When a remote Mexican oilfield comes down with a nasty case of Graboids (for the uninitiated: giant carnivorous worms with tunnelling abilities that put Bugs Bunny to shame), it is up to those veteran monster exterminators Burt and Earl to save the day—and accumulate some much-needed payola in the process. But this time, the slimy critters may have a few new tricks up their ... um, sleeves. Although denied a chance to appear in the cinema, this unjustly neglected direct-to-video sequel delivers the same winning mixture of cornpone and gore that made the original Tremorsa cult classic. Although Kevin Bacon is missing, Michael Gross and the wonderful Fred Ward reprise their roles from the first film. A hoot-and-a-half for horror and SF fans, Tremors 2has some genuine scares and a welcome sense of humour. The DVD, presented in 1.85:1 widescreen format, has trailers for both movies but no other extra features. —Andrew Wright

Better action, a bit of sex, and gorier R-rated violence make Underworld: Evolutiona reasonably satisfying sequel to 2003's surprise hit Underworld. Looking stunning as ever in her black leather battle gear, Kate Beckinsale is every goth guy's fantasy as Selene, the vampire "death dealer" who's now fighting to stop the release of the original "Lycan" werewolf, William (Brian Steele) from the prison that's held him for centuries. As we learn from the film's action-packed prologue, William and his brother Marcus (Tony Curran) began the bloodline of vampires and werewolves, and after witnessing centuries of warfare between them, their immortal father Corvinus (Derek Jacobi) now seeks Selene and the human vampire/lycan hybrid Michael (Scott Speedman) to put an end to the war perpetuated by Victor (Bill Nighy), the vampire warrior whose betrayal of Selene turns Underworld: Evolutioninto an epic tale of familial revenge. This ambitious attempt at Shakespearean horror is compromised by a script (by Danny McBride and returning director Len Wiseman, Beckinsale's real-life husband) that's more confusing than it needs to be, with too many characters and not enough storytelling detail to flesh them all out. Aspiring to greatness and falling well short of that goal, Underworld: Evolutionsucceeds instead as a full-throttle action/horror thriller, with enough swordplay, gunplay, and CGI monsters to justify the continuation of the Underworldfranchise. If you're an established fan, this is a must-see movie; if not, well... at least it's better than Van Helsing! —Jeff Shannon

Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith

Steve Beck The 'Antonia Graza' has been missing since 1962 so when a group of salvagers discover a mysterious vessel floating off the coast of Alaska they realise that this is its remains. Whilst towing the ship towards harbour strange things start to happen on board and the crew becomes trapped inside...

Danny Boyle

Ray Bradbury

John Carpenter

Higuchinsky

'Beat' Takeshi Kitano The ideal starter movie for those who wish to familiarise themselves with the work of the paradoxical Japanese auteur, Hana-Bi(the word means "fireworks" in Japanese) is an echtexample of "Beat"'s Takeshi Kitano's distinctive brand of existential crime thrillers. Like Violent Cop, Boiling Point, Sonatineor his LA-set Brother, Hana-Bijuxtaposes shocking bursts of violence with reflective moments of lyricism, setting up a slap-caress-slap rhythm that's as disquieting as it is addictive.

Kitano himself plays weary Tokyo cop Nishi, an impassive-faced detective in hock to yakuzamobsters, toughened by a career in violence (at one point he takes out an attacker's eye with a chopstick, an assault so swiftly edited one barely has time to register it). Nishi's Achilles-heel is his love for his wife Miyuki (Kayoko Kishimoto) who is dying of cancer, following their late daughter to the grave. When Nishi leaves a stakeout to attend to her in hospital, a colleague, Horibe (Ren Osugi) is paralysed in the ensuing shootout. Nishi, guilt-stricken, goes on the run with Miyuki, taking her to beauty spots to enjoy simple pleasures like kite-flying and picnics before she dies, although the yakuzaare never far behind. Meanwhile, Horibe takes up painting, and discovers in the process a calming new vocation (the na&239;ve, disturbing and strangely beautiful images are by Kitano himself, painted after he had his own near-fatal experience in a motorcycle accident).

The cumulative effect is a profoundly moving and enigmatic movie, one that discreetly withholds many of the narrative crutches—backstory, motivation—you would expect from a conventional Hollywood movie with the same story. It's not surprising Kitano is so drawn to characters teeming with contradictions, given that his own career seems so bi-polar on paper: he started out a television presenting clown, and his move into glowering policiers represented an image volte-face as surprising to Japanese audiences as it would be if Dale Winton had started making Scorsese-style gangster movies. His comic sensibility shines through in spots in Hana-Bi, even more so in the broad comedy Kikujiro. Considered by many critics Kitano's best film, Hana-Bi^'s power is augmented by Hideo Yamamoto's lapidary cinematography, and Jo Hisaishi's lush, string-laden score. —Leslie Felperin

H.P. Lovecraft

Brent Maddock

Richard Matheson It seems strange to find a 1954 vampire novel in Millennium's "SF Masterworks" classic reprints series. I Am Legend, though, was a trailblazing and later much imitated story that reinvented the vampire myth as SF. Without losing the horror, it presents vampirism as a disease whose secrets can be unlocked by scientific tools. The hero Robert Neville, perhaps the last uninfected man on Earth, finds himself in a paranoid nightmare. By night, the bloodthirsty undead of small-town America besiege his barricaded house: their repeated cry "Come out, Neville!" is a famous SF catchphrase. By day, when they hide in shadow and become comatose, Neville gets out his wooden stakes for an orgy of slaughter. He also discovers pseudoscientific explanations, some rather strained, for vampires' fear of light, vulnerability to stakes though not bullets, loathing of garlic, and so on. What gives the story its uneasy power is the gradual perspective shift which shows that by fighting monsters Neville is himself becoming monstrous—not a vampire but something to terrify vampires and haunt their dreams as a dreadful legend from the bad old days. I Am Legend was altered out of recognition when filmed as The Omega Man (1971), starring Charlton Heston. Avoid the movie; read the book. —David Langford

Hideo Nakata A major box office hit in the Far East, Hideo Nakada's Ringis a subtly creepy Japanese ghost story with an urban legend theme, based on a series of popular teen-appeal novels by Susuki Koji. Far less showy than even the restrained chills of The Blair Witch Projector The Sixth Sense, Ringhas nevertheless become a mainstream blockbuster and has already been followed by Ring 2and the prequel Ring 0. A Hollywood remake is in the works.

Investigating the inexplicable, near-simultaneous deaths of her young niece and three teenage friends, reporter Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) learns of a story about a supernaturally cursed video-tape circulating among school kids. As soon as anyone has watched the tape, allegedly recorded by mistake from a dead TV channel, the telephone rings and the viewer has exactly a week to live. Those doomed are invisibly marked, but their images are distorted if photographed. Inevitably, Asakawa gets hold of the tape and watches it. The enigmatic collage of images include a coy woman combing her hair in a mirror, an old newspaper headline about a volcanic eruption, a hooded figure ranting, people crawling and a rural well. When the phone rings (a memorably exaggerated effect), Asakawa is convinced that the curse is active and calls in her scientist ex-husband Ryuji (Hiroyuki Sanada) to help. He watches a copy of the video a day after Asakawa is exposed and willingly submits himself to the curse. Even more urgency is added to their quest when their young son is unwittingly duped, apparently by the mystery woman from the tape, into watching the video too, joining the queue for a supernatural death.

On the DVD:For a film made in the digital era, the letterboxed (16:9) print is in mediocre state, with a noticeable amount of scratching, though the Dolby Digital soundtrack is superb, making this a film that's as scary to listen to as it is to watch (the squeamish might find themselves covering their ears rather than their eyes in some scenes). Otherwise, there are trailers for the first two Ringfilms and Audition, 10 stills, filmographies for the principals, a review by Mark Kermode, blurb-like extracts from other reviews and the ominous option of playing Sadako's video after a solemn disavowal of responsibility from the distributors! —Kim Newman

George A. Romero

George A. Romero The quite terrifying and gory Dawn of the Deadwas George Romero's 1978 follow-up to his classic 1968 Night of the Living Dead. But it is also just as comically satiric as the first film in its take on contemporary values. This time, we follow the fortunes of four people who lock themselves inside a shopping centre to get away from the marauding dead and who then immerse themselves in unabashed consumerism, taking what they want from an array of clothing and jewellery shops, making gourmet meals and so on. It is Romero's take on Louis XVI in the modern world: keep the starving masses at bay and crank up the insulated indulgence. Still, this is a horror film after all and even some of Romero's best visual jokes (a Hare Krishna turned blue-skinned zombie) can make you sweat. —Tom Keogh

Dan Simmons

Zack Snyder Are you ready to get down with the sickness? Movie logic dictates that you shouldn't remake a classic, but Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Deaddefies that logic and comes up a winner. You could argue that George A. Romero's 1978 original was sacred ground for horror buffs, but it was a low-budget classic, and Snyder's action-packed upgrade benefits from the same manic pacing that energized Romero's continuing zombie saga. Romero's indictment of mega-mall commercialism is lost (it's arguably outmoded anyway), so Snyder and screenwriter James Gunn compensate with the same setting—in this case, a Milwaukee shopping mall under siege by cannibalistic zombies in the wake of a devastating viral outbreak—a well-chosen cast (led by Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, and Mekhi Phifer), some outrageously morbid humor, and a no-frills plot that keeps tension high and blood splattering by the bucketful. Horror buffs will catch plenty of tributes to Romero's film (including cameos by three of its cast members, including gore-makeup wizard Tom Savini), and shocking images are abundant enough to qualify this Dawnas an excellent zombie-flick double-feature with 28 Days Later, its de facto British counterpart. —Jeff Shannon

S.S. Wilson

John Wyndham

John Wyndham