Kim Newman

The characters might physically appear rounded, but are otherwise paper-thin.

Despite an above average cast and interesting use of the Catholic angle, this film just isn't quite scary enough for hardcore horror fans.

Reasonably entertaining but hectic (supposed) finale for the up-and-down series.

Guilty, with one or two mitigating circumstances.

Although the film has a ridiculous premise that's no reason for it not to work, sadly the direction it is taken in, it's poor acting, character development and shoddy action sequences are though. Allen stands out as a spunky heroine but she's the best thing in it.

Not a write-off, but more like a respectful homage than a 2020s update in the manner of Candyman (2021). Perhaps a little disrespect would have been truer to the Clive Barker/Pinhead spirit, which is curiously muted in this outing.

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

If you just want to look with admiration and Johnny and/or Angelina – and why wouldn't you? – this offers the full scenic tour, but it's one of those frustrating almost-good films which never really catches fire.

Martin Campbell made Zorro and Bond work as contemporary heroes, but doesn't quite have the feel for poor old Hal Jordan. Green Lantern is dazzling in pieces, but we've seen too many sharper versions of the superhero origin story in the last few years. It's not Jonah Hex, but the battery runs low too quickly.

More entertaining than "The Da Vinci Code," but still tosh.

Gong Li is welcome as Hannibal's Japanese aunt-in-law/mentor, Gaspard Ulliel isn't a bad young Lecter and Webber's direction is intermittently classy -- but this is a footnote rather than a film.

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

It must be hard for actresses as unconventional and gutsy as Weaver and Hunter to find scripts worth making. Although this offers them both meaty parts with plentiful neuroses and snappy lines, it is otherwise a completely mechanical load of old cods.

Writer-director Jack Hill (Spider Baby) evidently didn't try very hard on this one.

Despite delicate performances, the lead characters never escape stereotype, and the relationship between them, which should be the emotional heart of the movie, never becomes remotely convincing even on an I Love Lucy level.

A very pompous version of the kind of nonsense Chuck Norris has been doing in far less embarrassing fashion for so many years.

Pitched halfway between a comedy and a morality tale, this space race often falls between the two, but is mildly diverting and boasts a strong young cast that will go on to make better things.

All pout and pose, with no spine to speak of; a beast with no back.

Trying to break expectations isn't always a wise idea and here Disney show how not to do it. With this supposed-family movie, they disappoint on nearly every level. The plot is weak, the action poor and it's got Bette Midler, simply dreadful.

For a while, its crassness is amusing, but as the plot sets in, it gradually turns into a stultifying bore.

At barely 70 minutes long, this still manages to stammer and stall between the meaningless atrocities. It's time this series met Abbott and Costello.

This is a feel good movie which is too mechanically put together to make you feel anything.

As the bodies pile up amongst this testy crowd of horny teens, there remains a vacant hole were someone scary should be. In a strange way, this film stands unique amongst all slasher films as one where the killer is nearly intangible.

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.

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

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

Predictable and flat, the sort of cop-out horror movie which relies on sending up long-outdated female stereotypes of the matron vs the siren. Nothing particularly refreshing or even frightening resides within.

Showing more enthusiasm than aptitude, this earns ‘could do better if it tried’ on its report card — but it’s a strange enough genre mix to be vaguely worth a look.

Poor attempt by Hammer to create their version of Frankenstein, featuring the usually reliable Bates offering a rather irritating performance as the scientist who goes beyond the call of science. Meanwhile before the call of Darth Vader Prowse begins to practice his heavy breathing and ominous walk.

No plot, no real story, no point really.

Writer-director Jill Sprecher doesn't have the deftness or sad humour that P. T. Anderson uses in his similarly contrived group portraits, but the cast are, at least, individually fine.

Even the gratuitous nudity can't quite save a Heathers-goes-to-college horror that's undermined by a silly plot and clunky dialogue.

Predictable and been-there, seen-that, but entertaining nevertheless at times.

Unforgivably terrible.

Mildly titillating, but not very good.

A few memorable scenes but this doesn't keep up the pace or plausability sufficiently.

Poor remake of the Korean thriller.

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.

As horror, it's a worn-out succession of gory, meaningless, hard-to-enjoy deaths, and too much of the running time is given over to puppets arguing with each other.

Mad Max 2 with Thought for the Day thrown in. There’s some ace post-holocaust action, but you can’t help feel you were invited to a party with fizzy pop and cream cake and got suckered into a sermon instead.

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.

Unlucky for almost everyone. It's a sad day when a Friday the 13th remake is shown up by a My Bloody Valentine remake – couldn't they at least have sprung for 3-D?

Dialogue is all-cliché, a decent cast get not much to go on (if Wonder Woman put Nielsen back on the map, this does her few favours), and even the action scenes have a rushed, unfinished feel.

This mess isn’t likely to reboot or revive the American franchise.

The end result, while not entirely unrewarding, is another step away from the singular vision Cronenberg once expressed even in his marginal works.

Though Spike Lee would clearly like this movie to remind you of ills-of-TV satires like A Face In The Crowd and Network (there's a spin on the well-remembered "mad as hell" speech), it comes out as a weird, unsatisfying hybrid of Robert Downey Sr.'s Putney Swope and Mel Brooks's The Producers.

Straining for significance at every moment, this is one of a wave of late '60s/early '70s Westerns that represent Hollywood's idea of the counterculture in love beads, feathers and picturesque gore.

Every bit as contrived as the leading lady's hairstyles, and rather less technically impressive, this is still trashy fun.

Figgis, reunited with Gere after Internal Affairs, went through the Hollywood mangle on this one, and despite flashes of insight, anything worthwhile gets lost in a script that strains too hard for truth and provokes unfortunate big laughs.

Performances, plot and landings are nailed down, but there's not enough invention here for the film to achieve cult status.

Sugar Hill wants to be very different to the other Boyz in the Hood style films by using a second rate Spike Lee approach but sadly it doesn't make the film any better, only highlighting its failures. With the market heavily saturated with these 'hood' gangster films, this fails to stand out.

In between his successful Back II the Futures and his stint on Spin City, Fox's career was in freefall with this film proving the point. Although he is as charismatic as ever, it's not enough for the viewer to actually sympathise with Fox's character, or even lift this poor comedy enough to get a laugh.

44 Inch Chest gets by on the quality of its performances.

While [Penn] has all the heavyweight America-gone-sour themes and confused characters found in roadside movies like Five Easy Pieces, Electra Glide In Blue or Thieves Like Us, he misses the eccentric and exciting spikiness that made them more than just gloomfests.

There are a scattering of infallibly cringe-making horrors, but on the whole Saw 3D could do with more depth.

Although adequately put together, this is entirely unnecessary as a movie, with nothing to add to its limited interest sub-genre, no surprises at all in its by-the-numbers script, and no credit at all to the various servicable members of the cast.

Big sci-fi ideas done on a budget doesn't quite translate into a compelling thriller.

Except for the success of Three Men and a Baby, (NOT Little Lady), Tom Selleck had great problems making the transition to the big screen. Here is another case in hand with such stereotypical characters as Hutton dominatrix and Hoskins Londoner.

It's now become Hollywood gospel that if a high concept film is reasonably successful, then make a sequel and if that raises any interest at all, then, hey why not try one more. It's a shame that here the studios just don't know when to stop with this episode ruining the name of what was once an enjoyable franchise.

If there were a special Academy Award for Contrived Premise, this picture would be a hot favourite to scoop the statuette.

Not quite as dreadful as Resident Evil: Apocalypse, but that's hardly a major achievement.

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 plot unravels in unwieldy dollops, and, despite some adequate special effects (for the time), the whole thing is really a bit of a bore.

This energetically charmless 'family' fantasy lies there dead on screen, occasionally twitching at a funny line.

Mike Figgis raised enough cash to make this with a pretty good cast and a lot of technical skill, but it's still hard to endure at feature length.

Lambert fails to convince as the action star and somehow it is left to a computer to steal the show.

It’s uncomfortably the work of someone who thinks mass murder is cool and has no feeling for regular humans.

Pelham One was first class. Pelham Two stuck to the schedule. Pelham Three needs a bus pass.

A famously disastrous follow-up to William Friedkin’s horror hit.

That this is just about passable as a divorced parent’s weekend treat is down to Roberts’ charm and the timeless appeal of Nancy herself.

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.

Less pompous than Pet Sematary, this has moments of trashy vigour but is scuppered by a consistently wretched script, Mary Lambert's knee-jerk direction and the usual redundant sequel air of utter pointlessness.

Loud, noisy, flashy but too rarely chilling.

A monumentally misconceived sequel, Escape from L. A. is the huge, shonky blemish on the magnificent history of John Carpenter and Kurt Russell.

Class Action, which becomes unbearable whenever the lead characters talk about their relationship, has precisely two and a half things going for it, the half being Mastrantonio's Italian grin.

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.

With all these folks in the same movie, there are inevitably moments when Hoffman or Wilson get a laugh, but on the whole it's the same again but weaker and with fewer good jokes. We're too tired of the gag even to think of a 'focker' line to sign off the review.

Breaking the golden rule of thrillers - don't let the audience guess the ending from 15 minutes in - this just becomes largely pointless.

Director Dennis Hopper continues the fumbling manner of "Colors" and the forthcoming-but-disowned "Catchfire," drawing out what ought to be a 72 minute B-picture into two hours and ten minutes of sweaty silliness with three pretty stars who can't quite bring themselves to be camp enough for the material.

Not quite a complete write-off, but basically a folly.

"Save your last breath...to scream" reads the tagline - we advise you save it for the inevitable sigh as the credits roll on this monstrous B-Movie farce.

Despite magic moments, this is so lop-sided in conception it's really only worth seeking out as a folly.

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

The major fault in Exorcist III is the house-of-cards plot that is constantly collapsing.

There is a great deal of action in Renegades, yet it still manages to be a faintly boring film.

Lame and clunky in many places which doesn't manage to save this bizarre premise from dull absurdity.

The best thing about this is Tom Savini's superb, uncensored special effects.

The first film had its moment of charm, and the cast were good enough to overcome the downright stupidity of the storyline, but this is simply a dreary bore that takes advantage of a terrific cast by moving them about on the screen without giving them anything to do. One long yawn.

It plays a lot like a Porky's holiday comedy for the first half, and then the seagoing killer fish learn to fly and big rubber toothy things terrorise the survivors.

One of the problems is that King usually writes about cliche subjects so well that you don’t notice the hackneyed aspects of his books, and so when all the character detail, precise backgrounding and elaborate plot setting-up mechanisms are pruned away, all you get is a dumb TV movie with characters doing insanely stupid things to prolong the agony.

Bottom-rung dreck.

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

Depressing and trivial.

Brilliantly terrible or terribly terrible depending on your viewpoint.

Another soulless, pointless rip-off, this doodles around the plot parameters of John Carpenter's Halloween movies with only Pleasence, who died during production, and Carpenter's theme tune as links to the series' beginnings.

As a subversive take on Milne, it’s achingly banal. As a rural horror film, it’s more inept than the most wretched Wrong Turn sequel. As a would-be cult classic, it commits the ultimate sin of being no fun at all. This bear is sh*t in the woods.

A needless threequel. Note to director: avoid 'rise of the' titles.

Safe when it's ripping genre jokes word for word, this pallid pastiche never goes for the jugular, the heart, or any other part of the audience, for that matter. It breezes by like the tamest of ghosts, almost unnoticeable.

All-in-all a fairly unpleasant experience for most audiences.

Zombie’s filmmaking career began with inventive pop videos for his band White Zombie and he can still frame an interesting shot or layer in an unusual and affecting snatch of music, but after six features he still can’t come up with a fresh story, write characters with more depth than their make-up or direct stalking scenes that are suspenseful or moments of gory violence that are shocking.

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.

Significantly worse than the rest of the series, this film is one of the worst flops in recent cinema.

Hogan proved himself a better actor when pretending that American wrestling is a real sport, and the production team that brought you the Mannequin movies can add another excruciating dud to their CV.

It's incredible that a film could be so closely patterned on Carpenter's still-thrilling original movie and yet be so stupid, unscary and plodding as Halloween 4 is.

Don't bother.

A toothless, tedious farce which deserves to sink without a trace.

This hastily-produced sequel ignores the dreamstalking premise that had made A Nightmare on Elm Street successful and reverts to the overfamiliar possession story.

Worse than Scary Movies 1 through 3… And they were terrible.

A disjointed mish-M.A.S.H. of cliched comedy and misplaced observational wit.

Very, very low-brow.

Despite lashings of bright red gore and the obvious enthusiasm of its gibbering hordes, Redcon-1 is a hard slog. Nearly two hours of grunts vs zombies feels punitive.

Just no.

Blood Wars is tragically bereft of the pulp verve this nonsense needs to be tolerable.

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