Besides the overblown Terminator Genisys, Arnold Schwarzenegger also starred in a much better genre film in 2015. In Henry Hobson’s sombre indie debut Maggie, he played a grizzled father whose teenage daughter (Abigail Breslin) had been infected by a zombie (“necroambulism”) virus.
Enjoyable in an ‘80s-style The Goonies way, Christopher Landon’s comedy Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse featured Cloris Leachman as an irascible old zombie.
Jay Gallagher attempted to rescue his kidnapped sister from a mad scientist during the zombie apocalypse in the Australian Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead.
In Miguel Angel Vivas’ Spanish-made Extinction two feuding survivors and a nine-year-old girl waited out the zombie apocalypse in a frozen town. It was based on a best-selling novel by Juan de Dios Garduno.
The disparate inhabitants of a British apartment block discovered they were imprisoned while an epidemic spread outside in the low budget Containment (aka Infected), while the passengers on a late-night commuter train were attacked by werewolves in the low-budget British horror movie Howl, featuring Sean Pertwee.
Filmed in 2014 and based on a novella by Tim Lebbon, Pay the Ghost was an effective slice of urban horror starring an unusually subdued Nicolas Cage as a New York father whose young son went missing on Halloween night due to a centuries-old curse.
In the creepy Austrian-made Goodnight Mommy, nine-year-old twin boys (Lukas Schwarz and Elias Schwarz) suspected that it wasn’t really their mother under the cosmetic surgery bandages, while two siblings (Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould) went to stay with their strange grandparents (Deanne Dunagan and Peter McRobbie) for five days in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit.
Maika Monroe’s gawky teenager discovered that she had contracted a sexually transmitted curse in David Robert Mitchell’s critically acclaimed It Follows.
Writer/director Carol Morley found herself channelling Picnic at Hanging Rock, as girls at a late-1960s English boarding school suddenly began mysteriously fainting in The Falling, starring Florence Pugh, Maisie Williams and Greta Scacci.
James Marsden, Thomas Jane and Billy Bob Thornton came up against a Jaws-like killer bear in Into the Grizzly Maze, and a group of cub scouts encountered a legendary forest monster in the Belgium-made Cub.
Lin Shaye’s psychic medium Elise Rainier returned for the third time in the prequel Insidious 3: Chapter 3, as she attempted to prevent a demon from possessing the body of yet another unlucky teenager (Stefanie Scott).
A mother and her twin boys moved into an old farmhouse haunted by Nick King’s ghoulish bogeyman and his ghostly children in the sequel Sinister 2, while Maria Bello’s psychologist and Frank Grillo’s police detective investigated the murders of a group of teens holding a séance in a haunted Louisiana house in Demonic, which was “presented” by James Wan.
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension supposedly brought an end to the six-film found-footage franchise.
Six high school teens were threatened by the malevolent spirit of a dead friend (Heather Sossaman) who haunted social media in Unfriended, which played out through a computer screen in real time.
A group of Nebraska teens putting on a high school play were stalked by the ghost of a former student who died two decades earlier in the found-footage chiller The Gallows, while Oren Peli’s found-footage Area 51 finally received a limited release after six years on the shelf.
The Vatican Tapes was basically The Exorcist re-imagined as a found-footage demonic possession movie, as a priest (Michael Peña) and two exorcists attempted to save the soul of a young woman (Olivia Dudley).
A London family discovered that their remote Irish mill house was haunted by banshees and demonic fungus in Corin Hardy’s The Hallow, while Cary Elwes brought some class to A Haunting in Cawdor, in which a troubled teen (Shelby Young) discovered an old VHS tape that revealed a murder committed years earlier in a haunted theatre in the Midwest.
Bereaved parents Paul (Andrew Sensenig) and Anne (genre veteran Barbara Crampton) moved into a rural New England house to start a new life and were menaced by a family of vengeful spirits in writer/director Ted Geoghegan’s 1970s-set debut We Are Still Here, which also featured Lisa Marie, Larry Fessenden, Monte Markham and Susan Gibney.
The busy Crampton also turned up in the multi-director anthology film Tales of Halloween, which featured Barry Bostwick, Lin Shaye, Lisa Marie and John Savage; directors Mick Garris, Stuart Gordon, Joe Dante and John Landis; author Cody Goodfellow, artist Drew Struzan, and the voice of Adrienne Barbeau.
William Shatner played a radio host who linked a number of stories—including one involving zombie elves—in the episodic A Christmas Horror Story, and the eponymous demon knew if you had been naughty or nice in Michael Dougherty’s subversive Krampus.
A young woman (Taissa Farmiga) was transported back into the 1980s slasher movie that starred her late mother in The Final Girls.
Finally getting a limited release after two years, The Green Inferno was Eli Roth’s homage to 1980s cannibal movies, as a group of eco-activists found the indigenous population biting back in the Amazon rain forest. Meanwhile, Keanu Reeves’ husband and father found his life turned into a living hell by two strange women (Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas) who turned up at his door in the same director’s Knock Knock.
After some film festival screenings, Eli Roth “presented” Guillermo Amoedo’s bloody Chilean vampire thriller The Stranger in a limited American release.
Hayato Ichihara’s yakuza gangster was bitten by his vampire boss in Takashi Miike’s bonkers Yakuza Apocalypse.
The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence) marked writer/director Tom Six’s return to his torture-porn franchise with a surprise appearance by Eric Roberts as the strict governor of a prison where an insane warden (Dieter Laser, returning from the first film) was conducting his revolting experiments on the inmates. Adult movie star Bree Olson was also in the cast.
Matt Damon’s cheery astronaut found himself trapped on the red planet and left to fend for himself in Ridley Scott’s surprisingly upbeat The Martian, based on the self-published novel by Andy Weir. US President Barack Obama declared it his favourite film of the year.
Mila Kunis’ Chicago cleaner discovered that she was really an intergalactic princess in The Wachowskis’ YA space opera Jupiter Ascending, which also featured a slumming Channing Tatum, Sean Bean and Eddie Redmayne.
Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Chris Pine were part of a post-apocalyptic love triangle in the New Zealand-shot Z for Zachariah, which was based on the novel by Robert C. O’Brien and originally filmed by the BBC in 1984.
A pair of engineers (Norman Reedus and Djimon Hounsou) maintained the last breathable air on a dystopian Earth in Air, which was co-produced by Robert Kirkman. Also set in a dystopian future, an Asian woman decided to have her consciousness transferred into a younger, more ethnically diverse body, to help her daughter in Jennifer Phang’s Advantageous.
With a plot lifted from the much better Seconds (1966), Ben Kingsley’s dying businessman had his consciousness transferred into the healthy body of a young man (Ryan Reynolds) in Tarsem Singh’s derivative Self/Less. Kingsley also starred, alongside Gillian Anderson, veteran Roy Hudd and the young cast of Jon Wright’s low budget Robot Overlords, which was set on an Earth ruled by alien automatons.
Hugh Jackman and Sigourney Weaver turned up in Neil Blomkamp’s Chappie, in which a futuristic police droid attained consciousness, while a computer programmer (Domhnall Gleeson) found himself interacting with a sexy female artificial intelligence (Alicia Vikander) in Alex Garland’s directorial debut, Ex Machina.
Thomas Jane’s maverick police detective teamed up with a runaway cyborg (Ambyr Childers) to bring down Bruce Willis’ titular pleasure resort in the derivative Vice, which was a near-future rip-off of both Westworld and Blade Runner.
Elliot Cowan’s near-future police officer uncovered a conspiracy in a city where all recreational drugs were legal in the low budget Narcopolis, which also f
eatured Robert Bathurst, Nicky Henson and Jonathan Pryce.
Even John Cusack had the sense to sit-out the sequel Hot Tub Time Machine 2, but Chevy Chase needed to fire his agent.
Ethan Hawke’s temporal secret agent pursued through time a criminal who had eluded him in The Spierig Brothers’ complex Predestination, which was based on Robert A. Heinlein’s short story ‘All You Zombies’ and released in both cinemas and on-demand in the UK.
Hawke also starred in Alejandro Amenábar’s Regression as a detective who believed that Emma Watson’s troubled teenager was the victim of Satanic abuse in the 1990s.
Also released simultaneously in cinemas and on-demand, The Messenger starred Joely Richardson as a psychiatrist trying to discover if Robert Sheehan’s scruffy medium could really communicate with the dead.
Anthony Hopkins’ psychic doctor helped Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s FBI agent track down Colin Farrell’s psychic serial killer in Solace, which had sat on the shelf for a year.
Farrell also starred in Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ surreal The Lobster as a man who wanted to turn into the titular crustacean if he couldn’t find a partner in forty-five days. Rachel Weisz, Olivia Coleman, John C. Reilly and Ben Whishaw were amongst the international cast.
Co-director Guy Maddin’s fragmented The Forbidden Room comprised a number of episodes based on “lost” movies and featured Udo Kier, Geraldine Chaplin and Charlotte Rampling.
Dwayne Johnson and Carla Gugino set out to save their daughter (Alexandra Daddario) as California was wiped off the map by an earthquake in Brad Peyton’s enjoyable disaster epic San Andreas.
Rupert Friend’s genetically engineered assassin was ordered to kill the daughter (Hannah Ware) of a corporate CEO in Hitman: Agent 47, the second box-office flop based on the video game.
Taron Egerton’s street kid found himself recruited to secret sci-spy organisation of modern-day knights in Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, which was based on a comic book by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. The impressive supporting cast included Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Mark Hamill, Michael Caine, and an over-the-top Samuel L. Jackson as an evil Internet billionaire.
Both Ant-Man and Deadpool took radically different approaches to the already over-saturated superhero genre, as Paul Rudd and Ryan Reynolds, respectively, actually had fun with their not-so-well-known characters from the Marvel universe.
After a freak meteor storm turned stand-up comedian Brett Goldstein’s Peckham postman into a superhero, he set out on his first date for six years in the low-budget Britcom SuperBob, which also featured Catherine Tate.
Quentin Tarantino’s overlong Western mystery The Hateful Eight included elements from the 1968 movie 5 Card Stud and Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, as Kurt Russell’s bounty hunter was trapped by a blizzard with his prisoner (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and a group of strangers (played by Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, Bruce Dern and others), one of whom might be a murderer.
Russell also starred in a much better horror-Western, novelist S. Craig Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk, which involved a tribe of cave-dwelling cannibals preying on the inhabitants of a frontier town.
Tom Hardy’s disgraced military policeman started investigating a series of child murders in Stalin’s Russia of the early 1950s in Child 44. Daniel Espinosa’s dark thriller was based on the best-seller by Tom Rob Smith and also featured Noomi Rapace, Gary Oldman, Vincent Cassel, Paddy Considine and Charles Dance.
Set in 1947, Ian McKellen played an ageing, retired Sherlock Holmes dealing with early dementia and an unsolved case in Bill Condon’s Mr. Holmes, based on the 2005 novel A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin.
Vin Diesel produced and starred as the immortal sword-wielding warrior Kaulder in Breck Eisner’s The Last Witch Hunter, which also wasted the talents of Elijah Wood and Michael Caine.
Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore squared off against each other as rival sorcerers in Seventh Son, inspired by Joseph Delaney’s series of “Spook” novels, as Tom Ward’s farm boy was taught to battle witches and ghouls.
A magic ring allowed Josh Hartnett’s marine archaeologist to travel back into the body of a young British captain in 18th century India in Roland Joffé’s sumptuous-looking romance The Lovers (aka Time Traveller).
Justin Kurzel’s brutal and atmospheric version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth starred Michael Fassbender as the cursed Scottish king.
Adam Sandler’s bored New York shoe-repairer was able to magically transform into the people whose shoes he repaired in the fantasy The Cobbler, which also featured Steve Buscemi, Fritz Weaver, Dustin Hoffman and Ellen Barkin. Meanwhile, Sandler’s former arcade player saved the world from retro video-game inspired aliens in Chris Columbus’ unfunny Pixels.
Jack Black played a fictional version of children’s horror author R.L. Stine, whose monsters were accidentally released from his manuscripts in Goosebumps, and a trio of children battled an ancient Ice Ghost in the German-made Ghosthunters on Icy Trails, based on the book by Cornelia Funke.
Levi Miller’s boy-who-never-grew-up battled Hugh Jackman’s theatrical Blackbeard while befriending Garrett Hedlund’s future Captain Hook in Joe Wright’s overblown origin story Pan. Estimated to have cost nearly $150 million, it grossed just over £15 million in its opening weekend in the US.
A teenage girl (Britt Robertson) and a disillusioned inventor (George Clooney) visited the titular futuristic utopia in Disney’s underrated Tomorrowland, while Kenneth Branagh was the surprise choice to direct Disney’s live-action remake of the studio’s animated Cinderella. It starred Lily James in the title role and Cate Blanchett as her wicked stepmother.
Disney/Pixar’s animated Inside Out, which looked at what really goes on in the mind of a young girl, grossed $90 million at the domestic box-office during its opening weekend, being beaten only by Jurassic World. Unfortunately the studio’s own prehistoric story, the 3-D The Good Dinosaur, fared less well after a troubled production history.
Drac (voiced by the busy Adam Sandler, who also co-wrote this sequel to the 2012 movie) tried to convince his half-vampire grandson he was a true bloodsucker at heart in the animated Hotel Transylvania 2, which also featured the voices of Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, David Spade, Steve Buscemi, Fran Drescher and Mel Brooks.
The banana-loving yellow subordinates travelled to London to work for evil mastermind Scarlet Overkill (voiced by Sandra Bullock) in the eponymous prequel, Minions.
An alien fugitive (annoyingly voiced by Jim Parsons) teamed up with a young girl (voiced by Rihanna) in Tim Johnson’s animated Home, based on Adam Rex’s children’s book The True Meaning of Smekday.
The humour in Seth MacFarlane’s Ted 2 was much more adult, as Mark Wahlberg’s character was reunited with his foul-mouthed childhood friend. The impressive supporting cast included Amanda Seyfried, Giovanni Ribisi, Morgan Freeman, Sam J. Jones, Michael Dorn and Liam Neeson.
Nicholas Kleiman and Rob Lindsay’s Canadian kickstarter documentary Why Horror? was a disappointing look at the psychology of the subject, despite interviews with Alexandre Aja, John Carpenter, Don Coscarelli, Barbara Crampton, Steve Niles, George A. Romero, Eli Roth and Elijah Wood, amongst others.
Belinda Sallin’s feature-length documentary Dark Star: H.R. Giger’s World looked at the life and work of the Swiss surrealist artist and concept designer, filmed a year before his death.
Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD was an overlong documentary that interviewed numerous talking heads about the history of the influential British comic. Much better was Jon Schnepp’s kickstarter-funded The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened?, in which excitable host Kevin Smith took a fascinating in-depth look into the 1998 movie that never happened. It featured input from prospective star Nicolas Cage, proposed director Tim Burton, Grant Morrison, Brom, and hilariously egocentric producer Jon Peters.
It was reported in July that the head of German film director F.W. Murnau, who died in a car crash in1931, had been stolen from hi
s family plot in a Stahnsdorf cemetery, near Berlin. It was suspected that the skull of the man who directed Nosferatu (1922) and Faust (1926) had been taken for some occult purpose, as other tombs were not disturbed.
In October, director George A. Romero revealed to an audience at a convention that he had found a nine-minute section of Night of the Living Dead—possibly “the largest zombie scene in the film,” according to one source—that was cut from the original movie. The missing footage, which was discovered as part of a 16mm print, could be included in an upcoming re-release of the 1968 cult classic.
The same month, TCM presented the world TV premiere of the “lost” 1916 film version of Sherlock Holmes, featuring the only screen appearance by the great American stage actor William Gillette. Discovered in the vaults of the Cinémathèque Française a year earlier, the almost two-hour production underwent extensive digital restoration and colour tinting before being initially screened at film festivals in France and America.
A readers’ poll in the UK’s Radio Times listings magazine to find the “Greatest Movie Monster” came up with the following, not very exciting list: #1 Alien (Alien, 1979); #2 Skeleton Army (Jason and the Argonauts, 1963); #3 The Thing (The Thing, 1982); #4 Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984); #5 Jaws (Jaws, 1975); #6 Dracula (Dracula, 1931); #7 Godzilla (Godzilla, 1954); #8 Pale Man (Pan’s Labyrinth, 2006); #9 Dementor (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 2001) and #10 Chucky (Child’s Play, 1988).
A magical Devil genie idol allowed Anton Yelchin’s horrible girlfriend (Ashley Greene) to return from the grave in Joe Dante’s lightweight but fun zomromcom Burying the Ex. As usual, the director found a cameo role for veteran character actor Dick Miller in this direct-to-DVD release.
Doug Bradley played the owner of a failing amusement park who instigated a series of gruesome murders to generate publicity in Cary Hill’s low budget slasher Scream Park, and Michael Gross was back as “Burt Gummer”, now the star of a low budget reality TV show, in the belated DVD sequel Tremors 5: Bloodlines.
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