The Geek Show has undergone numerous changes and evolutions over the fourteen years since our inception, and these days we’re painting on a much larger canvas that includes genre movies, world cinema, and titles that we feel we can help as they don’t have vast marketing behemoths behind them. This year our ideology has led us to being much more active in the film festival space, and so far we’ve covered Slamdance, Glasgow Frightfest, Kinoteka, SXSW, and Fantasia (we’ve also got some London Frightfest movies coming soon). The next big event is for fans of “Horror, Fantasy, Sci-fi, Action & Just plain Fantastic Movies”, Fantastic Fest – a staple of the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas, for the past 19 years.

To highlight this (don’t say fantastic, don’t say fantastic), icon of the genre cinema calendar, I’m going to run through several groups of movies that are unified by loose themes – some of which make sense, while others are much less confined, and feel more like a mix-up you used to get at a sweet shop as a kid (remember them?).

BIG PREMIERES

Fantastic Fest has hosted some incredible world premieres (Smile, John Wick, There Will Be Blood, Zombieland, Split, The Night Comes For Us, and many more), and this year is no different. The first title of note is the US premiere of CLOUD, from Japanese fan favourite Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, Tokyo Sonata & Cure). Ryosuke makes his living as an online wholesaler, flipping goods from desperate sellers for a profit. As his business grows, so does his paranoia. Auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest is another masterful examination of dread and contagion in modern Japan. A return to feature-length horror that revisits some of the themes of his masterwork, Pulse, and we’re all about whatever nightmare fuel KK has in store for us. Honestly, this would be number 1 if we did a ranked rundown of this line-up.

Another huge name is Alexander Aja, who has a Gala Screening of his latest movie, NEVER LET GO. An evil takes over the world beyond their front doorstep, the only protection for a mother, (Halle Berry), and her twin sons is their house, and their family’s protective bond. Needing to stay connected at all times – even tethering themselves with ropes – they cling to one another, urging each other to never let go. But when one of the boys questions if the evil is real, the ties that bind them together are severed, triggering a terrifying fight for survival.

The last big debut is the latest in the long-running V/H/S series, V/H/S/BEYOND, which includes, among others, Jordan Downey, Christian & Justin Long, and Kate Siegel, who take us into a more sci-fi-inspired Hellscape. The genre roots of this film ensure that it will go down as one of the most unique additions to this incredibly inventive franchise.

EASTERN EUROPE-ISH

From the guarantees of big names and killer franchises, we head somewhere off the beaten track where the films aren’t exactly synonymous with the fantastical – Eastern Europe (well, Eastern and Northern Europe anyway). First it’s Estonia, and Moonika Siimet’s THE BLACK HOLE, which is playing as part of the Burnt Ends programme (and isn’t related to that strange Disney film from 1979). Aliens land in Estonia to collect teeth, and change the lives of bored, frustrated citizens in this triptych film of existential humour and strangely beautiful creature design. That one sentence tells us so much and so little, which means it could go anywhere and we’re all in. After that it’s Finland, and the World Premiere of Juuso Laatio & Jukka Vidgren’s HEAVIER TRIP. Impaled Rektum, the world’s most brutal metal band, must escape a Norwegian prison and save a reindeer slaughterhouse from foreclosure, before battling a Faustian promoter offering Rock God superstardom in exchange for selling out. It’s another film where the synopsis puts it on our radar, and we think it would be a perfect movie for our Pop Screen podcast (something of a black metal Wild Zero, maybe?).

My grasp of Kazak cinema is based upon two movies, 1989’s The Needle and 2020’s Sweetie, you won’t believe it, and STEPPENWOLF is set to make that a three. Set against a ravaged dystopian wasteland, a ruthless killer joins forces with a traumatized young mother in the search for her missing son in this hard-hitting, genre-bending B-movie from Kazakh auteur Adilkhan Yerzhanov. A set-up that somewhat echoes Ana Lily Amirpour’s Bad Batch as a post-apocalyptic joyride that gets to the heart of what makes this generation of genre-fluid filmmakers tick – albeit from a more severe end of the spectrum. Next up is Latvia – an emerging film-making nation that has started making its mark, and the World Premiere of Mārcis Lācis’s TOUCHED BY ETERNITY. Although lacking any zest for life, middle-aged hermit Fatso is obsessed with immortality. When a friendly duo of vampires materializes with a proposition, he has second thoughts when he learns what’s at stake in this playful vampire satire. Mixing up the brilliantly titled Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person with a sliver of What We Do in the Shadows, and changing its disposition to dour are the reasons why this is on our radar. This era of alternative vampire tales is something horror-adjacent cinema has been begging for years, the more the better.  

VIVE LES FRANÇAIS

Now we head to a country with a long-standing history in genre cinema that’s in the middle of a new boom era, France, and first in our selection is ANIMALE, from Algerian/French director Emma Benestan. After leaving a party with her male co-workers, aspiring bullfighter Nejma begins to experience physical and sensory perception changes after she’s attacked in a field in the middle of the night. Although it’s a genre movie of renewed empathy, bodily transformation and survivor’s guilt, its grounding within bull fighting may provide ample ground for a unique narrative. Next up is an interesting take on a storyline that could easily alienate the audience (looking at you Songbird), Thibault Emin’s ELSE. A new strange pandemic has hit the world, causing the infected to fuse with their surroundings. Two freshly acquainted lovers take refuge in a flat, trying to avoid the disease that spreads through eye contact. Having been through a global pandemic, it would stand to reason that most people would find movies about them tiresome, but Emin’s film uses it as a framework to tell a story of chaste love – presenting some fascinating possibilities that, for me, recall the promises of Benson and Moorhead’s Spring.

From something that may be oddly romantic, to something that probably isn’t – Aude Léa Rapin’s PLANET B. Shaken by violent protests, activist Julia wakes up in an unknown world after being shot in the face with a non-lethal round. Welcome to PLANET B, a place where your worst nightmares are generated to torture you. While it could embody the harsher edges of the Extremity years, the concept of alternative planets and realities, combined with police brutality, could allow this film to blur the lines between The Purge and a more pointed satire on the growing prevalence of lawlessness that’s defining 2024. Could this be the right movie at the right time?

ASIAN CINEMA

If you’ve been reading The Geek Show for a while, then you’ll know that the least surprising addition to this fantastic fest rundown is Asian cinema. We begin with Taiwan, and John Tsu’s (director of Detention, an adaptation of the award-winning videogame from Red Candle Games), latest feature, DEAD TALENTS SOCIETY. Dying is just the beginning of one young woman’s problems when she learns the hard way that the afterlife is a competitive world of celebrity scarers and desperate wannabes, and the cost of failure is a fate worse than death. Social media and influencer satire are far from new (it’s a sub-genre at this point), but adding such a different take on the afterlife makes this stand out from the crowd. Then it’s China, and Li Yang’s body swapping, time-travelling, coming of age story, ESCAPE FROM THE 21ST CENTURY. A trio of teenage friends find themselves able to inhabit their future bodies in this coming-of-age/coming-of-middle-age martial arts comedy. Maybe it’ll be too busy, as it looks like also part of a resurgence in martial arts cinema, but at the same time it has the vibe of that little wave of time travel comedies coming out of indie Japan – spear-headed by Junta Yamaguchi (River)

We hop over to Japan now, with Kensuke Sonomura – the director of some hard-nosed action movies, and his latest feature, GHOST KILLER. Fumika Matsuoka is a young woman with a terrible job, a friend in a bad relationship, and the ghost of an assassin bound to her until she gets revenge on his behalf. While this appears to be a move away from his more traditional gangster violence movies, it also sounds like one of the surrealist superpowered fantasies from South Korean Netflix, and there’s a potential for levity that kept his previous two films away from true greatness. Speaking of South Korea, also on our radar is director Ryoo Seung-Wan’s latest film, I, THE EXECUTIONER. The veteran detective Seo Do-cheol (Hwang Jung-min) and his team at Major Crimes, relentless in their pursuit of criminals, join forces with rookie cop Park Sun-woo (Jung Hae-in) to track down a serial killer who has plunged the nation into turmoil. Ryoo hasn’t been in good form lately, but at his peak he produces some of the best action cinema being made anywhere in the world, and we’re hoping that this new movie recaptures the nasty crime world that elevated South Korea to the pinnacle of pop culture.

EVERYTHING ELSE?

Don’t let that lackadaisical heading fool you, as we’re just as excited about the films in this section as we are any of the others.

We start with New Zealand and Ant Timpson’s (director of the dark family reunion comedy, Come to Daddy), latest film, BOOKWORM (which is also playing Frightfest). An 11-year-old girl sets out into the New Zealand backcountry with her estranged father to capture photographic evidence of the mythological Canterbury Panther, hoping to claim the reward and pay her mom’s medical bills. To see the person responsible for a movie as acerbic and dark as Come To Daddy shift to a kid’s fantasy adventure and reunite with Elijah Wood, suggests that this might be something that balances nostalgia with a modern edge. It’s off to Ireland now for Christopher Andrews’ pastoral thriller BRING THEM DOWN. Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan lock horns as the sons of two warring Irish shepherding dynasties. It’s on our list because we love Keoghan, and Abbott is also far from a slouch, plus there’s the promise of acerbic Irish humour that has us imagining something between Rams (2) and the Banshees of Inisherin. Canada the next stop, and it’s the World Premiere of Jason Krawczyk’s DON‘T MESS WITH GRANDMA. Michael Jai White is just a grandson who loves his grandma. When a motley group of thieves attempt to break into her home, he gives them a punishing lesson in etiquette while keeping her comfortably in the dark. We love Michael Jai White, but he hasn’t quite had that breakthrough so we’re hoping that this might be the one – especially given his wicked comedy chops (Black Dynamite).

Steven Kostanski isn’t a name that jumps off the page, his work certainly does, and in FRANKIE FREAKO the creator of PSYCHO GOREMAN introduces the raddest & baddest li’l goblin squad since the Ghoulies. Now I wasn’t a fan of Kostanski’s previous film as puppet monster movies of the ’80s and ’90s were part of my formative experience as a young film fan, and tapping into that is enough to get me invested. Next is Greece for director Yannis Veslemes’ SHE LOVED BLOSSOMS MORE, in which three brothers enter a world of cosmic horror as they try to bring their mother back from the beyond. It’s certainly enough to pique my interest, and Greece’s reputation with satirical movies over the last decade suggests that this may be something with a super dark sense of humour, which the world of Cosmic Horror has shockingly been lacking. Now we find what’s probably the coolest name of any we’ve listed – Karan Kandhari’s SISTER MIDNIGHT. Stuck on the outskirts of Mumbai following an arranged marriage, Uma turns to black magic to dislocate her domestic blues. Indian genre cinema is having a real moment, and while tradition butt heads with modernity through a style of horror elevated by Thai genre stalwarts, it feels like that moment will continue through Kandhari’s Sister Midnight (I also heard it has stop-motion animated goats).

So that’s what we’ve got our eyes on at Fantastic Fest. Let us know what you’re interested in.

Rob’s Archive – Fantastic Fest 2024