Everything We’re Excited to See At Fantasia This Year
For many, summertime is a bright, slow-sprawling haze, crowded with sun-soaked and zinc-caked days, soundtracked by the buzz of insects and the ripple of water. But for those who have a penchant for the sardonic, pulpy, or down-right horrifying, for those who love the sumptuous bite of genre cinema, July means the arrival of Fantasia International Film Festival, North America’s largest genre film festival.
Taking place every year in Montreal, Quebec, Fantasia has showcased some of the most exciting genre films from the world over, created by newcomers and seasoned filmmakers alike. Every year, more than one-hundred-thousand attendees watch with eager minds and twisted souls as day after day the festival premieres films that go on to become the rest of the world’s obsessions. A broad theatre for the hyper weird, experimental, and mainstream, the festival has premiered cultural classics such as 1999’s Ringu, and arthouse pieces like 2022’s Skinamarink.
The festival turns 30 this year and boasts an endlessly exciting lineup of films. There’s something at this festival for everybody. Here are just a handful of films we’re looking forward to this year.
Trauma Or, Monsters All
Written and directed by horror-master Larry Fessenden, Trauma Or, Monsters All promises to be a playground for the monstrous. The film follows a writer who moves to a small town to investigate some strange goings on, but when she gets too close to the truth, the horrors that lie beneath the surface are riled and angered. Fessenden brings together monsters from his wonderfully macabre oeuvre — including Sam from 1997’s Habit — for this exploration of the unrelenting waves of trauma and festering hurt. I can’t wait to re-enter Fessenden’s beautiful mind.
Drag
Produced by Danny DeVito and starring Lucy DeVito and Lizzy Caplan, Drag is a dark comedy about sisterhood and getting revenge. Two sisters break into the home of a guy who has not been nice to them (John Stamos) in an effort to get him back for his offenses, but everything goes terribly, hilariously awry. This film, directed by Raviv Ullman and Greg Yagolnitzer, promises thrills, laughs, and sisterly bonding — all of my favourite things!
Someone’s Daughter
With Someone’s Daughter, director Wiebke Von Carolsfeld seems to enliven a compelling question: what does the architecture of the conscience of the devil’s advocate look like? François Arnaud plays Paul, a man accused of rape more than a decade ago, and Pascale Bussières plays Sam, the lawyer who got Sam acquitted. In present day, the rape victim’s father kidnaps Paul and Sam and leaves them stranded in the wilderness. What ensues seems to be a reckoning for Sam, and I am deeply interested in seeing how this film handles its heady tale, how it balances respect for the victim, whether it lapses into a guileless thriller or a didactic morality tale, and if it remains human.
Motherwitch
Stories about motherhood and grief always attract me, perhaps because I’m always looking for ways to articulate pain. Director Minos Papas’ Motherwitch purports to be kin to films like Don’t Look Now and The Babadook: it follows a mother who has lost her children. But rather than explore grief by personifying pain in monsters or the horrific, the film enlivens it in the snaky canterings of a folkloric tale. Papas lends an ancient heft to the dynamic ebb and flow of grief and in the process promises to lend a vocabulary to grief that thrums with a visceral and timeless hurt, painting it as meaty and incurable and deeply, potentially renegade.
The Last Footage
One of Myanmar’s first found-footage horror films to premiere at an international festival, The Last Footage follows a group of friends as they visit a rubber plantation that one of them has inherited. One friend documents the trip on a pair of smart glasses, and as it descends into horrific chaos, the film gains an immediacy and rawness that looks like it will crawl deep under the skin. Myanmar has a lively DIY horror scene and The Last Footage promises to be a great introduction for Western audiences to the country’s genre film scene.
