Fantasia Film Festival 2024 (Curtain Raiser)

In centuries past, wealthy eccentrics would sometimes entertain, shock, and astound dinner-guests by showing them collections of intriguing, and frequently downright bizarre, items known as “Cabinet(s) of Curiosities”; these could contain anything from fragmentary relics of dead civilizations to some crude taxidermied chimera constructed by sewing the torso of a monkey to the tail of a fish. Strip that “Cabinet of Curiosities” concept of its potentially elitist and colonial baggage, and I’d argue that you’d have the perfect formula for how to curate a genre film festival lineup; a showcase of all the variety of the weird and wonderful delights that this planet we call home has to offer, whether low-brow, high-brow, or whatever unconventional brow placements may lie in-between.

The Fantasia International Film Festival has, in essence, perfected the art of film festival programming. The Montreal-based festival, which celebrates its 28^th year running this July and August, is globally renowned for its diverse, eclectic, and consistently high-quality lineups; if you need any more proof of that fact, last year’s edition played host to the premieres of indie comedy sensation Hundreds of Beavers, Australian horror hit Talk To Me, and the critically-acclaimed Daisy Ridley-starring depression drama Sometimes I Think About Dying. Though many festivals claim to have “something for everyone”, Fantasia really does seem to have something for everyone; in fact, with over 120 features and 200 shorts selected for their 2024 edition, there’s so much on offer that it feels nigh-impossible to figure out where to even start. How do you even choose which films to check out when there’s just so much variety in store? In order to slightly ease your burden, I’ve picked out ten extra-curious features that you really won’t want to miss from this year’s Fantasia Festival – so get your notepads (or digital equivalent) out and start noting down names, because chances are you won’t forget these ones anytime soon.

1. Slated for a wide international theatrical release later this year, Luz (2018) director Tilman Singer returns 6 years later with his latest strange, sinister shocker, Cuckoo. The first leading film role of Euphoria (2019-) star and transgender activist Hunter Schafer, Cuckoo follows a teenage girl named Gretchen (Schafer) whose family moves from the States to a remote town in the Bavarian Alps; offered a desk job at a hotel by local resort manager Herr König (The Guest and Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens), Gretchen begins to notice that her picturesque new mountain home is not what it seems, with the terrifying appearance of a woman (Kalin Morrow) who screams in the night being only a taste of the surreal horrors to come. Viewers can expect unsettling phenomena, bursts of grotesque body-horror, and Argento-esque frights in a movie that has been described by Mashable’s Siddhant Adlakha as “incredibly strange and deviously fun”.

2. Also making a return to Fantasia is Come to Daddy (2019) director Ant Timpson, teaming up once again with that film’s star, the legendary Elijah Wood, for his sophomore feature… a family-friendly adventure film? Bookworm tells the story of Mildred (Evil Dead Rise’s Nell Fisher), the titular 11-year-old bookworm, who is reunited with her estranged magician father Strawn Wise (Wood) following an unexpected and sudden family emergency; attempting to make up for his years of absence, Strawn takes Mildred camping in the New Zealand wilderness, hoping to appeal to her sense of bookish adventure by taking her on a quest to find the elusive mythical beast known as “the Canterbury Panther”. Antics ensue in what promises to be one of the biggest feel-good films of the festival, and proves alongside last year’s superb Riddle of Fire (2023) that zany genre film fun isn’t just for the grown-ups.

3. If you prefer the child stars of your movies to be a little more bloodthirsty, then Vinegar Syndrome’s new restoration of the 1974 killer-kid obscurity Devil Times Five might be more up your street. Though new premieres get most of the spotlight in press festival coverage, Fantasia has a hell of a retrospective lineup each year, showcasing restorations of all sorts of weird and wonderful cult cinema, particularly those lesser-known titles which haven’t yet found their crowd. Also released as Peopletoys and The Horrible House on the Hill, this underseen proto-slasher follows a group of five young psychiatric patients who escape from their transport van in the snowy California mountains and infiltrate the home of a real-estate mogul and his family; little do the adults know that the children they have just taken in are planning a deadly game, and it isn’t long before the bodies start to pile up! Fans of grimy, nasty, wintry ‘70s schlock won’t want to miss this preview of an upcoming release from those gonzo folks at Vinegar Syndrome.

4. While we’re on the subject of families in remote locations dealing with gruesome horror, I’ve got to mention the Adams family – and in case you’re wondering, I’m not related to them, it’s just a funny coincidence – whose latest film, Hell Hole, follows previous home-made horrors Hellbender (2022) and Where the Devil Roams (2023) as gloriously gory proof that the family that slays together, stays together. Hell Hole follows a fracking crew in the Serbian wilderness who accidentally unearth an ancient, slimy horror seeking a womb to be born anew from – one that will tear through flesh and bone to get what it wants. A grotesque, blackly humorous, and undoubtedly topical family-made creature-feature is sure to await those who wish to dig a little deeper and check this one out.

5. A monstrosity of a different kind – namely, an absolutely nightmarish-looking mannequin – features in Caveat (2020) director Damian McCarthy’s latest Irish chiller Oddity. This supernatural frightener follows a blind psychic and antique-dealer named Darcy (Carolyn Bracken), who uses her otherworldly gift to investigate the unsolved murder of her identical twin sister – with the help of a particularly horrifying wooden dummy. To say that this film has scared those that have had the chance to see it so far would be an understatement – expect to be utterly petrified.

6. In case Oddity didn’t provide you with enough fuel for your nightmares tonight, here’s a throwback for you – who remembers the “Paranormal Paranoids”? Back in the early days of YouTube, they were a fairly popular ghost-hunting channel, until the hosts suddenly went missing without a trace, and their videos were forgotten to time… at least, that’s what Chris Stuckmann, YouTuber and director of Shelby Oaks, would have you believe. This found-footage spooker gained a lot of online attention when it was first announced by Stuckmann, particularly as said announcement came following a tremendous webseries and viral marketing campaign for the film – and, if the footage we’ve seen so far is anything to go by, you’ll be hearing a whole lot of shrieks in the audience at the Shelby Oaks premiere.

7. If you’re still hungry for more scary internet urban legends following that, why not check out the latest from Japanese director Tomorjiro Amano, This Man? Inspired by a series of mysterious posters that appeared all across the globe in 2008, asking people if they recognise the uncanny face of a man who had supposedly been appearing in peoples’ dreams en masse, This Man follows a young woman named Hana (Arisa Deguchi) who becomes obsessed with a series of gruesome murders, all of which have one connecting factor – the victims all drew an image of a sinister unidentified man who they had seen in their dreams, moments before dying. Amano’s film combines eastern and western influences in what could very well be the latest modern J-horror classic.

8. Of course, not every memetically-mutated horror is a force of dark, abstract evil – sometimes, they just want to party! Enter Frankie Freako, the latest creature creation from Astron-6’s Steven Kostanski – and, for those unfamiliar with Kostanski’s work on the likes of Father’s Day (2011) and PG: Psycho Goreman (2020), expect neon schlock of the slimiest kind. Frankie Freako tells the tale of Conor (Conor Sweeney), an office worker who calls up a 1-900 number from an advert from a TV ad which promises “the party of a lifetime”, after his wife and boss call him out for being a “square”; The party’s host just so happens to be the titular interdimensional critter, summoned into our world by Conor’s call to wreak havoc from New York to L.A. – and if you know where the real-world inspiration for this film comes from, then you’ll know why I’m smiling ear-to-ear when typing this out. Frankie Freako promises enough ghoulies and other assorted tiny terrors to make Charles Band ascend to nirvana – needless to say, this is one for the midnight movie crowd, and if this sounds like your sort of thing, it’ll probably be a riot.

9. Of a similarly offbeat, wacky disposition is Maxwell Nalevansky and Carly Fry’s aughts-set absurdist comedy Rats!, a psychotronic film of the highest (in more ways than one) order. Rats follows a teenage delinquent, Raphael (Luke Wilcox), who is given a court order to stay with his drug-dealer cousin Mateo (Darius Autry) following his arrest for vandalism; as it turns out, Mateo may not merely be pushing dope, but also WMDs to an anonymous, high-paying bidder, which is just a hint of the chaos seemingly in store here. If the Letterboxd reviews of this film are anything to go by, Rats may genuinely leave you a changed person, or perhaps even transform you into some kind of higher form of life by the end. Fans of Street Trash (1987), The Greasy Strangler (2016), and that one random super-gross overly-detailed shot in every SpongeBob episode should most certainly check this one out.

Ten. Last, but certainly not least, is celebrated British actress and filmmaker Alice Lowe’s long-awaited second feature film following the cult pregnancy splatter-comedy Prevenge (2016), the epic reincarnation anti-rom-com Timestalker. This zany, highly original romp follows Agnes (Lowe), whose love life is more than a little complicated – namely, because her pursuit of one man, the “love of her life / lives”, keeps getting her killed over and over again. How many lifetimes will it take for her to move on? With a supporting cast composed of such Brit comedy names as Nick Frost and Mike Wozniak, this tale of love, death, and all-consuming fixation is sure to entertain and delight in a stylish, offbeat, and occasionally scatalogical fashion. Expect ambitious storytelling and dildo jokes.

These are just ten out of countless other films I could have chosen to spotlight, and believe me, I could go on for paragraphs upon paragraphs; I haven’t even mentioned Scooter McRae’s uncomfortable sex-doll sci-fi picture Black Eyed Susan, Chuck Russell’s remake of the cult ‘80s horror flick Witchboard, or Alice Maio Mackay’s transfeminine take on a Santa-slasher with Carnage for Christmas, and that’s without even taking a look into shorts like Michael Granberry’s Les Bêtes or Tony Hipwell’s The Lure. There are so many wonderful, mesmerizing, and dare I say, fantastic treats on display at this year’s Fantasia Festival, which runs from July 18^th to August 4^th 2024 – and what’s more, we’ll be covering them here at The Geek Show, so don’t touch that dial now, we’re just getting started!

Robyn’s Archive – Fantasia 2024 (Curtain Raiser)