The 30th edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival is upon us, perhaps the largest genre film festival in the world (and, for my money, my favorite), setting nearly three weeks aside at the tail end of July to descend upon Montreal with over 125 buzzy, strange, experimental, and just plain weird features (and more than 200 shorts) that should appeal to genre hounds of several stripes.
Playing July 16 through August 2nd, Fantasia celebrates its third decade with a host of works from around the world, including Chinese wuxia pictures, Canadian horror comedies, and documentaries about everything from VFX legend Steve Johnson to the history of the Ultraman franchise. We’ll also get restorations of films like the Chow Yun-Fat action classic “City War,” Takashi Miike’s bizarre “Gozu,” and Bruce McDonald’s 2008 classic “Pontypool.”
Among the luminaries announced to receive awards at Fantasia include “Drive” director Nicolas Winding Refn, whose latest film (and his first in a decade), “His Private Hell,” will open the fest; Japanese horror legend Takashi Shimizu (“Ju-On: The Grudge”) will receive the Cheval Noir Career Achievement Award, coinciding with the world premiere of “Village of Eight Gravestones” (more on that later) and the North American premiere of “The Mouths.” The fest will also host the Canadian premiere of Jane Schoenbrun’s hotly anticipated “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” as well as a two-hour “fragment” from Louise Weard’s groundbreaking (and lengthy) work of trans cinema, “castration movie chapter iii: a fragmentary passage.”
For more info on the fest and how to buy tickets, head here. In the meantime, if you need to plan your schedule, here’s a handy list of titles we’re particularly excited about.
Freaks Part II
While “Her Private Hell” is opening the fest, Fantasia will close with the latest from some local boys made good: Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein’s “Freaks Part II,” a sequel to the 2018 film about a hidden society of people with superpowers who are hunted by an unfriendly government. “Part II” follows the mother and daughter from the previous film, Mary (“Silicon Valley”‘s Amanda Crew) and Chloe (Lorelei Olivia Mote), as they continue their flight from the authorities, hiding their powers and identities to keep themselves safe. But Mary has revenge on her mind, with an eye to the officer (Lili Taylor) who killed her first child. The first “Freaks” overcame a modest budget with some really inventive special effects, and “Final Destination Bloodlines” proved that Lipovsky and Stein have a stellar command of horror thrills, so consider us sat.
The Glorious Dead
The Adams Family are Fantasia favorites, and for good reason; their prior films, “Hellbender,” “The Deeper You Dig,” and “Mother of Flies” (one of my favorites of last year) elevate themselves beyond the DIY auspices of the family filmmaking team into genuinely unsettling works of folk horror. Now, they’re back with “The Glorious Dead,” in which a small-town sheriff and her deputy wake up to find a world that is unrecognizable, spooky, and decidedly bloody, and a townspeople that are increasingly swallowed up by fear and anger. Expect plenty of inventive lo-fi gore, atmosphere shooting from the gills, and some shockingly timely gestures towards what it feels like to live in America today. Think “Evil Dead–dington.”
Hot Spot
“The Lure” director Agnieszka Smoczyńska returns with a sci-fi thriller that, naturally, touches on our growing anxieties about AI. In “Hot Spot,’ the world is ruled by sentient artificial intelligence, and a private detective (Noomi Rapace, seemingly born for these kinds of mid-level science fiction capers) sets about solving a murder, only to find herself in the company of a rebel group who might just be able to free humanity from their digital masters. Not much has been said about this, but the heady mix of director and material (which screams everything from Albert Pyun to “Blade Runner 2049“) makes this absolute catnip for a sci-fi hound like moi.
Our Effed Up World
While “Camp Miasma” is the clear marquee title for queer and trans cinema at this year’s Fantasia, it’s always nice to see prolific trans horror wunderkind (and Shoenbrun acolyte) Alice Maio Mackay up to her usual tricks as well. This year’s entry, “Our Effed Up World,” stars “Camp Miasma”‘s Jess McLeod, “Fucktoys”‘ Annapurna Sriram, and the “Hellraiser” remake’s Brandon Flynn as a group of slacker friends who are suddenly tasked with fighting off an alien invasion. Knowing Mackay’s penchant for using genre to probe the messy dynamics of queer friend groups (see last year’s “The Serpent’s Skin,” which charmed me), this ought to be fun.
Permanent Damage
Canadian filmmaker Seth A. Smith returns to Fantasia with a quirky crime caper about an escaped convict (“The Umbrella Academy”‘s Calem MacDonald) who finds himself in a battle of wills with a cruel landlord (Stephen Dorff) as he tries to steal his “golden goose.” Smith’s “Tin Can” from 2020 was a Fantasia highlight for me, a gloopy paranoid sci-fi thriller about the perils of isolation; I’ve long been curious what he’d do next.
The Samurai and the Prisoner
Plenty of previous festival favorites will be playing at Fantasia (another honorable mention I can’t wait to catch: Yuen Wo-ping’s “Blades of the Guardians“), but ever since its rapturous reception at Cannes (see our review), I have been champing at the bit to experience Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s masterful samurai film/murder mystery about a
Los Vampires
The Spanish-language version of 1931’s “Dracula” has long been a fascinating curiosity: a Spanish crew shot at night on the same set that Tod Browning’s classic vampire film used during the day. Craig Mitchell’s “Los Vampires” fictionalizes that account in much the same way as “Shadow of the Vampire” did “Nosferatu,” as a Spanish actor (“Lost”‘s Henry Ian Cusick) who shadows the English-speaking actor (Thomas Kretschmann) who’s playing the count by day. The premise and its promised tone feels like a beautifully deranged ode to the compromises and risks inherent in the creation of art, particularly in the messy days of Early Hollywood.
Village of Eight Gravestones
While his J-horror return “The Mouths” also looks intriguing, of the two Takashi Shimizu pictures announced this year, I can’t help but gravitate to the eerie folk horror of “Village of Eight Gravestones,” in which a young man named Tatsuya visits the rural village where his late mother grew up. Along the way, he’s assisted by the iconic Japanese pulp detective Kindaichi, who helps him solve the mystery of a killing spree that has beset the village shortly after Tatsuya’s arrival. Ghosts of the past and the splattered blood of the present are sure to meet, which is the wheelhouse Shimizu has spent a career mastering.
You Are the Film
Makoto Ueda loves his time-loop stories; after writing the scripts for the exceedingly clever “Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes” and “Rewrite,” Ueda steps behind the camera to film his latest, “You Are the Film.” This time, the twist revolves around two people, three kilometers apart, who must guide each other in real time through the actual cinema screen. That’s an inventive premise on its face, a lovely parallel to the innate interactivity between subject and object that occurs when we watch movies; I trust Ueda to explore it in some fun ways.
Zsazsa Zaturnnah
Based on the Filipino comic book of the same name, “Zsazsa Zaturnnah” (or its full title, “Zsazsa Zaturnnah vs. the Amazonistas of Planet X”) feels like it’ll be a candy-colored celebration of one of the Philippines’ foremost super-queeroes. Under the watchful eye of Filipino animator Avid Liongoren (“Hayop Ka!”, also restored and playing the fest this year) and Manila studio Rocketsheep. “Zsazsa” will tell the story of gay hairdresser Ada, who gets hit by a pink meteor and turns into the curvaceous superheroine of the title—who must, of course, protect her village from the aforementioned Amazonistas and all the terrifying creatures they can muster. It all looks riotous, uproarious, and hilariously flamboyant.
