Ancestral Beasts (Fantasia International Film Festival 2026)

We don’t get a lot of Canadian media here in the UK, but the little I’ve experienced from The Great White North shows a much healthier and supportive relationship with indigenous representation. Their neighbours to the south could learn a lot from them as there’s an official Indigenous Screen Office in Toronto, one result of that support in action being the world premiere of Tim Riedel’s Ancestral Beasts. The film’s cast and crew are almost entirely indigenous, Riedel himself having Red River Métis heritage, and seeing this happen in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand suggests the global film industry is doing some very important things very right.

The film starts with a cold open that skirts the line between a supernatural happening and a possible suicide which, given that it’s early in the story and we only see the blood, could go either way. The person leaving this mortal coil is the mother of the sisters central to the narrative, then the story jumps forward a few years and one of the siblings, Elyse (Morgan Holmstrom), is about to be fired from her job. She treated someone horribly and begs for time off to resolve her mental health struggles, but her boss refuses until her older sister, Nikki (Darla Contois), arrives full of thunder – somehow managing to secure a leave of absence so Elyse can get her insurance and affairs in order. Elyse and Nikki do not get along, the former even having the latter saved in her phone as “Evil Witch”, even though they only have each other after their mother’s suicide (or at least, that’s the story they know). Still at odds with her older sibling, Elyse drives off to the now‑decrepit cabin in the woods for space, solitude, and her recurring aide – a podcast called “Stolen Matriarchs”. Once there she butts heads with her yokel neighbour, Max (Josh Strait), meets an estranged cousin, and makes friends with people at the gym, but in the cabin there’s a massive hole that’s home to something with a murderous streak and a volatile relationship with human emotion.

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Riedel has been upfront about what Ancestral Beasts is, and even the press material for Fantasia states that he’s exploring his connection to familial dysfunction and mental health through psychological horror. He’s clear about the behaviour of the sisters embodying themes of self‑harm, anxiety, and depression, but the level of narrative padding can be difficult to come to terms with, especially as everything is clearly part of the subtext of previous generations’ trauma and mental health issues, and even the title signals the intent. The whole idea that “monsters = grief” is one of the great clichés of modern genre film, and there’s still room for stories within that framework if the ideas are there.

The director’s examination of personal history isn’t too trite or clichéd, but the problem for me is the combative treatment of mental health, which is another way of saying that Elyse and Nikki are difficult characters to get on with and here’s the double‑edged sword – the spiky nature of Holmstrom’s and Contois’s performances is entirely the point. If I said the characters are horrible and instantly unlikeable, that doesn’t mean an inability to engage with writer/director Riedel’s script, but is instead an aknowledgement that if Ancestral Beasts took a more nuanced approach beyond rage it would be a net benefit – we’re talking about a real catch‑22 here.

Much of the violence is emotional, and when it moves into more physical forms a lot of it takes place off‑screen or out of shot, the death of a character (whether they deserve it or not, which in most cases they don’t), being signposted by an explosive splatter of blood hitting a window or some other bit of peripheral set. The more effective horror trimmings are more insidious, the best example being a shot in which Elyse is lying in bed listening to her podcast while her hair is wisping in the wind, and the longer the shot holds, the more the creature at reveals itself. It’s a masterfully chilling slow build that’s on the opposite end of the tonal spectrum to a sequence in which Elyse is pulled by her hair to the ceiling, again while in bed. This escalates to her running to her car nearby, getting in and dropping her keys, after which there’s round after round of the creature opening different car doors and her scrambling to shut them. The entire sequence is very tense and well staged, and made all the more effective because we barely see any of the monster, speaking of which, Riedel does show too much of it. Where that would be an issue in other films though, he gets a pass because it’s such a unique thing – basically a giant millipede with a hand for a head. It’s a startlingly original image that eventually feeds into the themes of mental health and how a person can excessively punish themselves.

Ancestral Beasts is a very well‑made and well‑intentioned movie, and despite my difficulty getting along with the characters, the cast are consistent – except for Cody (Asivak Koostachin), as he’s the friend we all wish we had. Ultimately it comes down to the notion that as a spectator, directorial intent can be a hard thing to square with because what Riedel is doing is deeply personal, and there will always be validity in that. With so many other movies using the trauma = supernatural motif, Ancestral Beasts has a lot of competition, and even with the indigenous cast, crew, and perspective giving the film a clear identity, only the most striking creative highs tend to stand out in this crowded horror space.

ROB’S ARCHIVE – ANCESTRAL BEASTS (2026)