The 30th annual Fantasia Fest is almost here, and if this is your first time hearing of it, where have you been? It’s only the premiere international genre festival in the world, hosted in beautiful Montreal. It’s the festival that launched the careers of filmmakers like Adam Wingard, kicked off the North American leg of the J-Horror craze, and acted as the entry point for a number of future Canadian submissions for the Academy Awards. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. For its 30th year, the festival is pulling out all the stops, featuring a wealth of full-length and short films diving in and out of genre and the slipstreams between. If there’s a more prestigious festival for these kinds of offerings, I haven’t heard of it, and Fantasia continues to act as the vanguard for prestige in horror, science fiction, and the fantastical.
This year’s offerings are impossible to capture in one post, but as a way to whet your appetite for what’s to come, there’s no better way to share my own excitement than by telling you the five films of the fest I’m most looking forward to.
Trauma, Or Monsters All (dir. Larry Fessenden)
There’s so much I could say about Fessenden‘s work and what it means to me. I watched Habit on a whim only a few years ago, became obsessed with how he expertly ties together the concerns of indie drama with gothic monster tales, and does it all with modest budgets and some of the best storytelling skills within the industry. Fessenden is probably best known for co-writing the videogame smash Until Dawn and acting as a producer and mentor figure for a number of talents behind the camera (Kelly Reichardt, Ti West, Jim Mickle, I could go on all day), but the little shared universe he’s been building among his own horror films, within the NYC vampire/addiction tale Habit, the Frankenstein retelling Depraved (possibly his finest hour), and the werewolf alcoholism metaphor Blackout, all comes to a head in Trauma, Or Monsters All. I can’t even begin to imagine how these three diverging stories will begin to connect, but to put a fine bow on it, this new film elicits the same feelings in me that something like The Avengers did in most American cinemagoers. Seriously, if this piece does nothing else, I really hope it pushes you towards exploring Fessenden‘s unique spin on horror. It’s one of the most rewarding moviegoing experiences you can have, spooky season or otherwise.
Her Private Hell (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn)
Nicolas Winding Refn has been, sadly, off the radar in terms of the big screen for some time now. While he’ll be eternally remembered for the James Sallis adaptation Drive (one of the best films of its year, bar none), his follow-up Only God Forgives was unfairly received and misunderstood by audiences and critics seeking something in the same high-octane vein. Since then, he’s mostly worked in television, most notably developing the ambitious (if perhaps too much so) Too Old To Die Young with Ed Brubaker for Amazon, and the arthouse horror film The Neon Demon, another challenging effort that did at least garner its adherents over the years. His newest, Her Private Hell, pairs two favorites of mine (Sophie Thatcher and Charles Melton) in a science fiction horror tale that sees a strange mist engulfing a futuristic metropolis while both of its protagonists are in search of their family members. How can you say no to a logline like that?
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (dir. Jane Schoenbrun)
Two years ago, I was staggered in the middle of a press screening. I had heard a little noise about the latest A24 film, I Saw the TV Glow, but I had no idea how much it would envelop me during its runtime and how deeply felt its wounds would be, especially as someone who grew up very sad and uncomfortable within his own body and found his escape in fiction, especially that of cheaply produced television. That little boy grew up to be a man (of sorts) who awaited the latest film from Jane Schoenbrun with bated breath, and based on the reaction it received at the Cannes Film Festival (winning the Queer Palm and sitting at a flawless 100% on the Tomatometer), that wait was worth it. What excites me most about what Schoenbrun has cooked up here is how they’re touching on another aspect of my own fandom growing up, which is the slasher, and totally turning it inside out with its focus aimed on the metafictional. Between this and their upcoming novel Public Access Afterworld, which gives off a real Videodrome-meets-the-internet-age feel (I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my list to get to when it hits this October), this is without doubt their breakthrough year, and their latest looks to be a stunner.
The Samurai and the Prisoner (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
When it comes to current-day Japanese filmmakers, I have two that I will watch whatever they make without a moment’s hesitation: the first is Ryusuke Hamaguchi, who I think is simply one of our best living directors. The other is Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who has had a long and incredibly varied career, but over the last twenty years I don’t believe there’s a single horror/thriller filmmaker within the country who can touch him. Even outside of Japan, it’s difficult to identify anyone in Kurosawa‘s league within the genre. From touchstones like Pulse and Cure (my pick for the best J-Horror film by a mile) to recent releases like Cloud, which I caught at its North American debut at TIFF two years ago and which, with its flexibility between crime, action thriller, and existential dread, I still think about it to this day; those nightmarish last shots alone haunt me in ways few films do. I must admit, given my enthusiasm for this side of his work, I’ve been less interested in his later-career flings within historical drama. A more stately approach than what I’ve become comfortable with as a regular Kurosawa viewer. Which brings us to his latest, The Samurai and the Prisoner, a jidaigeki (a period drama set before the Meiji era). Surprisingly, this is the first of these that Kurosawa has ever made. That alone catches my eye, on top of the fact that the cast includes the star of Cloud, Masaki Suda, which is also a big draw. I’m not familiar with the source novel, but it’s a well-regarded piece of detective fiction slapped down right in the middle of one of Japan’s most civil-war-inflected periods. Kurosawa doing a full-fledged mystery in one of Japan’s most traditional filmic forms is a gripping combo, even if it’s off-register for him.
Colony (dir. Yeon Sang-ho)
Now let’s shift over to South Korea for the final entry, which is the newest effort from Yeon Sang-ho, whose “zombies on a bullet train” effort Train To Busan breathed new life into the most moribund of old horror saws a decade ago. When I first saw it, I was thrilled by how Yeon could maintain tension in such tight quarters while balancing out his expertly pitched ensemble. Its post-apocalyptic sequel (in the way Day of the Dead is a sequel to Dawn of the Dead), Peninsula, was a disappointment. And after a dalliance of his own with other genres, he’s now back in horror territory with Colony. It’s a new zombie film, trading in the expansive elements of his last swim in these waters for another enclosed setting. This time, a zombie virus breaks out during a biotech conference, and authorities shut down the building, leaving those left inside to find a way to survive. A solid premise, and the biotech aspect of this form of the plague adds a new wrinkle (apparently there’s a hivemind element at play) that puts me in mind of some of the more unique aspects of the Resident Evil franchise. I’m rooting for Yeon here. The world could use a new-generation Romero, and Train To Busan proved he had the goods. In times like these, horror with an explicit turn towards the socio-political would be very welcome.