Shudder, out now

When a Royal Air Force pilot is shot down over Afghanistan, she finds refuge in an abandoned underground bunker where deadly man-made biological weapons are awakened.

Neil Marshall directs and co-writes with his lead actor Charlotte Kirk, roles they also carried out on previous movie The Reckoning, but sadly this is no return to form for the Dog Soldiers and The Descent director.

Quite clearly the movie they’re trying to make here is something that fuses Alien, Predator, The Thing, or even The Relic, Mimic, Deep Rising or Resident Evil, all of which are mixed into the pot. Sadly, this is nowhere near the sum of its parts and is closer to one of those godawful SyFy movies starring a former cast member from Star Trek.

The intention is presumably to mould Kirk into the no-nonsense action hero persona of Kate Beckinsale or Mila Jovovich, but she just doesn’t have the presence, and saddled with the clunkiest self-penned dialogue she’d have been better off asking AI to script this. Battlestar Galactica’s Jamie Bamber turns up with an eyepatch and an awful Foghorn Leghorn-style Southern drawl, but even he doesn’t look like he’s having fun.

Verdict: ‘What’s the plan, Stan?’ Derivative, pointless and poorly executed, we’ve seen it all before and done so much better. 2/10 

Nick Joy