Fantasia 2025 Review: FOREIGNER, A Newcomer, Coming-of-Age Horror For The Tween Set

Yasamin (Yasi), a recently immigrated Iranian teen in Canada, struggles to fit in at her new high school. She falls in with a clique of white girls whose subtle racism pressures her to erase her identity. Desperate to belong, Yasi transforms herself to match Western ideals, even dyeing her hair blonde. But as she distances herself from her culture and family, a dark force tied to her fading heritage begins to surface, threatening both her loved ones and her new life.

 

Ava Maria Safai said about their debut feature film, Foreigner, that it is a blend of comedy and horror meant for the tween age group. There isn't a whole lot of in-between horror for this age group. They may get a few things that go bump in the night, but then the genre quickly goes into unreachable, mature-themed, and rated horror films.  

 

Tweens are also the perfect age group to reach out to as far as development, growth, and understanding of self. A movie like Foreigner can serve as a window into the future of other tween children of immigrants who will be coming to Canada and any other Western country. 

 

With Foreigner, they will get a coming-of-age and folklore story mixed with the newcomer narrative. The three girls who befriend Yasamin intentionally have this Mean Girls kind of vibe to them, a play on the popular teen comedy. The film Heathers was also noted on the film’s festival page, but we are going to lose points here when we admit that we have not watched that movie. Are we a bad 80s kid? 

 

Foreigner is a good horror movie for newcomers, either to the genre or to the country. There is a specific relatability we have to it, watching the relationship between the daughter and the father become distant as she becomes more Western than Iranian. We speak from the experience of working with youth and teens for a couple of decades. It was not uncommon for immigrant parents to come to us and share their uneasiness with their children adopting Western culture, as far as adopting beauty and fashion trends, and the music and entertainment they took in. Parents often came to us and didn't know what to do about this.

 

The film gradually introduces supernatural elements rooted in the director’s Iranian heritage, revealing them later in the story. It implies that the loss of one’s cultural identity creates a kind of spiritual vulnerability - an opening through which dark, external forces may enter. Culture and identity function as a protective barrier; without them, one becomes exposed. This is presented as a cautionary tale - assuming, of course, one believes in such demonic forces. Whether confronting the demons of one’s homeland or those of an adopted country, they will inevitably appear. 

 

There appear to be suggestions that Yasamin’s mother went through a similar thing, as her mother tried to prepare her for life in Canada. She too was watching lots of Western television, bought her daughter a Western magazine, helping her learn English. But her mother is no longer with her. There are scenes of their distress interlaced into the footage that suggest that something happened to her as well.

 

Foreigner looks at the cultural tensions in Iranian immigrant families through horror. It follows a father and daughter growing apart as she starts to take on more Western habits, something many immigrant parents face when their kids start adapting to a new culture. The film uses supernatural elements to show the fear of losing one’s roots, hinting that letting go of tradition can open the door to outside (even demonic) forces. It especially highlights what it’s like for tweens and teens to grow up between two cultures, trying to balance their family’s traditions with the Western world around them.

 

The level and intensity of the horror elements in this film are admittedly mild in comparison to the genre’s contemporaries, but it is perfect for its target audience, the generation following in Ava Maria Safai’s footsteps. In a way, Safai has taken it upon herself to be one of their guides, to share their experiences as a first-generation Iranian-Canadian, hopefully keep the ones after her clear of trouble, corporally and spiritually.