Happy fright season everyone! This year I was lucky enough to cover Fantastic Fest 2026. I was able to put my eyes on four films from the festival in between my day job and time with my family. My full review for Kung Fu Deadly is out now (https://insessionfilm.com/movie-review-fantastic-fest-2026-kung-fu-deadly/) but this article is for the other three movies that I watched. There’s something weird for everyone in between the surveillance state in Compliance, the deadpan and off kilterness of Girl in the Night, and the yearning for love and futuristic cinematography in The Squirrel. The genres of films that play at Fantastic Fest vary from sci-fi, action, horror, comedy, etc. Take a look into what I was able to check out.
Compliance – Kyle Mangione-Smith
Compliance is a movie that will be very divisive. What interested me most was the way it’s filmed and edited. The screen‑life filmmaking style always grabs my attention because I enjoy seeing the computer desktops, phones, and other digital interfaces woven into the storytelling. In Compliance, we follow Sam (Megan Wilcox), a PR team member assigned to speak with a woman who was sexually assaulted on a property owned by the tech start‑up she works for, UVisit. After an emotionally draining day, Sam learns that UVisit wants to sweep the tragedy under the rug and pay off the victim to keep quiet. What follows is so stupid and asinine that a real‑life tech company could use clips from this movie in a training video.The sexual‑assault scenes weren’t necessary, and the writer/director could’ve found a better way to kick the plot into high gear. The movie is ultimately about big tech companies being bad and how we’re all living in a surveillance state. I also believe the organizations opposing UVisit are just as bad as UVisit itself. There are multiple spy/espionage sequences that are so silly I couldn’t hold in my laughter.The screen‑life filmmaking is cool, but it’s not enough to make this movie a hit overall.
Girl in the Night – Luka Marčetić
Talk about a movie that caught me by surprise. Girl in the Night is about a guy named Rok (Urban Kuntarič). Rok is a complete loser. Better yet, he’s a loser and a kleptomaniac. Rok enjoys the thrill of stealing things but he does his crimes in the most irresolute ways. At his night job in a gas station, he’s so bored that he starts stealing chocolate bars. Unfortunately, he goes one step further and steals the bike of a young woman named Iza (Lara Wolf). Rok begins to hang out with Iza and she reveals to him that she has superpowers and that she can fly. The weirdness and the deadpan comedy really kept me engaged for this 95 minute movie. I couldn’t help but to think of directors like Jared Hess and Wes Anderson. They’ve made movies like this but not with such bleak characters and post apocalyptic atmosphere. The entire movie is set at night time so audience members can feel the loneliness and despair of the characters such as Rok, Iza, Rok’s roommate Kremen, the mysterious bike lady, etc. Surprisingly, this movie won the Best Picture award at Fantastic Fest 2026. I hope that the movie becomes more popular once it’s acquired by a studio and is released to general audiences because it’s just that good.
The Squirrel – Markus Lehmusruusu
Think ahead. Think of a world in which nature and animals don’t exist anymore. A world in which people can’t have sex anymore. Sounds horrific, doesn’t it? Well the scifi, drama, rom-com The Squirrel paints a broad picture of this world and how one man is shaken to his core by an animal that shows him that he’s longing for something that he never thought he would, love. Our lead, Pasi (Miro Lopperi), is a designer of synthetic animals, similar to Gemma in M3gan. Pasi doesn’t have a social life outside of work and just to receive pleasure he takes sexual favors from a machine. One night during a shift, Pasi finds a squirrel in the trash behind the building. He takes it home so that he can do some tests on the little guy and actually feel some sort of way about him. As time goes by, he starts to become emotionally attached to the squirrel. He treats him as if he’s a pet that he can keep around. Investigator Emilia (Mimosa Willamo) is on the case of this suspicious thing that’s roaming around their space. Pasi meets Emilia for the first time and he’s smitten. Throughout the film’s sweet spot of a runtime (95 minutes) we watch Pasi become hopeful about life, sad that his new buddy is depressed because he’s not in his element anymore, and find love in an unexpected place. The cinematography and production design are sleek and futuristic. The colors pop off the screen and they’re vibrant depending on the type of scene they’re in. I enjoyed the chemistry between the two actors in the scenes that we have of them. Their characters are just so bored in their day to day lives. When it’s time for the two of them to be together they can’t keep their hands off of each other.
My first Fantastic Fest was kind of let down due to the small amount of films that I was able to watch. I am considering going to the actual festival in Texas next year just for the experience. A lot of my peers have told me that the events and parties are a good time and that they’re a plus to the festival besides watching the movies that are playing.
