Austin, TX’s Fantastic Fest returns this September for its 19th edition, with eight days filled to the brim with genre films big and small. We will be covering a variety of films as they premiere at the fest. In the interim, here are some individual titles which may be worth adding to your watchlist.

The 2024 edition of Fantastic Fest will run September 19 to September 26.

Cloud (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the prolific genre filmmaker, is pushing 70. Yet, he has three separate projects circulating film festivals in the past year. One of them, Cloud, is officially Japan’s selection for contention in the Best International Feature Oscar race. A crime thriller revolving around the world of online resell market scams, Cloud is evidently a film of two halves. The first half: a tense socio-economic drama; the second: a much more exaggerated riff on the action thriller. The two halves may or may not cohere, but they also may not need to to get the job done.

U.S. premiere – September 19

Memoir of a Snail (dir. Adam Elliot)

Adam Elliot is best known for his Oscar-winning short Harvie Krumpet and the cult favorite Mary and Max. He returns to film festivals in 2024 with his second feature, Memoir of a Snail. It is a life-affirming stop motion Claymation about two siblings separated and raised in contrasting households. The film is eight years in the making, and from an outside perspective it looks wonderful. For Fantastic Fest, it presents as a diversion from the usual genre film fare, but that may make it stand out all the more.

Texas premiere – September 21

Steppenwolf (dir. Adilkhan Yerzhanov)

I completely missed Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s Steppenwolf when it played Fantasia earlier this summer, where it won an award for its lead performances. The gritty revenge drama from Kazakhstan is being called “bleak” and “nihilistic” enough times online that I’m convinced the film will be a tough hang. That said, the film cuts into a 20-second teaser that is thrilling enough to catch my attention.

I have only seen one film produced in Kazakhstan – Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It, an entertaining film in its own right – and it’s about time I got on the Kazakh cinema train. Yerzhanov may be an ideal place to start, as he was a prominent figure in the “Partisan Cinema” movement in the 2010s, which emphasized the socio-political through film production that severed all ties from “governmental interference.”

U.S. premiere – September 21

Terrifier 3 (dir. Damien Leone)

The surprise success of Damien Leone’s Terrifier 2 in specialty theatrical release (according to The Numbers, a $15 million grosser with a $250,000 production budget; not too shabby at all) makes the quick turnaround on a third entry in the hyper-violent slasher franchise appear far less surprising. In a horror market that – aside from legacy sequels – has remained wary of the slasher subgenre, Art the Clown has found a cushy little niche for himself. By combining grand-scale splatter with the formula of the slasher (i.e., create a recognizable icon in a murderous character and a “final girl” to face off against that icon), Leone plays to a subsect of the horror fandom that is starved for quality practical effects and sinister extremity.

After being staunchly opposed to Terrifier and All Hallow’s Eve (in which Art makes an appearance), Terrifier 2 showed glimpses of grotesque artistry that genuinely impressed me. The film is still rough around all its edges, but to the extent that Leone indulges in crafting an operatic cat and mouse game with extremely heightened imagery of good and evil, I could get on board. Terrifier 3, at a similarly exorbitant 2+ hour runtime, may prove to be similarly heightened.

World premiere – September 19

V/H/S/Beyond (dir. Various)

I’m a sucker for the V/H/S franchise. Even when the entries are mediocre-to-bad, I enjoy the experience of watching the diversity of style and narration that a group of directors can bring to the found footage genre. In a sense, V/H/S is the franchise keeping found footage on life support. On the other hand, the oversaturation of the series (with Shudder’s involvement, we’re getting one film a year) poses a very real risk of fatigue.

This time around, I am excited because I am not familiar with the directors involved (aside from actor Justin Long). Here’s hoping I come out the other side with the discovery of a new horror talent (maybe Kate Siegel, co-writer of Hush who is directing here for the first time).

World premiere – September 20

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As always, thanks for reading!

—Alex Brannan (Letterboxd, Facebook)