.
3 Headed Shark Attack (2015)
With the Mega Shark and especially the Sharknado films, The Asylum played the killer shark film as ridiculously as possible with delirious results. In this sequel to 2-Headed Shark Attack, they get the blend of the tongue-in-cheek absurdity to a point of near-perfection
3 Women (1977)
The great Robert Altman was one of the most individualistic and downright eccentric American directors. His most head-scratching efforts were when he experimented in genre cinema like this cryptic and baffling work in which three (mainly two) women appear to exchange identities
30 Days of Night (2007)
Solid vampire film produced by Sam Raimi about a small Alaskan town that suddenly finds itself besieged by vampires who have come because of the month of night
30 Days of Night: Dark Days (2010)
Sequel to the modestly effective Alaskan-set vampire film 30 Days of Night, this holds up surprisingly well for something that gives all indication of being a throwaway video sequel
30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2013)
Another crude and witless genre parody in the vein of the Scary Movie series and Jason Friedberg-Aaron Seltzer of Epic Movie, Disaster Movie et al notoriety. Friedberg and Seltzer are some of the worst directors currently at work – if there is anything worse than that it is surely a failed attempt to imitate them
30,000 Leagues Under the Sea (2007)
The Asylum conduct their cheap version of the Jules Verne novel, so cheap it doesn’t even look like they went to sea or underwater to film. Here the oft-filmed Verne story has been modernised
300 (2007)
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
300: Rise of an Empire (2014)
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.
3022 (2019)
Spacegoing film that follows the crew aboard a space station as they survive the destruction of the Earth
31 (2016)
Rob Zombie featuring people abducted and forced to play in a deathsport game. This is largely a re-run of House of 1000 Corpses, while both films in turn draw heavily on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. As always, Rob Zombie has a following but also switches large swathes of his audience off
388 Arletta Avenue (2011)
Found Footage film about a stalker secretly filming a couple and abducting the wife, this tepidly circles around thriller cliches where other Found Footage films have delved into the psycho genre with more disturbing effect
A Tale from the East (1990)
A wannabe entry aboard the HK supernatural fantasy fad of the late 80s/early 90s sparked by the likes of the Mr Vampire and A Chinese Ghost Story films … This, which involves a time travel plot, is crippled by a pandering to a slapstick inanity that makes it a painful watching experience
A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)
A South Korean ghost story that achieves quite a degree of spookiness, albeit influenced by the Japanese Ring phenomenon, although things fall apart at a confusing twist ending
A Taste of Fear (1961)
The first of Hammer’s psycho-thrillers – a departure for the studio with them abandoning their Victorian era setting for a contemporary one – in an attempt to copy the success of Hitchcock’s Psycho. Quite a reasonable effort that comes without the improbably contrived plots of some of their later psycho-thrillers
A Thin Line Between Love and Hate (1996)
Martin Lawrence directs and stars in a comedy variant on Fatal Attraction in which he has the role of a player who is stalked by a psycho Lynn Whitfield
A Thousand and One Nights (1945)
Part of the fad during the 1940s for swashbuckling Arabian Nights adventures, this tells the story of Aladdin and is more embracing of the fantasy elements than most of the other films of this period
A Thousand Words (2012)
Eddie Murphy’s presence is not enough to lift the lame premise of this comedy where he is given a curse where he has a thousand words to say before he dies … a film that has a soggy marshmallow heart rather than one that lets Murphy loose to do what he does best
A Town Called Panic (2009)
Film made entirely with stop-motion animated plastic toys and with a sublimely nonsensical absurdiism that has more hilarity and creativity than most mainstream animated fare you will see all year
A Town Has Turned to Dust (1998)
Adaptation of an old Rod Serling script about racial prejudice and lynch mobs. The original was a non-genre work that took place in a Western setting but this has transplanted the milieu to an alien planet.
A Trip to the Moon (1902)
Often misidentified as the first science-fiction film, Georges Melies’s short is a whimsy involving comedic exploits on the Lunar surface. Hardly serious as SF but an undeniably iconic work made with enormous sophistication for the day
A Troll in Central Park (1994)
Incredibly insipid animated film from Don Bluth about a kind-hearted troll that relocates to Central Park. Feels like a wannabe Disney film that is merely going through the moves.
A Twist of Faith (1999)
Dull serial killer thriller with Andrew McCarthy tracking a killer that has a Catholic fixation
Der Todesking (1990)
From Jörg Buttgereit, director of the notorious NEKRomantik, an anthology that depicts various scenes of death and suicide. Essentially the original version of The ABCs of Death
El Topo (1970)
Cult film from Alejandro Jodorowsky, a surrealistic Western that comes with an incoherent mishmash of symbolism, Zen mysticism and 1960s raised consciousness
T.I.M. (2023)
We have had a spate of films in the last few years about androids and A.I. This has to count as the first film about an android stalker
T.M.A. (2009)
Czech-made haunted house story that does not vary far from the traditional basics but generates a sparse but modest atmosphere
TAG: The Assassination Game (1982)
Film based on the popular campus mock killing game where one player snaps and starts to kill for real. Featuring the screen debut of Linda Hamilton
Taichi Hero (2012)
Sequel to Stephen Fung’s Taichi Zero. The first film was distractingly self-conscious and hyper-active; by contrast, this is much less so, allowing it to settle down and start being the fantastic martial arts film it sets out to be. Even so, classic Wu Xia directors leave everything Fung does for dead
Taichi Zero (2012)
From the high-profile release this had, I was expecting it to be a Wu Xia epic – instead we get what feels like a martial arts film by way of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World where instead of amazing us with the fight scenes the director seems in love with self-conscious cuteness of his own visuals
Tail Sting (2002)
Completely ridiculous film about mutant scorpions on a plane – after something this laughable, it’s hard to see why Snakes on a Plane needed to plant tongue in cheek
Tainted Love (1995)
Tawdry copy of Basic Instinct, a psycho-sexual thriller about a woman detective going undercover to investigate a series of murders linked to a health club
Take Shelter (2011)
Strong and effective film with Michael Shannon as a man who has precognitive vision of a terrible coming storm and tries to build a shelter while everyone around him thinks he is going mad
Taken (2002)
TV mini-series in ten two-hour parts that deals with UFOs, covering several generations from the 1940s to the present. An interesting take on UFO encounters with the benefit of some phenomenal performances
Taking Earth (2017)
Alien invasion film made by industry outsiders from South Africa. The plot is like a much better version of I Am Number Four but played out on a much more ambitious scale where the novice filmmakers do sensational things in the visual effects department on a minuscule budget
Taking Lives (2004)
Serial killer thriller with Angelina Jolie as an FBI profiler tracking a killer in Montreal and becoming involved with suspect Ethan Hawke. The plot falls apart in some shabby twists
Takut: Faces of Fear (2008)
An anthology of horror tales from Indonesia, most being too short to make much distinction,, the exception being The Mo Brothers gore-drenched first film Dara
Tale of a Vampire (1992)
Part of the 1990s fad for dark romantic vampire films with vampire Julian Sands lurking around a library and fixating on Suzanna Hamilton
Tale of Tales (2015)
A trio of tales from the world’s oldest fairytale collection – but quite different to anything you expect … While there is all the magic, ogres and princesses, this is a beautifully lush film made for adults and less about simple homilies that about fate and its cruel twists
Tales from Earthsea (2006)
Hayao Miyazaki’s son Goro more than capably takes up his father’s mantle in a anime beautiful adaptation of one of Ursula K. Le Guin’s later Earthsea books
Tales from the Crypt (1972)
Amicus adapts several stories from the notorious EC Comics as one of their anthology films. Missing is EC’s black humour but this is a worthwhile Amicus anthology
Tales from the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood (1996)
The second of the films spun off from tv’s Tales from the Crypt. While the first film Demon Knight took itself seriously, this does not and is killed by a campy tone and a miscast Dennis Miller keeping up a running barrage of excruciating one-liners
Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight (1995)
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
Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990)
Film spinoff from the Tales from the Darkside tv series, this is an anthology of three horror tales, the result is a surprisingly slick and well made film
Tales from the Hood (1995)
Horror anthology with a specific focus around African-American issues. This conducts a fine revival of the anthology genre and delivers a series of episodes that are all solid and well above-average horror tales
Tales from the Hood 2 (2018)
Tales from the Hood was the novelty of an African-American made horror anthology. 23 years later the principal talents (including producer Spike Lee) reunite for a sequel
Tales from the Hood 3 (2020)
Tales from the Hood was a horror anthology made by African American filmmakers that worked familiar horror themes in around race issues. It has developed a small cult reputation. This was the second of two sequels
Tales of an Ancient Empire (2010)
Albert Pyun makes a long promised sequel to his first film The Sword and the Sorcerer but delivers an impoverished mess that is all over the place plotwise
Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971)
A ballet adaptation of the stories of Beatrix Potter performed by The Royal Ballet with performers in animal costumes
Tales of Halloween (2015)
An anthology of Halloween-themed horror tales, all from different genre directors, including some interesting high-profile names. The results are uneven with the film providing a couple of amusing segments but nothing truly standout
Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1968)
Trilogy of Edgar Allan Poe tales from three European directors. Roger Vadim’s opening episode drags but both Louis Malle and Federico Fellini deliver standout works in their respective segments
Tales of Terror (1962)
The fourth of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films. This mixes it up slightly and adapts four Poe stories into three episodes, each of which stars Vincent Price
Tales of the Uncanny: The Ultimate Survey of Anthology Horror (2020)
A documentary that charts the history of the horror anthology in considerable depth, including conducting a survey on the best anthologies and individual episodes
Tales That Witness Madness (1973)
Director Freddie Francis had had great success making several of the Amicus horror anthologies then went independent to made another Amicus-styled anthology here with mixed results
Talk to Me (2022)
An Australian film has been getting some great word of mouth, a teen horror that stands it head and shoulders above its contemporaries
Talking to Heaven (2002)
A Hallmark tv mini-series based on the life of the supposed true-life medium James Van Praagh
Tall Tale (1995)
This has the promising idea of bringing together various mythic figures from the West like Pecos Bill and John Bunyan but then mishandles them in an oddly mundane depiction
Talos the Mummy (1998)
Part of a late 90s spate of mummy movies, this effort from Highlander director Russell Mulcahy revives the genre with a modern arsenal of effects