I went to Fantastic Fest for the first time in 2009, and have been off and on since – 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2023, 2024, 2025, and now 2026! Eight solid days of film-watching. It is “genre” film, which is a weird term that means horror, scifi, “foreign”… Basically anything non-mainstream.
The fest kicked off with a big feature…
Resident Evil! An organ delivery driver is given a special package to go to Raccoon City General Hospital and – if you know anything about Resident Evil that’s ’nuff said. A completely different take on Resident Evil than all the previous incoherent actioners, by the director of Weapons and Barbarian. It was humorous and scary in turns, going for an Evil Dead 2 sort of vibe. Many of the shots were video gamey but not, you know, bad, as you might be led to expect by that statement. The action is nonstop and gruesome, these aren’t just zombies, it’s tentacle mutating body horror from the jump and escalated over the course of our hapless everyman’s journey. A fun watch. 3.5/5
Then it was snakey time, hence all the snake decor.
Beware Boiúna – A medical volunteer mission on the Amazon runs afoul of both colonizers and jumbo sized wildlife. Can be summed up as “a better Anaconda” in terms of effects and most technical measures. Is nature or man more ruthless? Well, one has a giant ass snake in play. But team human has a scrappy indigenous girl! Filmed on location along the Amazon. Not Werner Herzog by any means but a solid giant creature feature. Well made by Michael P. Nelson, director of last year’s “Silent Night, Deadly Night” reboot and solid if B-movie acting from the leads. And I got to hold a big snake they had as a promo. 3/5
One of the two female leads was Jessica Rothe, who was starring in three movies at the fest! Scream Queen of 2026 for sure.
The Glorious Dead – By the Adams family, a local fest favorite family/group that generates a movie a year plus or minus. A small town sheriff, Deb, has weird things start to happen in town. Sounds like half the streaming series out now right? Well this is a really small rural town and the sheriff is used to everyone being crackpots or helpless and wanting random handyman help from her so it takes a good number of weird reports to get her attention but then it gets really weird and gruesome fast. A horror comedy about the dead coming back to life, but a much different take on it than you’d expect. I liked the premise – but it was the late movie and they needed to edit it, they went through the same core loop of being confronted by the problem/doing the same thing about the problem/seeing that doesn’t work 3 full times and I was falling asleep by the third. It’s only 81 minutes long though. 2.5/5, 3/5 after an edit.
The first night of the fest was a success – kind of a downward trend over the evening, but whatver! I was up fresh and early for day 2…
