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Fantastic Fest 2026 – Day 7

Posted on September 28, 2026 | Leave a comment

Next to last day of the fest! A week in but I’m still going strong. Unfortunately we weren’t off to a strong start today… But we ended strong!

Death Has No Master – A woman (Asia Argento) returns to her childhood cacao plantation in Venezuela to sell it but must contend with squatters and PTSD. You wouldn’t think that’s enough plot to sustain a movie and you would be right. Billed as “slow burn,” it teases flashbacks that never go anywhere, and deliberately or accidentally refuses to let you make an emotional connection with anyone or anything. It wants to talk should colonialism and whatnot but doesn’t seem to have any real point. By the time the violence starts, it’s not just ambiguous who deserves it but also why we should care. 1/5

Corpus – A movie that dares to ask the question “can the power of cocaine enable a twink to overcome witchcraft?” Stay tuned for the answer. A New York photographer slash drug dealer, his model ex-boyfriend, and their younger version of Jason Manzoukas bro go out to a mansion in the middle of nowhere to party with a photographer who looks like Charlize Theron, her elderly Asian girlfriend, and a feral model girl. Hijinks and eventually stabbings ensue. Way too slow and no discernible point. 2/5

5 More Minutes – There’s a 5 minute “Groundhog Day” style time loop in this Spanish film but it is happening to everyone everywhere – but things or people damaged stay damaged. A couple whose marriage is on the rocks heads out to a tech-disconnected Airbnb in the country when it hits. You don’t heal and people freak out and mistrust each other so the stakes and consequences get higher each time. Enjoyable and funny but as the start and end are completely unexplained it seemed a little hollow. 3/5

Each movie today has beem getting a little better, but I was not prepared for the next…

A Prayer For The Dying – Based on the Stewart O’Nan book of the same name, this is a Western, set in Friendship, Wisconsin in 1870. It stars British folk singer Johnny Flynn as the Jacob, a combination sheriff, pastor, and undertaker, and John C. Reilly as the town doctor. A diphtheria outbreak and wildfires threaten the town as Jacob has to make increasingly hard decisions about how to keep the townsfolk safe in a world that provides no way out sometimes. It’s a heavy psychological drama about the burden of responsibility and is in a class above the other films I saw here. It’s sometimes dislocating, sometimes impressionist or surreal, sometimes painfully realistic. I haven’t read the novel but I get the sense it’s one part Cormac McCarthy and one part Daniel Kraus’ “Angel Down.” Why is a Western with A list stars at Fantastic Fest? Apparently no one in Hollywood was willing to take a high concept risk and let director Dara Van Dusen make it in the U.S. so she went to Finland to get a producer and shot it in Slovakia. Instead we get the trash we deserve I guess. 5/5

I discovered with a start that I already have the novel on my Kindle so I plan on reading it and apparently it is visually inspired by a book called Wisconsin Death Trip which in turn has a documentary which I also intend to dig into.

There was still a midnight showing to go but I was so affected by this film I needed to go home and lie down, so that’s what I did instead.

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Fantastic Fest 2026 – Day 6

Posted on September 28, 2026 | Leave a comment

OK, 22 movies in and energy is starting to flag. I’m punishing the Alamo for their QR code ordering and ridiculous prices by not eating anything in the theater and have scavenged the nearby areas for placees I can get food in the ~1 hour between screenings. So I wasn’t *totally* crushed when I didn’t get into a film in 2 slots today (I tried for Playhouse, yet another superrnatural VHA movie, and the Spanish vampire tale Upiro), though it’s still not ideal. I did get into the morning showing though…

The Spiral – What could be more terrifying to an Italian than a fat son and a lesbian daughter? Only a mother’s smothering, smothering love! The Spiral is a really interesting and psychological Italian movie, with the bargains-with-Satan(?) aspect really almost a side note in a tale that illustrates the decisions parents make within families and how they play out, along with the related guilt, shame, control, and so on. The mother makes ever-escalating deals to get her family back to its desired idyllic Italian state of garden parties, winning at football, and slapping women when they’re lippy. A slow but hard burn, a thinking movie! I loved it, 5/5.

I tried waiting in the standby line for Playhouse as I heard great buzz for it from the first half, but was unable to get in and had 2 consecutive slots free. So I went and got an Italian at Home Slice (inspired by The Spiral of course) and… Went to see a movie!!! You heard me. The 4k re-release of the original Ghost In The Shell was in theaters one week only, the exact same week as Fantastic Fest, so I zapped over to a nearby AMC and saw it. So, I may as well review it here too!

Ghost in the Shell – The cyberpunk Japanese animated classic has some fun action, with Major Motoko Kusanagi leading a futuristic cyborg special ops squad that’s part of the Byzantine Japanese government, but it takes its time to lavish you with visuals and soundtrack and philosophical meditation on – what is a soul? (A “ghost” is a soul.) If we get more and more of our bodies replaced with tech, what are we? If an AI claims to be alive, what is it? If minds and memory can be hacked and manipulated, what is self? I’ve seen it many times and the image that has started to stick with me the most each time is a hapless garbage man, whose brain got hacked so he’d make proxy hacking calls from his trash route believing he was trying to get to see his daughter via his ex-wife, but that was all implanted memories. When they catch him and he sees that the “picture of his daughter” he’s been showing is just him with a basset hound, he is crushed and ask how they can remove the false memories – but they can’t, and his dejection is profound. It’s slow and thoughtful and in my top 3 GOAT anime (Akira and Princess Mononoke being the other two). 5/5

Back to the fest! In the feature slot was a movie I had not selected in the first half but people said it was good. I learned to avoid “puppet movies” in previous fests but this one paid off.

Kylgor In the Grisly Abyss – An all-latex puppet production of a fun 1980s type barbarian fantasy movie!  Kylgor and his four comrades go to slay the evil king and take his head – they do that as the setup, but then they and some of the pursuing evil-kingdom soldiers fall into an underground cavern full of demented monsters and slime and blood and monsters and blood and slime! Really good pacing and variety, this is the kind of thing that could get old at feature length but it doesn’t! Every character has an arc, and you can follow the sword and axe and dagger and punching and biting puppet fights… The final boss has an electrified flying guillotine as a weapon which is metal as hell. Made by a Canadian family in their garage for like $17k? Hell I’ll pitch in for a sequel!

I play a tabletop role-playing game called Dungeon Crawl Classics that has an aesthetic identical to this film, they totally should do a collab! 4/5

And finally, the midnight showing!

The Heretiks – A cult of witches that lives in the woods near the ‘burbs decide it’s time to sacrifice a random girl who is having drama with her older sister and little friend on Halloween. They have to fend them off with the help of one of the witches that disagrees with them on various theological points like “don’t bring on the end times” and “don’t giggle maniacally at all opportunities.” OK sure, it has a cast of 9 and props clearly liberated from a Spirit Halloween and is set in “a suburban house” and “a park”, but unlike the vast majority in this genre it has good pacing and remarkably coherent magic that obeys clear rules, which is refreshing. The mixed magic and melee fights are fun!  (MMA should have spells that can throw people across the room, or set them on fire, or immediately remove all their skin; I’d watch it if it did!) I mean, it’s not Halloween, but it does have a lot going for it. 3.5/5

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Fantastic Fest 2025 – Day Eight

Posted on October 16, 2025 | Leave a comment

The last day of the fest. Fatigue has set in. You’ve seen most of the films so you start picking random stuff out of the schedule.

Angel’s Egg – A restored 1984 anime by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) and illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano (Vampire Hunter D). Cryptic, weird, haunting. A little girl (?) tends a large egg in an abandoned world and meets a mysterious soldier (?). Very little dialogue, mostly the sounds of wind and rain and water and footsteps. Cool and surreal. It’s on HBO MAX now but I figured I should see it on the big screen, and that was the right call. Slow and moody alert, but I like that. 4/5 stars.

Lunatic: The Luna Vachon Story – A documentary about female wrestler Luna Vachon and her struggle to get both herself and women’s wrestling taken seriously, with bipolar disorder, lots of drugs, a culture of abuse, and sex trafficking getting in the way (not to mention Vince McMahon). Lots of segments from her adoptive father Paul “The Butcher” Vachon, several wrestlers she had been friends with, and her son, who is all blonde, square-jawed, and smiling as he relates heartwarming tales of not seeing his mom for years, getting involved in gangs, being beaten, not seeing her for a year at a time, and doing lines of coke with her. (He went on to first prison and then a couple seasons of Hell’s Kitchen). A pretty depressing expose (Rowdy Roddy Piper likes to rape 13-year-olds apparently) alongside a tale of someone who spent every bit of her energy trying to achieve her dream and got 98% of the way there despite it all. 3.5/5 stars.

Camp (or, CAMP) – A young woman is upset because she ran over a kid when she was 16 and her best friend OD’ed recently. So she goes to become a camp counselor and makes friends with the other counselors who like to party, take drugs, and engage in light witchcraft. It is… puzzling and unsatisfying and gets real surreal toward the end. But maybe their witchcraft works because I want to hate it, but there were enough flashes of good moviemaking to keep me engaged… It seems like any random cult dreck movie but was slightly better, though for no reason I am able to identify. It was not comedy, or horror, or drama really, just… dreamy? 2/5 stars.

I talked with others after the showing to try to make sense of it. “I’m not sure who that’s for or what it’s trying to say or why” was a common sentiment. But, opinions vary, it won one of the fest awards. I’m trying not to be judgemental about that, though this seems more like a film you’re “supposed” to like (ha ha! down with Christians and up with lesbianism!) than you actually *do* like.

Then the final slot of the fest! They saved a new horror movie for it to go out with a bang.

Whistle – Hot goth lesbian moves to a new high school and she and her friends, a jock, a princess, a The Crow cosplayer, and a hot preppie lesbian, run afoul of an Aztec Death Whistle that kills all who hear it!  About what you’d expect, the cool twist is that you die in the way you eventually would if you lived till whenever you were gonna kick the bucket, from “old age” to “fell into a wood chipper.” Oddly none are peaceful, even if it’s old age you get chased around by an old ghoulish monster version of yourself first. The kills are not as epic as you’d hope for though, from a Final Destination kind of thing. 3/5 stars, maybe generous but heck I’m in a generous mood!

And now, the closing night party! I don’t always go to these but this one sounded boss. It was out at Robert Rodriguez’ Troublemaker Studios in a cool outside city set!

Besides music and drinking there was a big ol fantasy LARP type of scavenger hunt where you had to protect a minotaur by defeating a minotaur hunter, which involved a lot of fetch quests from random NPCs – find runes, deliver a message, find an herb, draw some sketches, you know, adult Dora the Explorer episodes.

In the end it’s rolling dice at a table getting benefits from each thing you gathered. I hooked up with a band of merry folks and we murderized the bad guy!

And that was Fantastic Fest 2025, the 20th anniversary edition! I’m sure to go back next year, I just need to make sure I get a Superfan badge so I don’t have to queue for tickets. I hope some of these movie reviews help and encourage you to check out some unusual films you might otherwise not notice!

My three best of the fest were Sirat, A Woman Called Mother, and Ikatan Darah – a drama, a horror movie, and an action movie, all foreign. Keep an eye out for them.

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