J’ai dû lui faire goûter le programme.
Bonjour, hello, bienvenue, welcome, enfants de la nuit, children of the night… once again descends on all that scintillating time in Montreal – Fantasia International Film Festival – where dreams, nightmares, flights of fancy, and chills await. From genre (re)defining science fiction to ghostly apparitions and amazing animations, through to historical epics and post and pre apocalyptic visions – there is something to please those who crave the macabre, the magical, and the just messed up!
Fantasia is the defining North American festival which kickstarts the year in horror, thrillers, genre unwieldy masterpieces, and the wonderfully weird. 2024 proves once again that Québécois have their fingers on the pulse of what will quicken yours. From its inception in 1996 Fantasia has opened doors for creatives as varied as Adam Wingard, Laura Moss, Mark H. Rapaport, Paris Garcilla, and was way ahead on the Nicolas Cage renaissance with a career award in the 27th Edition. Picking the best from Cannes and bringing them straight to North America. If it is good enough for Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro, John Woo, Jennifer Reeder, and Mike Flanagan it’s good enough for your eyeballs and adrenal glands.
The 28th Edition is proffering tasty treats. An incredible retrospective screening from Canadian trailblazer Vincenzo Natali. Cube (1997) proved hell isn’t just other people it’s being stuck in a torture device with other people. James Wan and Leigh Whannel would probably be drinking flat whites in Melbourne wondering how to break into the horror market if not for Cube. Escape Room wouldn’t exist. A 4K restoration will be shown with Vincenzo and actor David Hewlett – a genre legend in his own right – in attendance.
Although there are no geographical boundaries for films shown at Fantasia (in fact it often has more Asian films than any festival outside of Asia) the festival doesn’t forget the home grown Canadian and Quebecois films.
What do Christian Slater, Liv Tyler, Tim Curry, and Kyle MacLachlan have in common? They were all directed by Allan Moyle. If you celebrate Rex Manning Day (or if you know what it is) then you’ll be keen to see the Canadian director’s experimental first feature The Rubber Gun described by those who know as “Huck Finn on coke.” The Montreal-set docufiction stars Moyle along with Stephen Lack as they chronicle the downfall of a ‘family’ of counterculture drug users. Self-financed and filmed over two years in 1974 and 1975 The Rubber Gun was a critical hit with those who got the fleeting opportunity to see it. The Rubber Gun is just one of the retrospective gems chosen for Fantasia 2024 screening.
André Forcier brings to the festival his seventeenth feature film Ababouiné, a period drama and fantasy set in the Catholic Church in the 1950s. Karl R. Hearne presents his feature The G starring Dale Dickey as a woman pushed to revenge after she is subjected to elder abuse.
Annick Blanc’s Jour de chasse (Hunting Daze) part of the New Flesh Competition is a Quebec based thriller and mind-bender about a stripper Nina (Nahéma Ricci) who ends up at a buck’s party with a bunch of privileged city-dwelling hobby hunters out to prove who has the best ‘Alpha’ instincts. Nina enters their homosocial pack by pledging allegiance to their pack. But when the weekend revelry of booze, drugs, and competing testosterone takes a dark turn, Nina finds that her new buddies have a particular set of survival skills which might not include her.
A surreal feminist subversion as power play and pack mentality comes with deadly consequences. One critic praised it writing: “Psychopomps, animal guides, ferocity, and hot pink nail polish are Annick Blanc’s motifs; they create an assured vision of the perpetual damage of misogynistic and racist behaviour. Annick Blanc through Nina stares into the hearts of those who believe they own everything and despises what she finds. “Mother nature is the only redeemer,” and she is raging.” – that critic was me. Trust me, Hunting Daze is excoriating, disturbing and wild.
Jayro Bustamante is a Guatemalan director whose work has been chosen twice to represent the country in the Academy Awards. Anyone who saw his political horror fable La Llorona (2019) will be beyond thrilled that he is presenting his new feature Rita which like La Llorona draws on real life events. A fire which claimed the lives of forty-one girls incarcerated in an orphanage and forced to endure inhumane treatment. Using the lens of fantasy and sorority as solidarity, Bustamante crafts a film of astonishing beauty about the power of young women to rise as mythical creatures to reclaim what has been taken from them with the anger of the innocent betrayed. A Bustamante film is an unmissable and precious event – just ask the Criterion Collection as they added La Llorona to their carefully curated disc releases. Bustamante might not yet have won an Oscar, but he is in hallowed halls.
One of the darkest entries from New French Horror is Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s debut feature À l’intérieur (Inside) 2007. If Béatrice Dalle as a (literally) devouring lover in Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day wasn’t disturbing enough, her turn as an intruder intent on extracting the unborn child of a heavily pregnant woman in Inside pushes the increasingly logical fear that your Betty Blue poster can hurt you.
Maury and Bustillo switch genres from horror to police procedural in Mangeur d’Âmes (The Soul Eater) where Virginie Ledoyen and Paul Hamy play detectives, one investigating a particularly gruesome murder-suicide, the other investigating the disappearance of several children from a small town in the French mountains. The legend of a local bogeyman known as The Soul Eater is who the locals claim must be responsible for all the town’s woes, but surely such an occult entity cannot exist?
Also featuring the iconic Sandrine Bonnaire, The Soul Eater is a hybrid chiller with two of the most pitiless contemporary directors guiding the action. Whichever genre Maury and Bustillo choose to work in, they want to ensure your nightmares are vivid and unshakeable.
Everybody’s favourite spooky family directorial team is back – The Adams family. If they aren’t your favourites have you been paying attention to their incredible back catalogue of DIY horror films? How many times does John Adams have to kill or be killed by one of his daughters (Zelda and Lulu)? Just how many spells does Toby have to cast?
If you have witnessed Hellbender, The Deeper You Dig, or their recent award-winning feature Where the Devil Roams you know you are in for something special with their Serbian shot creature feature Hell Hole. Written by John, Lulu, and Toby and directed by John and Toby, Hell Hole is a gooey, transgressive, eco-horror-slash-body-horror piece of punk spontaneity and daring. If something has been hidden that deep in the earth for that long – best you don’t dig it up, especially for a quick and ultimately very dirty way to get gas and fuel.
As a bonus John and Toby present their short feature Plastic Smile which has the always reliable animated porcelain doll with an agenda! If that isn’t enough to whet your appetite John and Toby will be at the festival with Toby sitting in a free panel discussion about women directed horror films presented by Heidi Honeycutt also featuring director Jenn Wexler, screenwriter and director Rioghnach Ni Ghrioghair, multi-hyphenate Kristina Klebe, horror historians extraordinaire Kier-La Janisse and Heather Buckley, plus many wonderful creatives and writers.
Alice Lowe is a genius and if there was all the time in the world I could list the reasons why. Luckily, Alice Lowe’s new feature Timestalker does have all the time in the world. Unluckily, Alice playing the romantically cursed Agnes uses that time to fall head over heels in love with Alex (Aneurin Barnard) only to fall head into grave and then be reincarnated to do it all over again. While Agnes/Alice is caught up with those shenanigans, we can quickly pop over to the listing reasons Alice Lowe is a genius part of this pitch.
Point one: Alice Lowe co-wrote and starred in Ben Wheatley’s comedy/horror Sightseers and it was pretty bloody great.
Point two: Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place.
Point three: She starred in and directed the stabby stabby pregnant woman documentary, sorry, comedy horror Prevenge and it was top-notch, A+, 100 percent brilliant.
Point four: Unlike other people who have been in, or attached to, Horrible Histories she hasn’t turned up in a Paddington film.
Point five: She wrote something called LifeSpam: My Baby is French. I haven’t seen it, but I already appreciate it.
Timestalker is Lowe’s sophomore feature film and it’s as close to a romantic comedy as you’re going to get from a woman who decided going on holidays with Steve Oram was enough of a reason to kill people. Or that hormones and swollen ankles mean there is a demonic presence in the womb and, oh well, best do whatever baby wants. Erring on the side of it being a comedy is safe, but romance is going to be righteously skewed and skewered. Bonus points awarded for getting to dress up across the centuries with some stunning wigs and for casting Nick Frost, Jacob Anderson, and Kate Dickie in supporting roles.
From South Korea comes The Roundup: Punishment. Getting to see Ma Dong-seok punch through a bunch of bad guys again is enough of a pitch. No more convincing than Ma Dong-seok hitting people hard is necessary.
And this is barely even scratching the surface of what Fantasia International Film Fest 2024 has programmed. Go to the website and hit something random and it will no doubt be sizzling.
Fantasia International Film Fest is in Montreal, Quebec from July 18 to August 4, 2024.
