Every so often, a movie comes along which is so deeply committed to being sincerely odd that – regardless of my overall enjoyment of it – I can’t help but appreciate it on principle. Tie Man (2024) is one of those movies.
Directed by Rémi Fréchette, best known for his segments in horror anthologies Montréal Dead End (2018) and Deathcember (2019), Tie Man is a true curiosity in the world of low-budget genre cinema. Beginning life as a 6-part miniseries for French-Canadian horror channel Frissons TV before being re-edited into a 99-minute feature film, Tie Man is a quirky, scuzzy action-comedy that feels like Québec’s answer to Troma – and, as with the output of said studio south of the border, Fréchette’s film might not be for everyone, but will undoubtedly find some die-hard fans in the midnight movie crowd. Having its International Premiere at the 2025 edition of Fantastic Fest as part of their ‘Burnt Ends’ programming strand, which is dedicated to showcasing the most weird and wonderful offerings the festival has to offer, I can’t think of a better place and time for Tie Man to introduce himself to the rest of the world.
Tie Man follows super-cop Marjolaine Coppola (Catherine Beauchemin), whose search for her missing sister leads her to uncover a conspiracy of police corruption and organised crime. Shot in the eye by her partner (Karl Farah) and left for dead in an alleyway, Coppola is taken in and (literally) patched up by Tie Man (Jérémie Earp, who played the lead in superb Québécois slasher Discopath), a tailor turned vigilante superhero after criminals stapled ties to his face and drowned him in chemicals. The two join forces and embark on a quest to protect the city from gangs of cloned mutant goons, take down the corrupt politician and corporate tycoon Franz DeMann (Peter Seaborne), and wreak their revenge upon the evil sister-abducting scientist Bruno (François Lambert) – all with a little help from Tie Man’s father, Gaston (Luc-Martial Dagenais), who might be a zombie. He’s looking worse for wear, either way.
Tie Man is an admirable example of low-budget genre creativity, and one which I don’t doubt will play well to audiences at Fantastic Fest looking for something schlocky and out-there
There’s a lot going on in Tie Man, almost too much to properly take in at once – yet there are some interesting elements which really stand out whilst watching. The effort that Fréchette put into making this film is visible in every frame, especially when it comes to production design and practical FX work; the Gotham-meets-Tromaville city that Tie Man calls home is lovingly and creatively realised through the use of scale models and effective compositing work, and even though the film has a very intentionally artificial aesthetic, its world nonetheless feels lived in and fully-realised. Regardless of what one might think of the film’s plot, pace or tone, it can’t be denied that Tie Man is a well-made low-budget genre riff on everything from Darkman (1990) to RoboCop (1987), complete with a very conscious sense of style that helps to disguise any lack of resources that the film might have when compared to a higher-budget work of superhero fiction.
I’d be lying if I said Tie Man was entirely for me, with many of the jokes not landing half as well for me, a sober reviewer, as they would for the crowded audience at a midnight screening. There are plenty of wacky and weird shenanigans afoot throughout the film’s runtime, yet part of me wishes that more was done with the titular vigilante hero, whose tie-related powers (and tailoring-influenced persona) are criminally under-utilised throughout the course of the film, outside of a creative and memorable sex scene which proves to be one of the film’s funnier moments. Having not seen the original TV miniseries, I can’t help but wonder if the pace of Tie Man flows better in its original format – and, given that the film was shot in English but dubbed into French for release, part of me is curious to see if Tie Man would have played better in the original language it was written in.
Nonetheless, Tie Man is an admirable example of low-budget genre creativity, and one which I don’t doubt will play well to audiences at Fantastic Fest looking for something schlocky and out-there – descriptors which can absolutely be applied to Fréchette’s picture. Plus, given the recent success of James Gunn’s Superman (2025) and Macon Blair’s The Toxic Avenger (2023), I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t the last we see of Marjolaine and Tie Man on the big screen…
TIE MAN HAD ITS INTERNATIONAL DEBUT AT FANTASTIC FEST 2025
