Kate Beckinsale also returned in the skin-tight leather catsuit for the 3-D Underworld: Awakening, the fourth entry in the puzzling vampires vs Lycans series, co-scripted by her husband Len Wiseman. It also debuted at #1 in the US.
Twenty years after the release of the original, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren were back as resurrected warriors in Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning.
Two years after Alexandre Aja’s sly remake, Piranha 3DD was bigger if not better with a cast that included a returning Christopher Lloyd, along with David Hasselhoff, Gary Busey and veteran Clu Gulager, the father of director John Gulager.
Ashley Green and Tom Felton were haunted by a blurry entity in The Apparition, while Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick’s daughter (Natasha Callis) was inhabited by an evil dybbuk demon in The Possession (which was also apparently “based on a true story”). It was #1 at the US box-office over the Labor Day weekend.
Elizabeth Olsen starred in Silent House, an American remake of Gustavo Hernández’s real-time Spanish thriller, and Clive Owen starred in The Intruders, a haunted house story set in both Spain and the UK.
Returning home to her late mother’s haunted house, a biker girl (Caity Lotz) had to face her childhood traumas in Nicholas McCarthy’s low budget debut The Pact, which also featured Casper Van Dien.
After moving into a house where a number of gruesome murders were committed, Ethan Hawke’s true-crime writer found his family endangered by a murderous spirit in Scott Derrickson’s Sinister, while Kelly McGillis turned up as psychic actress staying at a 100-year-old Connecticut inn haunted by a dead bride in Ti West’s The Innkeepers.
Set in Yorkshire during the 1970s, When the Lights Went Out was “based on the true story of the most terrifying poltergeist haunting in British history”. In a desperate attempt to drum up some publicity, the film’s producer called in the exorcists when two screenings were interrupted by power cuts, which were put down to the effects of “demonic possession”.
Also based in Yorkshire, Imbred was about an encounter between a group of young offenders and the locals that led to bloody violence.
A psychopathic marksman was killing people on the top floor of a soon-to-be-demolished high-rise in Tower Block, starring Sheridan Smith.
Maryland beach-goers were infected by horrific parasitic isopods in Barry Levinson’s eco-warning The Bay, while Rutger Hauer, Doug Bradley and Shane Richie were among the unlikely cast gathered for Neil Jones’s low budget vampire film The Reverend.
Jessica Biel uncovered the legend of The Tall Man while searching for her missing child, and a killer targeted his victims via Internet chats in Smiley.
A psycho killer may have kidnapped Amanda Seyfried’s sister in Gone, and new kid in town Jennifer Lawrence discovered odd things going on at the home of a boy and his sister in House at the End of the Street.
Richard Bates, Jr.’s body horror comedy Excision featured Traci Lords, John Waters, the busy Malcolm McDowell, Marlee Matlin, Ray Wise and the offspring of many well-known actors in a tale of a psycho student (Anna-Lynn McCord).
A pair of hitmen discovered more than they expected in the remote house of their intended victim in Sean Hogan’s talky The Devil’s Business, while debuting director Alastair Siddon’s ghost movie In the Dark Half was made for even less money.
A couple teamed up to battle zombies in Keith Wright’s comedy Harold’s Going Stiff.
Paranormal Activity 4 was actually a “found footage” follow-up to the first sequel (the previous entry being a prequel), as a Nevada family came to regret taking in their neighbour’s kid.
Paranormal Activity creator Oren Peli produced and co-scripted Chernobyl Diaries, in which a group of “shock tourists” were chased around the former Russian nuclear facility by murderous mutants, while Noel Clarke scripted and starred in Storage 24, a low budget British thriller in which a group of friends ran around a storage unit being pursued by an alien monster.
Acquired by Paramount for just £1 million, the R-rated faux-documentary The Devil Inside opened in the US at #1 with a record-breaking $33.7 million – the third-biggest January opening ever, despite poor reviews.
From Eduardo Sanchez, co-director of The Blair Witch Project, Lovely Molly was another “found footage” farrago about a woman literally haunted by her past.
V/H/S was a “found footage” horror anthology of six stories by six directors, including Sanchez, David Bruckner and Ti West, while more “found footage” revealed that a British explorer (Richard Dillane) and his stowaway son discovered prehistoric creatures in the Congo in The Dinosaur Project.
British stand-up comedian Ross Noble played a reanimated killer clown in Conor McMahon’s Irish slasher flick Stitches, and Jon Wright’s comedy Grabbers, in which getting drunk was the only defence from a tentacular alien monster, also hailed from the Emerald Isle.
Cillian Murphy and Sigourney Weaver’s sceptical scientists investigated Robert De Niro’s blind psychic in Spanish writer and director Rodrigo Cortés’s paranormal thriller, Red Lights.
“Presented” by Luc Besson, futuristic French thriller Lockout was basically Escape from New York in outer space as charisma-challenged Guy Pearce had to rescue the president’s daughter from an orbiting prison.
A French adaptation of the 1796 Gothic novel by Matthew Gregory Lewis, The Monk starred Vincent Cassel as the titular seventeenth-century Spanish friar tempted by the Devil (Sergi López).
Bickering survivors of a nuclear attack took refuge in the basement of a New York apartment building in the Germanmade The Divide.
Halle Berry’s South African boat owner lost some stupid tourists to the sharks in Dark Tide, while Moscow was overrun by alien invaders in The Darkest Hour in 3-D.
Bhoot Returns was a Bollywood sequel involving ghosts and an exorcism.
Salman Rushdie’s script of his novel Midnight’s Children downplayed the book’s magical realism, while the Wachowskis’ and Tom Tykwer’s epic version of David Mitchell’s literary SF novel Cloud Atlas juggled six storylines simultaneously with the help of a cast that included Tom Hanks, Hugh Grant, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent and Hugo Weaving in multiple roles.
Frank Langella’s former cat burglar enlisted his mechanical housekeeper as a partner-in-crime in the sentimental Robot & Frank.
Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill were members of an oddball neighbourhood watch patrol who discovered that an alien invasion was happening in their suburban neighbourhood in the misjudged comedy The Watch.
A lonely novelist (Paul Dano) struggling with writer’s block willed into existence of the girl of his dreams (scriptwriter Zoe Kazan, the granddaughter of legendary director Elia) in Ruby Sparks, which also featured Antonio Banderas, Annette Bening, Steve Coogan and Elliott Gould.
Willem Dafoe’s character just got on with things while the ozone level evaporated in Abel Ferrara’s 4:44 Last Day on Earth, and Steve Carell and Kiera Knightley went on an apocalyptic road trip together as a massive asteroid plummeted towards the planet in the oddball romcom Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.
Julia Roberts’s pantomime evil queen plotted the death of her step-daughter (a bland Lily Collins) in Tarsem Singh’s Mirror Mirror, while Charlize Theron’s immortal wicked queen was far more alluring than Kristen Stewart’s pouty heroine in Rupert Sanders’s all-flash-but-no-substance Snow White & the Huntsman, which also featured Chris Hemsworth as the hunky huntsman and the cream of British character actors as eight dwarves.
Loosely based on the Jules Verne novel, the 3-D Journey 2: The Mysterious Island was an enjoyable family-friendly follow-up to the 2008 Journey to the Center of the Earth and featured Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Michael Caine.
Three teens emerged with telekinetic powers after an alien encounter in the low-budget Chronicle, which was presented in video diary format. The film beat The Woman in Black to #1 in its opening week at the US box-office.
Based on his 1984 live-action short film, Tim Burton’s Fran
kenweenie was a 3-D stop-motion fable about a ten-year-old horror film fan named Victor who brought his beloved dead dog Sparky back to life. Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Winona Ryder and Martin Landau helped provide the voices.
Adam Sandler’s Count Dracula was over-protective of his 118-year-old daughter (voiced by Selena Gomez) in Genndy Tartakovsky’s 3-D animated comedy Hotel Transylvania. It achieved the best September opening weekend of all time in the US, debuting at #1. Tartakovsky’s hand-animated short Goodnight Mr. Foot, about Bigfoot checking into the same hotel, was shown as support in some cinemas.
The ability of an eleven-year-old outcast (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee) to talk to ghosts came in handy when his cursed Massachusetts town was overrun by zombies in the delightfully spooky 3-D stop-motion children’s film ParaNorman, from the same studio that created Coraline.
The 3-D animated Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax had the third-best March opening ever, grossing $70.2 million in its first week and keeping John Carter off the top spot in its second. The colourful cartoon ended up taking almost three times what the Burroughs adaptation did at the US box-office.
Other children’s animated films included A Monster in Paris and, in 3-D, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!, Rise of the Guardians and Wreck-It Ralph.
Rodney Ascher’s fascinating feature documentary Room 237 looked at the conspiracy theories surrounding Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, including supposed references to the Holocaust, the genocide of Native Americans and Kubrick’s admission that he helped fake the Apollo 11 moon landing!
As part of its extensive Alfred Hitchcock retrospective, the BFI reissued a restored version of the director’s superb 1927 silent thriller The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, which starred matinee idol Ivor Novello as a suspected Jack the Ripper killer. Nitin Sawhney provided a new music score.
Meanwhile, for the first time ever, Hitchcock’s overrated Vertigo (a ghost story without a ghost) replaced Citizen Kane at the top of Sight & Sound’s poll of the best films ever made, as voted every ten years by a jury of international film critics (who should be ashamed of themselves).
The 84th Academy Awards were announced on February 26th at the temporarily renamed Hollywood and Highland Center in Los Angeles. Although it did not pick up any of the major awards, Martin Scorsese’s delightful children’s fantasy film Hugo was the big winner of the night, collecting technical Oscars for Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo won for Best Film Editing, and the Best Animated Film Oscar went to Rango. “Man or Muppet” from The Muppets won Best Song, while The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore collected the Best Animated Short Oscar.
At $499.99 the Harry Potter Wizard’s Collection not only contained all the films in DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra Violet versions, but also five hours of new extras, including a conversation between J. K. Rowling and screenwriter Steve Kloves. The packaging also featured various “artifacts”, and even the box itself was a magic trick.
Almost as entertaining, Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures included new high-definition transfers of all four films and a new making-of documentary about the 1981 original.
The Blu-ray of Marvel’s The Avengers included Louis D’Esposito’s spin-off short film Item 47, in which a young couple discovered a discarded alien gun from the climax of that film and went on a crime spree. A pair of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were dispatched to stop them.
Released for the first time on Blu-ray, the limited edition Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection featured eight discs, twelve hours of extras and a forty-eight-page book, The Original House of Horror: Universal and a Monster Legacy.
A pair of evangelical American Christians (Brittania Nicol and Henry Garrett) discovered that pagan beliefs survived in a remote Scottish border village in The Wicker Tree, Robin Hardy’s ambitious companion piece to his cult classic The Wicker Man (1973). The direct-to-DVD release included a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameo by Christopher Lee, who starred in the earlier film.
Udo Kier’s Nazi launched an invasion from the dark side of the Moon in the deliriously bonkers Iron Sky, while Outpost II: Black Sun was a sequel to the 2008 Outpost that once again featured Nazi zombies.
Seiji Chiba’s AvN: Alien vs Ninja was not the only clever direct-to-DVD title of the year. Alejandro Brugués’s Juan of the Dead was about the titular Cuban zombie-killer, while Jonathan Glendening’s Strippers vs. Werewolves did exactly what it said on the box and featured an eclectic cast that included Robert Englund, Steven Berkoff, Sarah Douglas, Lysette Anthony and Martin Kemp.
Meanwhile, Michelle Ryan, Honor Blackman, Tony Selby, Georgina Hale, Dudley Sutton and Richard Briers were among the British thespians dealing with an outbreak of the living dead in London’s East End in Matthias Hoene’s Cockneys vs. Zombies.
Toby Jones’s sound engineer found life imitating art as he worked on a 1970s Italian horror movie in Berberian Sound Studio, and former “Pinhead” Doug Bradley starred in the unnecessary sequel Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines.
Somehow Lance Henriksen and Art Hindle found themselves involved in Monster Brawl, Jesse T. Cook’s wrestling monsters movie that also featured wrestling legends Jimmy Hart and Kevin Nash.
A night in Dartmoor’s haunted Wistman’s Woods didn’t work out well for a trio of hikers in A Night in the Woods, a poor man’s British version of The Blair Witch Project.
When it came to 1980s remakes, Elijah Wood starred in Franck Khalfoun’s Maniac, which was shot entirely from the killer’s point of view. Rebecca De Mornay starred in Mother’s Day, a remake of the psychological thriller from the director of three Saw sequels, while Malcolm McDowell was the star of Silent Night, a remake of the Santa Claus slasher Silent Night Deadly Night.
Even Stephen King was impressed with the low budget independent film Entrance, about the peculiar life of a female barista (Suziey Block).
Cashing-in on star Noomi Rapace’s appearance in Prometheus, the direct-to-DVD Babycall (aka The Monitor) was a Scandinavian chiller about an apparently haunted baby-monitor.
Paco Plaza’s [Rec]3 Génesis was the second sequel in the Spanish zombie franchise, while Kill Zombie! (aka Zombibi) was a comedy/horror hailing from the Netherlands.
Executive produced by Roland Emmerich, Hell (aka Das Ende der Nacht) was a German post-apocalyptic thriller set in 2016, when the world had been turned into a scorched wasteland by global warming.
Resident Evil: Damnation was an original CGI movie released on Blu-ray and DVD.
In August, the British Film Institute launched its new M. R. James series Ghost Stories: Classic Adaptations from the BBC with a disc containing both the 1968 and 2010 versions of Whistle and I’ll Come to You, and a double-bill of The Stalls of Barchester and A Warning to the Curious.
From 1971 and recalling the work of Nigel Kneale, The Dæmons was one of the best Doctor Who stories ever. The five-part series was digitally remastered for a two-disc DVD that also included a making-of documentary and another looking at the career of producer Barry Letts.
Although the BBC wiped most of the original tapes of another Jon Pertwee Doctor Who, the welcome DVD release of 1970s The Ambassadors of Death was pieced together from various sources.
Released on DVD to tie-in with Tim Burton’s misunderstood remake, the three-disc set Dark Shadows – The Original TV Series (The Barnabas Collins Episodes) contained just eighteen episodes from the 1960s daytime soap opera that featured Jonathan Frid’s 175-year-old vampire.
Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, Bruce Dern, Robert De Niro, Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, William Shatner and Quentin Tarantino were among those who paid tribute to the career of influential producer/director Roger Corman in Alex Stapleton’s documentary, Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.
Lara Pulver was without doubt the sexiest Irene Adler ever in “A Scandal in Belgravia”, the first of three new contemporary Sherlock
films from the BBC starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Holmes and Watson. Unfortunately it was followed by Mark Gattis’s misguided riff on “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, but the series picked up again for the final showdown between Holmes and his nemesis Jim Moriarty (Andrew Scott) in “The Reichenbach Fall”. The latter featured a brief appearance by Douglas Wilmer – a BBC Holmes in the mid-1960s – as an elderly member of the Diogenes Club.
There was an argument to be made that the Syfy channel was the new Monogram/PRC as it churned out a string of low budget TV movies in all genres, some of which bore an uncanny resemblance to bigger and better-known works.
A magnetised Mercury threatened to crash into the Earth in Collision Course, a Miami mountain could wipe out all life in Miami Magna (aka Swamp Volcano) and a mystical snow globe created Snowmegeddon. The planet was knocked off its rotation by exploding white matter in Earth’s Final Hours starring Bruce Davison, and more superstorms threatened the Earth in Mega Cyclone (aka Space Twister).
Giant spiders attacked New Orleans in Arachnoquake featuring Edward Furlong, and Dominique Swain and Jake Busey’s scientific researchers were kidnapped in Antarctica by Nazis at the Center of the Earth, who were creating a cyborg Adolph Hitler.
American Battleship (aka American Warships), starring Mario Van Peebles and Carl Weathers, could not possibly be confused with a more expensive summer movie, as the crew of the last battleship confronted an alien invasion of Earth.
Even by the (low) standards of Syfy movies, 2-Headed Shark Attack starring Carmen Electra and Jersey Shore Shark Attack featuring Jack Scalia were rubbish.
However, these Syfy movies offered once-famous movie and TV actors an opportunity to still add to their credits as poor Michael Madsen found himself stuck in the Roger Corman-produced hybrid Piranhaconda, and Rae Dawn Chong looked on as Pegasus vs. Chimera.
Paul Ziller’s The Philadelphia Experiment was actually a sequel to the 1984 time-travel movie of the same name, featuring Nicholas Lea, the ubiquitous Malcolm McDowell and the star of the original, Michael Paré, in a different role.
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