Kim Newman

Smart, fun, mid-list horror with Scream overtones

William Eubank continues to work his particular mind-stretching mix of acute character interplay and cosmic conceptual breakthrough.

Writer-director Gerard Johnson and chameleon-like star Ferdinando continue to impress with their strong collaboration here.

A first-rate horror movie, It Follows adds a new monster to the pantheon expect pranksters to imitate the Follower for cheap shocks soon — and has a refreshing, unpretentious sense that a meaningful subtext doesn’t undercut spookiness.

A funny, affecting, twisted tale, which demands you pay close attention to every throwaway detail.

Of course, this is a film you have to meet half-way. If you’re willing to enter its world, it’s an immensely rewarding, amusing, wise, melancholy and involving experience.

An ambitious physics and time-bending, relationship drama with solid performances from the two main characters.

Like too much filmed space opera, this is wonderfully imaginative when it comes to costume, art direction, special effects, spaceships and incidental alien creatures but stuck with old-hat character types and a resolutely unspecial storyline. It’s frequently entertaining, but as much for its terrible moments as its inspired touches.

Son Of A Gun has the gritty, rough feel of 1970s heist/hit picture

Worse than being buried alive in an actual pyramid, if mercifully less time-consuming.

It may not be much more than six of the most imaginatively staged and filmed fight scenes in the cinema, but that’s almost certainly enough to recommend it.

Like Paranormal Activity at a wedding - Paranuptial Activity? - this low-budget horror has its moment. Much, much better than Legion, although not as scary as the actual Book of Revelation.

One of the strongest, most effective horror films of recent years — with awards-quality lead work from Essie Davis, and a brilliantly designed new monster who could well become the break-out spook archetype of the decade.

A couple of good jumps but this Conjuring spin-off is led down by poor writing, anodyne leads and and overwhelming sense of familiarity

The unfamiliar young cast all show a lot of potential in a well-thought-through, sting- in-the-tail plot. It’s a well-assembled genre movie rather than a great statement, but none the worse for it.

Armour-clanging, cloak-swishing tosh with okay battles, terrible dialogue and sadly little horror or heroism. Nowhere near as bad as I, Frankenstein – but what is?

A tense, two-piece horror with serious kick.

Though overstretched and a trifle ponderous, this is a solidly acceptable star vehicle with more than enough righteous vengeance for an evening of classy thrills.

Even if you’ve skipped the Dardennes’ work until now, this is a talking-point movie — and an outstanding lead performance — you need to see. It’s a rare film of unforced simplicity that will stick with you for a long time. And it’s honest right to its perfectly judged ending.

You’ll be jolted a couple of times, but these aren’t scares that will stay with you. How about retiring “based on a true story” in favour of “based on a good story”?

Like "The Cover" and "Man On Wire," this documentary comes clad in the garb of a thriller. And a heck of a good one at that.

A character-driven thriller with more twists than an off-the-map dirt road, awards-quality performances from the three leads, a rare sensitivity to the after-effects of horror and a sure directorial hand. Mickle and Damici officially segue from ‘promising’ to ‘delivering’.

Hogg’s films are never conventional stories, but this is a rewarding and affecting watch.

An unlikely but effective found-footage horror from Goldthwait.

A lean, tough, thoughtful thriller with depth, Blue Ruin establishes Jeremy Saulnier as a promising indie auteur and Macon Blair as an unusual leading man.

A few too-broad gags aside — and even these are in the funky spirit of ’60s Marvel — this is a satisfying second issue with thrills, heartbreak, gasps, and a perfectly judged slingshot ending.

A mysterious and disorientating blend of giallo violence, cinematic experimentation and Lynchian psychohorror. Revel in its bonkers beauty.

On the strength of only two films, McDonagh and Gleeson are a director/star team on a par with Ford/Wayne, Fellini/Mastroianni or Scorsese/De Niro. Calvary is gripping, moving, funny and troubling, down to an uncompromising yet uncynical finish.

Brimming with ideas and laudable ambition, it's well worth a look.

It’s the tangle of workings-out not the easy answer that are the proof of a theorem, and that magnificent, sparkling, insightful chaos abounds here.

A well-warranted remastering of his Aussie new wave classic.

A crunching, visceral transplant for this cannibal tale from its urban Mexican setting to an American milieu.

A rich movie, seductive when abandoning people for falling snow or bleak nature and funny, painful and unflinching when it gets physical.

A provocative, engrossing, often hilarious, frequently tough picture. Not for all sensibilities but it’s among von Trier’s more playful, purely entertaining films, with insight and humour in even the horrors.

A quality production, with awards-bid performances from Bale and Affleck to prove it... but, as signalled by the curiously unmemorable title, it flounders while trying to come up with a story to embody the things it wants to say about the sorry state of modern America. Worth seeing, but a near-miss.

Interesting material let down by the occasionally pedestrian direction.

An ordinary, forgettable horror film. Even the Devil deserves more than this.

Perhaps a folly and – Kikuchi aside - too deadpan to be a romp, this is still a decent, colourful samurai spectacle with a classical look (lots of symmetrical compositions) and a story which stands up under multiple retellings.

An extremely entertaining, brilliantly acted, highly diverting film which — like all hustles — delivers less than it promises. Still, it’s worth being taken for the ride.

Even if you think you've seen this story too often, Big Bad Wolves will surprise and enthrall. A thriller which bites deep, it has a light touch which finds humanity even in the worst horrors.

It may be contrived and nothing new plot-wise, but In Fear has atmosphere and enough proper scares to deliver on the promise of its title.

How to sum up? You have to make synapse-spark connections, interpret events to your own satisfaction, pick up visual cues (a long stretch of the film is dialogue-free) and be happy with not knowing all the answers (you know, like in life — but not in most motion pictures). A perfectly judged, strikingly beautiful film, but also a lunatic enterprise which invites — even welcomes — befuddlement as much as wonder. A true original.

An entertaining, provocative biopic with good performances and many strong scenes — but it still doesn’t feel like the full Lovelace story.

Not perfect, but a much more satisfying Earth-in-ruins film than Oblivion or After Earth. It is a little more conventional than District 9 (what isn’t?), but confirms Blomkamp as one of the potential science-fiction greats of this decade.

With Cage as a harried cop, Cusack as a serial killer and 50 Cent as a pimp, we're assuming the casting department kicked off early on this one. Still, there's plenty in this taut thriller for you to stick around for, not least the reuniting of the Con Air duo.

Very physical, with intense performances and half-serious period talk, it’s an impressive, haunting picture — though the sort of thing you have to meet at least halfway to enjoy.

Well-acted and suspenseful, with a great deal of editorial content, this feels a little awkward and earnest, and perhaps not angry enough.

A near-irresistible Friday-night-out monster picture in the tradition of Lake Placid or Tremors, with a boozy Irish charm that makes it a distinctive addition to the catalogue of alien invasions.

Prepare to cringe and snicker whenever the characters are talking, but gasp when Shyamalan just shows amazing stuff.

There's plenty here to show why director Daniel Espinosa caught Hollywood's eye, even if this pre-Safe House crime drama holds few surprises.

A mixture of tough and wistful and reflective and brutal, this is the ideal vampire movie for Twi-hards who’ve had their hearts broken for the first time and want to move on to a less cosy vision of eternal romance with a side order of addiction.

A pleasingly intricate double (or is it triple?) revenge plot anchored by excellent acting, with a terrific burst of action at the climax.

Lacking a single honest laugh, this is shoddy by comparison with the other Scary Movie sequels… which throws it in a pit with Transylmania, Breaking Wind and Stan Helsing.

A uniquely British blend of excruciating comedy of embarrassment and outright grue, not quite as disorientating in its mood shifts as Kill List but just as impressive a film.

A smart, subversive but rather cold debut from Brandon Cronenberg that's short of the dark wit that lit up his father's early work. Then again, comparisons are hardly fair, especially when Cronenberg Jr. clearly has plenty of ideas of his own.

Thanks to Rushdie's sensitive handling of his own material, this is an adaptation big in both ideas and heart.

Though it rings ever so slightly hollow as cool shades into callousness, this exercise in sexy suspense and brain-scrambling mystery is a dazzling, absorbing entertainment which shows off Danny Boyle’s mastery of complex storytelling and black, black humour.

Deeply icky on many different levels, with Ross Noble's feature debut illuminated by stomach-churning effects.

An austere, cerebral reading of a book which is unfettered, blood-bolstered and wildly sensationalist — Lewis is the father of torture porn, not a master of subtle chills. It’s interesting and unsettling, with a charismatic lead performance, but nowhere near as shocking as it should be.

If there are post-Harry Potter children who don’t know or care about The Wizard of Oz, they might be at sea with this story about a not-very-nice grownup in a magic land, but long-term Oz watchers will be enchanted and enthralled. There’s even a musical number, albeit an abbreviated one. Mila Kunis gets a gold star for excellence in bewitchery and Sam Raimi can settle securely behind the curtain as a mature master of illusion.

Like good whisky, Loach is mellowing and becoming subtler with age — though a swift chug still has a bit of a kick.

A few reasonable action sequences are mired in family soap, making this A Good Day To Call It Quits.

A moving and often funny self-portrayal of Chapman that will delight Python fans.

Just no.

Gripping throughout, with an impressive central performance, this is like a Dogme 95 redo of a Chuck Norris film - by heroic effort, the good guys find and kill a bad guy. How you feel about that is something Bigelow leaves you to decide.

One or two serious scares and some excellent creature design work make this a superior British horror sci-fi.

A clunky, lumbering sequel that, like its masked protagonist, has no redeeming features.

Enormously entertaining, endlessly quotable, perfectly cast and packed full of the richest acting you'll see from an ensemble cast all year, but the result is ever so slightly hollow.

The first film was imperfect but solid as game-adaps go and fans revelled in its clammy shocks. No such luck this time out. Director Bassett oversees a vaporous horror sequel that rarely raises the pulse.

Catfish pair Joost and Ariel Schulman keep the franchise firmly on track with a satisfyingly scary fourth instalment.

Skyfall is pretty much all you could want from a 21st Century Bond: cool but not camp, respectful of tradition but up to the moment, serious in its thrills and relatively complex in its characters but with the sense of fun that hasn't always been evident lately.

Derrickson bounces back from his insipid redo of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" with an effective chiller that's got a skeleton or two in its closet.

A few old favourites – like the inconveniently wonky torch and the probably-not-quite-killed maniac – deliver the required jolts, but early promise dwindles to hokum.

Intelligent science-fiction sometimes seems an endangered species - too much physics and there's a risk of creating something cold and remote, too many explosions and get lost in the multiplex. Looper isn't perfect, but it pulls off the full Wizard Of Oz: it has a brain, courage and a heart.

Ingenious and wonderfully detailed, though better in its imaginative horror than its slightly too-broad comic knockabout. It's not quite on the level of Coraline, but it's proper summer fun with some dark delights.

It exists basically as a long showreel for Superman-to-be Henry Cavill, who gets to demonstrate a mastery of run-with-a-gun acting and flex his leading man charisma without really breaking a sweat.

Too safe to shock and too familiar to really frighten, this is an overly conventional affair.

The final act has an inevitable wavering patch when the film is obliged to tut-tut about the shallowness of the stripping, drinking, bantering, carousing and whooping it has previously enjoyed, but this is terrific entertainment with a sideline in wry melancholia and testosterone-fuelled philosophy. Have 20 dollars.

Less confrontational than most Solondz movies, in that it refrains from violence or kink, but still unsettling and affecting.

It works as a suspense-building scare machine, given heart and depth by Olsen's performance - though it's still an effective exercise in misdirection rather than a strikingly original vision, and now it's a remake of an effective exercise in misdirection.

A rough, exhausting, exhilarating action picture with a payoff which would have delighted Sam Fuller or Howard Hawks. The Stath - an actual Olympian, remember - is on top form.

A slick thriller which takes place in a moral vacuum. It's fascinating rather than exciting, but makes for chilly thrills with two strong, charismatic lead performances, a great deal of style and amusingly repulsive, ruthless twists.

Another reason to avoid films endorsed by the US military, this is sub-propaganda tosh that inadvertently plays like Hot Shots: Part Trois.

An unsuspenseful thriller with shades of "Death Wish." Nicolas Cage's return to New Orleans doesn't even have a hallucinatory iguana to recommend it.

Besides being an author, Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most vicious, merciless critics of his age. He would not have let this get past him without skewering its shortcomings with a barbed quill.

Terrific performances, especially from the menacing, lazily charismatic Henshall, and debut director Kurzel's expressionist storytelling make for an Aussie film well worth hunting down. A tough but seriously rewarding watch.

Tolerably exciting spycraft, but stuck with a see-through plot. Washington and Reynolds are watchable, but not exactly stretched by these roles.

Odd, but intriguing.

Not a complete disaster, but also not the vampire / werewolf mash we've always wanted.

More startling than an unexpected punch in the noggin, Na Hong-Jin's unusual thriller could have the highest knife count this side of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. A violent thrill-ride to a dark new corner of Asian cinema.

This is a great director's greatest love story.

Guilty, with one or two mitigating circumstances.

The Human Centipede gets longer (how long before it becomes The Human Millipede?) but the shocks will be familiar to anyone who enjoyed the first film. The 180 seconds or so of cuts needed to get it past the BBFC open up some plot holes but won't sweeten the pill for everyone else.

Lurie's remake doesn't bring a lot of fresh ideas to the table. The thick fug of moral ambiguity, so disconcerting in Peckinpah's film, is missing, replaced by certainties rife in modern horror. The result is a bit of yawn enlivened only by James Woods' delirious bad guy.

A few good stunts, some tolerable brooding and one nice, if silly desert chase. But not essential.

Von Trier is a burr under the hide for many viewers, and the unconverted won't be convinced. But it's audacious, beautiful, tactful filmmaking and perhaps the perfect match for "The Tree Of Life" on a bipolar double bill.

Blair Witch with moon rock. Paranormal Activity in space. Contrived, but if you can take one more variant on the formula, it's got its moments.

You might need to take a Norwegian guide along to explain various local references and identify the specific trolls, but Troll Hunter's proud cultural identity - tremble, a US remake is in the works - is its strongest suit. It's wry, spectacular fun.