In The Pyramid, a group of American archaeologists found themselves being hunted through a lost subterranean tomb by a flesh-eating Anubis, and an alien abductee went on a killing spree in Stephen King’s fictional town of Derry, Maine, in Almost Human.
Actor/comedian Bobcat Goldthwait directed the zero-budget “found-footage” backwoods thriller Willow Creek, about a couple of documentary film-makers (Bryce Johnson and Alexie Gilmore) on the trail of the legendary Bigfoot.
The Remaining was a faith-based horror film in which a group of wedding guests found themselves battling demons after being left behind following the Rapture. Unfortunately, co-writer/director Casey La Scala seriously botched the “found-footage” concept from the beginning.
Vic Armstrong’s Left Behind was yet another faith-based film about the Rapture, which starred no less than Nicolas Cage as an airline pilot who missed the calling. The $16 million movie, which was a remake of a 2000 direct-to-video production based on a series of apocalyptic novels, also featured Lea Thompson and William Ragsdale.
Family secrets were revealed by a torrential rainstorm in Jim Mickle’s low budget We Are What We Are, a remake of a 2010 Mexican film featuring Kelly McGillis, Michael Parks and Larry Fessenden.
Adam Wingard followed up his acclaimed home-invasion chiller You’re Next with The Guest, in which Dan Stevens’ mysterious “David” inveigled his way into a family’s home.
Jesse Eisenberg’s government clerk found his life being usurped by a devious doppelgänger in The Double, based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Vegar Hoel’s survivor from the enjoyable 2009 film returned to battle Nazi and Russian zombies in the even better Norwegian sequel Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead.
In Kevin Smith’s horror comedy Tusk, Michael Parks’ backwoods seafarer transformed a visiting podcaster (Justin Long) into a walrus. Haley Joel Osment and Johnny Depp turned up in surprising supporting roles.
Minnie Driver and Meat Loaf starred in the musical/comedy/slasher film Stage Fright, while co-writer Marion Wayans starred in the comedy sequel A Haunted House 2, which once again spoofed contemporary horror movies through crude humour and stupidity.
Set ten years after the previous entry, Matt Reeves’ epic 3-D Dawn of the Planet of the Apes saw intelligent simian Ceasar (Andy Serkis in a remarkable motion-capture performance) and his genetically evolved apes forced into a war with Gary Oldman’s leader of the human survivors by vengeful, machine gun-toting primate Koba (Toby Kebbell).
Oldman was also one of the stars of Brazilian director José Padilha’s stylish reboot of RoboCop, which replaced the humanity at the heart of the 1987 original with unrelenting comic book violence. The cast also included Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson and Joel Kinnaman as the cyborg cop.
Mark Wahlberg’s eccentric inventor and his hot daughter (Nicola Peltz) found themselves embroiled in yet another galactic war in Michael Bay’s overlong third sequel Transformers: Age of Extinction. Thankfully, the always-watchable Stanley Tucci and Kelsey Grammer were on hand to take audiences’ minds off the giant CGI robots beating the crap out of each other.
Antonio Banderas’ insurance investigator discovered that robots in a dystopian future were illegally altering themselves in Automata, which also featured Dylan McDermott, Robert Forster and the voices of Melanie Griffith and Javier Bardem.
Toby Stephens’ morally conflicted scientist created a self-aware cyborg (Caity Lotz) that was turned into a killing machine by the British government in Caradog W. James’ low budget The Machine.
Joaquin Phoenix’s divorced loner fell in love with his phone’s artificial intelligence (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) in Spike Jonze’s Her.
A synthetic drug allowed the titular heroine (the excellent Johansson again) to use the full potential of her mind, giving her god-like powers in Luc Besson’s bonkers action thriller Lucy while, in a very different performance, the actresses’ sexy alien travelled around Scotland picking up lonely men to feed upon in Jonathan Glazer’s low budget gem Under the Skin.
Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway’s astronauts set out to save mankind by discovering a new planet in Christopher Nolan’s overly emotional Interstellar, which featured a surprise cameo by Matt Damon as an earlier space explorer.
Tom Cruise’s cowardly propagandist found himself in a time-loop, dying over and over again alongside Emily Blunt’s seasoned soldier in a war against alien invaders in Doug Liman’s surprisingly inventive 3-D Edge of Tomorrow. A cross between a Philip K. Dick nightmare and Groundhog Day, it was based on a Japanese graphic novel and retitled Live Die Repeat for its Blu-ray release. To promote the film, Cruise and Blunt attended premieres in London, Paris and New York during a twenty-four hour period.
Actor and director Noel Clarke’s latest low budget British SF movie The Anomaly, in which he played a former soldier switching between two parallel existences, boasted a supporting cast that included Ian Somerhalder, Brian Cox and Luke Hemsworth.
Having apparently never read Donovan’s Brain or seen Colossus: The Forbin Project, Johnny Depps’ dying scientist uploaded his consciousness into an omnipotent super-computer in the Christopher Nolan-produced Transcendence, with depressingly predictable results. Meanwhile, Christopher Waltz’s near-future computer genius was tasked with proving that existence itself was meaningless in Terry Gilliam’s bewildering The Zero Theorem.
Set on the titular train circling the globe in a frozen future, Boon Joon Ho’s Snowpiercer featured Chris Evans, Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton and Jamie Bell. Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson starred in the post-apocalyptic thriller The Rover, set in the Australian outback.
Three friends driving to California tracked down a mysterious signal and ended up in a secret high-tec facility run by Laurence Fishburne in The Signal.
In Mike Cahill’s thoughtful low budget I Origins, a research biologist (Michael Pitt) discovered an anomaly in the human eye that could prove the existence of reincarnation.
Brick Mansions, an inferior remake of the French film District 13 (2004), starred the late Paul Walker in his final completed film as a narcotics cop on the trail of a drug lord (RZA) with a nuclear bomb in a near-future Detroit housing project.
Patrick Wilson, Liv Tyler, Jerry O’Connell and Keir Dullea starred in Jack Plotnick’s 1970s retro sc-fi spoof, Space Station 76.
Frank Pavich’s superb documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune looked at the Chilean director’s “lost” mid-1970s movie version of Frank Herbert’s classic SF novel, with fascinating commentary from a sprightly 85-year-old Alejandro Jodorowsky, Chris Foss, Gary Kurtz, H.R. Giger, Richard Stanley and others.
Jennifer Lawrence’s personality-free Katniss Everdeen became a symbol of the revolution against the totalitarian government of President Snow (Donald Sutherland) in Francis Lawrence’s overblown second sequel The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I, based on the best-selling young adult novel by Suzanne Collins. The film was dedicated to the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.