Tag Archives: Fantasia Festival

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Parvulos — Fantasia Festival 2024

Parvulos is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

I’m going to give Parvulos the benefit of the doubt when it comes to its politics, in that I’m assuming it isn’t trying to have a politics at all. I begin by saying that, because the premise of the film is that a raging, deadly virus out-paced the rollout of vaccine boosters, so the government put out an untested vaccine whose unintended side effect was zombie-ism. The film first poses the question: What if society crumbled because of a deadly virus. Then, as an end-of-first-act twist, it posits instead: What if society crumbled because of that virus’s vaccine?

This first act is a slow-developing world building section in which three brothers, living alone in a home in the country, struggle to Continue reading Review: Parvulos — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Documentary, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Me and My Victim — Fantasia Festival 2024

Me and My Victim is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

Me and My Victim begins with co-director Maurane reciting a poem at a party. The poem is about the disparity between pornographic depictions of yoga and massaging and their real-life counterparts. There is a tension felt in the voice of the poem’s speaker, in that she both desires the perversity of the pornographic contexts and is violently averse to the notion of being touched by the men giving the massage and running the yoga class. Within the context of the poem, it is an intriguing tension, and this dichotomy between attraction and disgust (kind of, sort of) defines the narrative of the film.

The bulk of the documentary is a series of recreations of Maurane’s early dates with a romantic partner (the other co-director, Billy Pedlow), dates which are inflected with strange sexual tension. The intent is to expose Continue reading Review: Me and My Victim — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: House of Sayuri — Fantasia Festival 2024

House of Sayuri is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

Koji Shiraishi, known for the unsettling Noroi: The Curse, gives us in House of Sayuri an initially by-the-numbers haunted house film that pleasantly surprises with a second act rug pull. The film focuses on a family moving into a new home, where strange things immediately start occurring. It becomes evident that a violent ghost is haunting the family, bringing death and darkness to anyone who stays the night in the house.

House of Sayuri spends a good portion of its runtime recycling the same scare formula. A person wanders through the narrow corridors of the new home at night, finds themselves in Continue reading Review: House of Sayuri — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Review: Black Eyed Susan — Fantasia Festival 2024

Black Eyed Susan is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

Scooter McCrae could be described as an underground filmmaker. His three features have all been made on shoestring budgets and have provocatively challenged conventions. I remain a neophyte to McCrae’s work (I promise I will watch Sixteen Tongues very soon, but I didn’t have time to catch up with it ahead of this review). At the same time, I imagine I will see similar themes and moods to Black Eyed Susan present in his earlier films.

In the film, a man with a history of alcohol dependency and aggressive outbursts, Derek (Damien Maffei), is hired by an acquaintance to work at an artificial intelligence development company. The technology the company wants to push to market, and which Derek is tasked with testing, is a highly realistic Continue reading Review: Black Eyed Susan — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: The Soul Eater — Fantasia Festival 2024

The Soul Eater is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

In the rural town of Roquenoir, France, a series of murders and kidnappings have taken place. One survivor, a young boy, says it is the work of the “Soul Eater,” a creature of urban legend that steals children away into the woods.

Two investigators working under different jurisdictions are tasked with investigating the case. Elisabeth (Virginie Ledoyen) works for the National Police and is focused on the murders. Franck (Paul Hamy), the captain of the National Gendarmerie, is focused on the missing children. The two butt heads as they seek answers about this mysterious series of crimes.

Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, best known for their bloody 2007 film Inside, bring glimpses of the gruesome to this otherwise Continue reading Review: The Soul Eater — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Western

Review: Mash Ville — Fantasia Festival 2024

Mash Ville is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

Mash Ville is the type of ensemble crime film that is so jam-packed with plotty incident and odd characters that it feels as though the film is doing a lot and thus must be doing something interesting and new. The film aspires to be something like an acid western, and it may also draw comparisons to Tarantino or the Coens, in that the film attempts to blend slick humor with farce with black comedy.

The problem with an overly plotted black comedy about death and crime is that, if you do too much, it becomes Continue reading Review: Mash Ville — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Cuckoo — Fantasia Festival 2024

Cuckoo is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

I can’t help but feel that Cuckoo is a series of intriguing parts in search of a sum. Writer-director Tilman Singer introduces potentially fresh approaches to well-worn horror-thriller ideas, but these ideas never fully culminate in something satisfyingly original.

In the film, Gretchen (Hunter Schafer), a young rebellious teenager, moves from the United States to Germany to live with her father in a secluded estate in the Alps with his new wife and her young daughter. It is a decision she quickly regrets. Feeling homesick, she calls her mother and leaves a message saying as much. More than this, she is put off by the home, the neighboring resort at which she is given a job, and the people populating the area. In particular, Mr. König (Dan Stevens), the owner of the resort and Gretchen’s father’s employer, unnerves Gretchen.

Par for the course with horror films, strange and inexplicable occurrences start bringing themselves to Gretchen’s attention. Her mute half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu) starts convulsing in her bedroom in an apparent seizure brought on by a sound coming from the nearby woods. Women coming into the resort lobby occasionally fall suddenly ill and vomit. Mr. König insists that Gretchen not Continue reading Review: Cuckoo — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: The Beast Within — Fantasia Festival 2024

The Beast Within is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

The Beast Within is the least fun werewolf movie I’ve seen.

Alexander J. Farrell, who is normally a documentary filmmaker, brings us this horror-lite werewolf picture starring Kit Harington. Harington, top billed, is more accurately the third lead in a film with only four characters. He doesn’t say a line of dialogue until the 23-minute mark, for one. While his character Noah is the one inflicted with the titular “beast within,” the film is centered around his young daughter Willow (Caoilinn Springall) as she comes to learn about the affliction that plagues her family.

The Beast Within is, ostensibly, a film about a werewolf. But the truer explanation of its premise is that it is a film about lycanthropy as a thin metaphor for Continue reading Review: The Beast Within — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: FAQ — Fantasia Festival 2024

FAQ is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

FAQ is an interesting little creature. It has an infectious personality, driven by the child actor at its center. For a small-scale story about childhood and parenting, it is doing quite a lot (perhaps too much). Even as it is unclear exactly where it is going, what its odd plot points are progressing toward, the film gets by on heart and charm and liveliness.

At its core, FAQ is a film about a daughter and a mother. Dong-chun (Park Na-eun) is a quiet, curious, and restless child who, despite an excelling mind, struggles to make sense of her studies. Her mother (Park Hyo-ju) is worried about Continue reading Review: FAQ — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: The Old Man and the Demon Sword — Fantasia Festival 2024

The Old Man and the Demon Sword is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

Despite being extremely talky with heavily expository dialogue, the plot of Fábio Powers’ The Old Man and the Demon Sword is immediately confusing. Something meant to resemble a force field is cut through by a swordsman and his demon-possessed sword, initiating a battle against skeletal shadow people that no one else can see (save for the random older man of the title, who pops out of the bushes with a knife). The sword wants the barrier to be breached, for reasons I could not quite identify. And some sort of grand council is pulling the strings of the skeleton army, it seems.

The hooded hero has what is meant to be witty banter with the demon sword (João Loy), a trait carried over to the old man Tonho (Antonio da Luz) once he acquires the sword. The film, ostensibly, is an Continue reading Review: The Old Man and the Demon Sword — Fantasia Festival 2024 →