The genre film world is descending on Austin, Texas yet again for the 2019 edition of Fantastic Fest. Screen Anarchy will be there lapping up all the cinematic goodness and will have plenty to say about the movies we have yet to see. But of the 52 non-world premiere and non-repertory features on display, we've already reviewed a whopping 18 of them. Which movies should you see? Well, you can't really go wrong with a lineup this strong... but click on below for a few words from the reviews of at least those 18. See you at the fest!
Click on through to the reviews!
Koko-Di Koko-Da
Review by Martin Kudlac
"Koko-di Koko-da merges a twisted fairy tale (before they became Disneyfied) and a family drama, blending them together in an arena of subconsciousness doubling as a self-flagellating Sarterian limbo."
The Long Walk
Review by Shelagh Rowan-Legg
"{Director Mattie] Do exerts perfect precision over her story, which is reflected in her collaboration with her crew, especially an ambitious yet haunting script by Christopher Larsen, cinematography by Matthew Macar that shows both the beauty and wildness of the Laotian countryside, and excellent editing by Zohar Michel that gives us clues like breadcrumbs in the trail."
Memory - The Origin of Alien
Review by Ard Vijn
"The documentary starts with mythology, then focuses on the stories which inspired Dan O'Bannon and H. R. Giger, then moves to the most iconic and shocking scene of Alien (the 'chestburster') to show how these are all linked, from fear of the unknown, to guilt, to body horror."
Dogs Don't Wear Pants
Review by J Hurtado
"Those looking for a cheap thrill in Dogs Don’t Wear Pants might feel a little tingle in their loins from time to time, but the film isn’t about titillation. Valkeapää uses domination and submission as a very apt metaphor for letting go, and even though the people in this situation may be clad from head to toe in leather and chains, they are as human as any man or woman walking down the street."
Little Joe
Review by Tom Kiesecoms
"A deliberate, artificial coldness clings to everything, and idiosyncratic stylistic choices - such as the gradual zooming in on an interchange until both conversation partners are out of frame and the camera has centered on a spot on the wall or window that really doesn’t hold anything of interest - convey a creeping approach of otherworldliness."
Swallow
Review by Kurt Halfyard
"Shot in a gorgeously uncomfortable way, Swallow is, at times, a great body horror picture. It is worthy of the best of them in generating audience discomfort, even if the film never strays from its given style, which presents things in a chaste, often minimalist way."
Come to Daddy
Review by Kurt Halfyard
"Come To Daddy takes an outlandish and consistently surprising journey to explore the bizarre nooks and crannies of masculinity and father-son estrangement."
After Midnight (Formerly known as Something Else)
Review by Andrew Mack
"It turns out that Something Else is really something special. Here is a character drama that gives us genuine characters to love and care about, that we can relate to, and stirs up the pot with a fuck-off scary monster lurking in the woods beyond the property line."
Parasite
Review by Pierce Conran
"Unsurprisingly, Song Kang-ho shines as Ki-taek, employing his brilliant comic timing and intonation to tease out side-splitting laughs. His delivery swerves up and down, halts and flows, even as his delivery rarely edges above a breathless whisper."
Synchronic
Review by Shelagh Rowan-Legg
"While not as deep or strange as their previous films, Synchronic still exists within the Benson/Moorhead universe, albeit at the edge where they are likely to find new fans who they might draw in with those of us who have been exploring their territory for a while."
The Deeper You Dig
Review by J Hurtado
"A kind of ambitious family project, The Deeper You Dig was co-written, co-directed, and shot by Toby Poser, John Adams, and their daughter Zelda. This low budget feature is a wonder of ingenuity, with each of the three contributing more or less equally to the completion of a pretty damn decent feature debut."
Vivarium
Review by Kurt Halfyard
"The movie belongs to Imogen Poots, who, in spite of how awful and unfathomable the child is (they never name it), finds herself grudgingly forming a maternal bond that wavers between a tentative, caring curiosity and exasperated hate. She sets the tone of the household and family dynamic, and, really, the film. She is harried and human and barely holding things together, living out a mockery of her vague domestic dream."
Patrick
Review by Martin Kudlac
"As simple as the plot may look, Mielants directing feature debut is a carefully thought through. Patrick does not fall into the usual category of existential tragicomedies, nevertheless, it is one."
Blood Machines
Review by Peter Martin
"The scratchy aesthetic mixes color and light to create a universe that is markedly different from our own. Against that background, the two male 'space hunters,' one older, one younger, fit in well in their post-wasteland outfits, even though they do not necessarily resemble any astronauts or space explorers from other sci-fi films."
Jallikattu
Review by J Hurtado
"Deftly dissecting a kind of primal masculinity in gruesome detail, Jallikattu watches several competing hordes of men and the way in which their blind devotion to victory over the beast leads them each into their own private hells."
Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks
Review by Andrew Mack
"Martial Arts cinema dynasties have come and gone. Institutions like Shaw Bros and Golden Harvest are not the behemoths they once were. They have, however, indefinitely left their mark on the landscape of the action cinema we appreciate and love today. Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks reminds us how dynamic that journey was."
The Platform
Review by Kurt Halfyard
"The world-building (out of a single set, and a rogues gallery of character actors) here is an impressive use of resources; the screenplay does the heavy-lifting in terms of social satire and problem solving. The practical effects team lay out a spread of violence that is as aggressively mean, as the chefs up top are fussy and precise. The snappy musical score is a percussion of rattles, not unlike an empty cup across prison bars, punctuated with angry, diegetic klaxons."
I Lost My Body
Review by Tom Kiesecoms
"The film’s incredibly fluent animation packs a vivid immediacy, but the true beauty stems from its confident mode of storytelling.
Perfectly paced at a lean runtime of eighty minutes, I Lost My Body’s ‘less is more’-approach never feels compelled to state the obvious."