From Finland comes “Heavy Trip,” a metalhead slacker comedy that descends from “Wayne’s World” and “Airheads,” but without looking like a studio trying to sell “cool.” Like another Fantasia comedy you should keep an eye out for, “Mega Time Squad,” this movie flies its geek flag proudly, which here includes some extended musical performances of death metal, someone getting doused in animal blood, a viking ship full of vikings, and more. 

If you’ve ever responded “that’s so metal!” after something ridiculous has happened, “Heavy Trip” might be your cup of tea. It’s a cartoonish ensemble comedy about a band of very gentle spirits with long hair, who love playing music that sounds like the gates of hell being slowly dragged open. The lead singer of the group, known as Impaled Rektum, is the couldn’t-hurt-a-fly Turo (Johannes Holopainen), who is shy about performing for people other than his bandmates. They usually play covers in a basement, but when the grinding of a piece of machinery inspires a melody, they have their first song, which leads to a possible chance of playing a big festival in Norway. 

The premise is a bit light on plot, and the cartoonish characters are kind of one-note in that the script doesn’t do enough with them. But “Heavy Trip” takes its full form as a death metal “Blues Brothers” by the third act, when the crew finally hits the road; one of the characters even says “We’re on a mission from Satan.” The hijinks get even crazier, and the silly characters make for bigger gags. In turn, “Heavy Trip” achieves the status of bonafide crowd-pleaser, for a crowd that isn’t normally acknowledged with such detail and warmth. In one of my favorite details about the movie, “Heavy Trip” knows that while metalheads might listen to music that directly concerns death and destruction, they can be the sweetest and silliest of music fans.

Another movie that made its world premiere at Fantasia, “Our House,” starts as a sibling drama and turns into a scantly spooky haunted house tale. In “Our House,” Thomas Mann has a few strong passages as a young college student who brings about a strange presence in his family home. The way that “Our House” gets to this familiar set-up might be the best—the family home in question has become emotionally barren after the two parents die, and now the college-age Ethan (Mann) must take care of his two younger siblings. As he enters into a new maturity, while mourning the loss alongside his brother and sister, he remains fixated on an invention that he hopes will create wireless electricity. 

As it follows this family and his project, the movie has the air of an Amblin project, especially in its surprisingly wholesome nature. There’s a noticeable craft to these emotional moments that make way for science that gets weirder and weirder. Especially as Ethan tests this machine of which we soon start to understand of its full abilities, director Anthony Scott Burns builds tension in certain moments when the machine is ramping up, cutting back and forth between the actions of different siblings. But then the movie as a whole only gets weaker when it should be the most tense. 

With sincerity kind of holding everything together, it’s dispiriting when “Our House” becomes more of a rote haunted house movie. The tropes that it does bring in (like Ethan’s younger sister being playful with ghosts, and then later on, a spooky doll) aren’t challenged so much as convenient. It’s nice to see a horror movie work with a terror that’s more family oriented, while dealing with grief. But it’s strange that these creative sparks would lead to something so conventional. 

It’s not cliche to start turning into a whole other animal during adolescence, but watching “Blue My Mind” might have you think that. Writer/director Lisa Brühlmann’s film is a tedious burn about a young woman’s gradual change, like an A24-branded coming-of-age title with a metamorphosis that’s heavy on its metaphor. 

Hitting familiar beats for movies that involve innocent young people in the hell of high school, it tells of a woman named Mia (Luna Wedler) who fails to fit in with her classmates. In a bid to be liked by the bratty popular people, including queen mean girl Gianna (Zoë Pastelle Holthuizen), Mia starts to practice things outside of her comfort zone, like partying and having sex. But as she begins to let peer pressure steer her identity, she starts to notice that her body is changing: her feet start becoming webbed, and she has a craving for fish. It’s a nightmare for Mia, in part because of its randomness, but also because she doesn’t want to be seen as extremely different than her peers. 

“Blue My Mind” boasts a few discomforting moments of body horror, especially as she tries to alter her body from its progression. But its parallel story is of the usual beats of peer pressure, awkward maturation and it leads to an empty climax. More than Wedler’s performance, Holthuizen’s act as someone who goes from being completely intimidating to the exact opposite offers a bit of emotional resonance, but it’s not enough for the movie as a whole. The script’s predetermined nature leaves the viewer colder than they should feel. 

A previous review of “Hurt” by Sonny Mallhi was removed from this dispatch on December 8, 2021 after it became known that the critic was provided the wrong cut of the film.

Nick Allen

Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

subscribe icon

The best movie reviews, in your inbox