Fantasia 2026 Review: TRISTES TROPIQUES, Lots of Blood, Little Reward

Roo (Tears in Chinese) was abandoned by his mother at an early age and taken into the care of a man he has only ever known as Master. Raised in the jungle with other discarded children, Roo was taught to be a killer, brought up to be a deadly arm of the group known as Tristes Tropiques. 

 

Years later, Roo is working at a coffee shop when JoJo, one of the other children in the group, shows up and tells him that Master has been assassinated. After the news was announced, rival gangs and criminal organizations throughout the city vie for control while an equally deadly group of assassins called the Kons linger in the dark. 

 

As bodies pile up and the truth about Master’s death comes to light, Roo has a choice. Continue the simple life he has now, or enter the fray and use the deadly skills he was taught as a child. 

 

Korean director Park Hoon-jung, known internationally for creating the kinetic action thrillers The Witch: Part 1 - The Subversion and Part 2 - The Other One, and co-writing the incredible 2010 horror flick I Saw The Devil, returned near the end of 2025 with another dose of brutally violent action in Tristes Tropiques. Finally making its way to Fantasia this week, the film subjected its audience to a barrage of gun and blade violence on a level seldom seen on screen.

 

The movie’s prologue explains Master’s early life as a mercenary, a leader of a deeply feared group of soldiers who showed no mercy to anyone. Men, women, children; all who were in their path were slain until one day Master decides it is time to hang up his blade and retire to the jungle. He slaughters his entire team of mercenaries before doing so, avoiding any future troubles. It is a brutal and understandably harrowing few minutes of setup for an audience to experience off the hop. It sets the standard of gratuitous violence we should expect throughout the remainder of the movie. 

 

As quickly as one group is introduced, another is mercilessly slaughtered. The story attempts to create some mystery surrounding the murder of Master as details change depending on who is telling what they heard from someone else about his death, but we have been around this game long enough to already know what awaits us at the end. With no consistent enemy to fight against, we are left with a ‘kill-them, let God sort them out’ mentality, making it impossible to find a clear antagonist to root against. Villains are a necessity if you’re trying to establish what the stakes are, but the different groups in the mix here seem more interested in control of the city than wiping out the remaining Tristes Tropiques kids-to-adults.

 

The portrayal of violence itself is not the problem; as excessive as it is, a lot of bloodletting never hurt anyone. Nor is the sheer level of violence the core issue. Instead, action aficionados may find fault with how these sequences are captured and edited, as the film seems afraid to pause and embrace the inherent "cool factor" throughout this choreographed mayhem.

 

Because all the action is shot to be immersive and frantic, the cinematography undermines the story’s ongoing one-against-many setup. Whenever the surviving members of Tristes Tropiques face immeasurable odds, each sequence desperately exclaims, "See? See how impossible these odds are? Yet, watch them carve through their adversaries like a hot knife through butter.” Or, in this case, slicing them up like meat destined for a Korean barbecue.

 

The real issue is the action design clearly contains spotlight moments meant to make the viewer "ooh and aah". Characters climb along walls. Blades spin in hands. Deft movements avoid attacks. But they are so poorly framed or over in a flash that we are left with only a second to wonder, "Was that cool? It looked like it would have been." This frantic pacing and editing reduces what should be spectacular displays into a blur of ultra-low percentage headshots taken at a distance, with a pistol—not once or twice, but for at least half a dozen kills in a row. (No, really. We looked it up. Headshots, at a distance, have only a 5 percent accuracy rating). Yes, there is an allowance for action to be over the top and creatively liberal in its execution; this is an execution never meant to be accurate, only excessive.

 

Action fans should be cheering through those moments, but if the Fantasia audience is any barometer to go by—and if you’ve been to Fantasia, you know this audience is incredibly enthusiastic about anything you put in front of them, no matter the quality—if they are not cheering during the action scenes but erupt in cheers and applause during Roo’s character beats, it suggests that there is indeed an imbalance in tone.

 

Here, audiences are being shoved towards relief. This is an audience that has been fostered and tailored on some of the best action cinema from around the world over thirty years, and they only respond to the scant human moments that are meant to bring relief from the severity. Nothing during the elevator scene. Nothing during the police transport scene. Nary a yelp during the finale. Brutality overwhelms the serenity in it.

 

This disconnect between spectacle and substance extends directly into how we perceive the characters performing these feats. Amidst the chaos, Roo emerges as our most empathetic anchor; any emotional investment we feel for JoJo and the other remaining Tristes Tropiques kids is reflected through him. As the only one who attempted to leave the violence behind for a regular life, his humanity highlights the void left by his peers. Ultimately, the film leaves us leery of investing in the rest of the ensemble, as it is difficult to feel empathy for characters who seem equally as bad as the villains we are supposed to root against.

 

Tristes Tropiques was in trouble the moment it came charging out of the gates, rushing through its prologue to prove its own extremity. It is an extremity that undermines its own characters in the process. While the scale of the carnage might satisfy action completionists, anyone looking for substance beneath a spectacle will find this execution simply too excessive to care.