Genre cinema is in remarkably good health in the U.S. with projects like Backrooms and Obsession signalling a new generation of inventive, internet‑age storytellers and emerging filmmakers who are already making waves. Here in Britain though, genre filmmaking often struggles to find the same cultural momentum, which is why the […]
Pop Culture
The Mouths (Fantasia International Film Festival 2026)
For anyone who remembers the Japanese horror movie boom of the late ’90s and early ’00s, Takashi Shimizu (the man behind Ju‑on), is responsible for some of the most dread‑inducing, skin‑crawling images ever produced, and remains one of the genre’s defining architects. Even before The Mouths begins you know you’re […]
Bowels of Hell (Fantasia International Film Festival 2026)
Gurcius Gewdner & Gustavo Vinagre’s Bowels of Hell arrives at Fantasia, and for a film with a title like, you’d be forgiven for expecting a riotously loud, messy, frantic, and proudly tasteless slab of Brazilian exploitation cinema, bur what you actually get is something stranger, slower, and far more patient […]
Tight Lettuce (Fantasia International Film Festival 2026)
Fantasia always has at least one film that feels like it wandered in from a completely different festival, and this year it’s Harrison Houde’s Tight Lettuce. Based on a true story and described by the festival as a “tender and chaotic portrait of a father and son”, it’s an earnest […]
The Specials (Fantasia International Film Festival 2026)
Functionally, The Specials is a dance movie – albeit one where killers, hitmen, and assorted hard‑nosed gangster archetypes are offered a lucrative opportunity – go undercover as a dance troupe and infiltrate a contest in order to eliminate a yakuza patriarch. It’s the kind of setup that sounds like a […]
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 […]
Home Bodies (Fantasia International Film Festival 2026)
It’s a breakout year for director Casey Walker, who has two films hitting the festival circuit almost simultaneously – Home Bodies at Fantasia, and Ithaqua set to play at FrightFest later in the summer. Based on a script by Adrian Murray and Marcus Sullivan, Home Bodies is a sci‑fi film […]
Backstage Madness (Fantasia International Film Festival 2026)
One of the things I enjoy about Fantasia Film Festival is the cosmopolitan nature of its programming as while they have big names and anticipated features, they also give space to movies from corners of the world that rarely get international visibility. I’d love to see more African features, but […]
Sicko (Fantasia Film Festival 2026)
Here in the UK, and across much of the developed world, we’re in the middle of a cost‑of‑living crisis, with people drowning under bills, rent and debt. The sheer exhaustion of trying to stay afloat begs the question of how far someone would go to escape that pressure – something […]
When You Open the Door (Fantasia International Film Festival 2026)
Eriko Katagiri’s debut feature When You Open the Door arrives at Fantasia 2026 with the kind of industry backing most directors can only dream of. The film received the Japan Horror Award (sponsored by entertainment titan Kadokawa) – an accolade that has gained a reputation for discovering fresh talent, previous […]