Festivals Reviews
Fantasia 2026 Review: THE GLORIOUS DEAD, When it is The End of The World But You Still Have to Clock in
On a cold, winter day, in rural America, It was supposed to be Sheriff Deb’s day off. But one of her deputies, Mikey, is knocking on her door early in the morning. The power is out. No one else has...
Fantasia 2026 Review: THE SPECIALS, A Crowd-Pleasing Yakuza Subversion
A yakuza member named Kumashiro hires four independent, rival assassins to eliminate Boss Honjō, the powerful leader of the rival Honjō-gumi syndicate. Executing the hit has always been complicated because Honjō frequently uses body doubles, leaving constant doubt regarding his...
Fantasia 2026 Review: RUBBERHEAD: THE LIFE AND MONSTERS OF STEVE JOHNSON A Hilarious and Humbling Portrait of a Chaotic Genius
There’s something mesmerizing about watching car crashes. We know it is dangerous, often even deadly; we know that for all of the sparks flying around as an out-of-control car meets its fiery fate, there’s usually someone inside who is in...
Fantasia 2026 Review: TOKYO BURST: CRIME CITY, Trades in Solo Grit For Buddy-Cop Chaos in a Worthy Expansion of THE ROUNDUP Universe
Welcome to Kabuki-cho, an entertainment district in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Called the "Sleepless Town", it is home to a sprawl of host and hostess clubs, love hotels, nightclubs and yakuza hangouts. Shiro Aiba, the Shinjuku Central Police Station’s newest,...
Fantasia 2026 Review: RECLUSE, Screenwriter Henry Chaisson Conquers Visual And Sonic Terror in Neo-Gothic Horror
Joan is dragged back to her childhood home. There has been an accident and she has received an ominous call from her ailing, disfigured father. She is a sound engineer by trade, he is a famous artist and long...
Fantasia 2026 Review: CHERRY AND VIRGIN, A Nervous and Experimental Work of Genius
I was 18 years old when an adult friend I met at a summer factory job recommended that I see Federico Fellini's 8 1/2. I could not make heads or tails of the movie, in Italian, in black and white,...
Fantasia 2026 Review: CAPTURED! Of Ghosts And Growing Up
Misaki is a bright high-school senior who has the grades to get into a good university. Misaki’s reservation is that she lives alone with her mother, who works a night shift to make ends meet. She is more or less...
Fantasia 2026 Review: VILLAGE OF EIGHT GRAVESTONES, Takashi Shimizu Proves Traditional Murder Mysteries Are Better With Ghosts
When Tatsuya’s estranged mom suddenly passes away, he is forced to head out to her old, isolated village and meet the family he has never known, the Tajimi Family. On the way there, he bumps into private detective Kosuke Kindaichi,...
Fantasia 2026 Review: THE LAST HORROR, Myanmar's First Found-Footage Film Forced to be Too Safe With The Scares
The Last Footage starts with a collection of videos from life loggers, users recording daily experiences using wearable tech. We see the Burmese peoples out jogging along lakefronts, playing concerts with their bands, riding the backseat of a motorcycle which...
Fantasia 2026 Review: CORPUS, Languid Queer Thriller Delivers a Killer Horror Payoff
Sayo photographs New York’s nightlife, dealing drugs to partygoers at clubs and generally stays out of trouble with the owners of those clubs with free samples. Life takes a spin when he learns that Vince, an old friend whose star...
Fantasia 2026 Review: OUR EFFED UP WORLD, Alice Maio Mackay's Hang Out Movie... With Aliens!
Australian wunderkind Alice Maio Mackay returns to the director’s chair for her eighth feature film, Our Effed Up World, celebrating its Canadian premiere at this year’s Fantasia. A science-fiction story about a group of young adults fighting off an alien...
Fantasia 2026 Review: THE LAST TEMPTATION OF BECKY, It's Nazi Killin' Time Again
One of genre cinema’s most unexpected franchises expands beyond its humble roots in Jenn Wexler’s The Last Temptation of Becky. The titular teen with a serious attitude problem is off to Poland this time, when a Nazi scion with dreams...
Fantasia 2026 Review: BEASTS CLUTCHING AT STRAWS, A Sack Of Cash Causes Problems In This Black Comedy Thriller
A desperately unpopular streamer with a dementia-stricken mother, a crooked cop, a duplicitous femme fatale, and a sack full of money collide in director Jojo Hideo's Beasts Clutching at Straws, an adaptation of the Sone Keisuke novel previously filmed by...
Fantasia 2026 Review: INSECTASY, Are You Into Bugs?
Sadie is horny. Really horny. She has let real life, either working at the walk-in-clinic as a receptionist, or hanging out with her friends, fade into the background like radio-static, only half awares and mostly filtered out. She only thinks...
Fantasia 2026 Review: FERINE, A Stunning Feature Debut From Andrea Corsini
Motherhood is a beast in first time feature filmmaker Andrea Corsini’s lush Italian psychological horror stunner, Ferine, celebrating its international premiere at this year’s Fantasia. Bolstered by a captivating lead performance from Oddity’s Carolyn Bracken and an unforgettable score from...
Fantasia 2026 Review: NIGHTBORN, A Mother's Dream Turned Folk Horror Nightmare
Saga’s (Seidi Haarla) blissful fantasies of motherhood are upended when her and her husband Jon’s (Rupert Grint) son turns out to be a bit more difficult than they were expecting in Hanna Bergholm’s sophomore feature, Nightborn. Following up on her...
Fantasia 2026 Review: NIKO, All Night Pretentious Delight
Cyber-punk adjacent, arthouse romance, pop-philosophical musing Niko debuts K-pop Girls' Generation member, Tiffany Young in the titular role as a woman who runs a business hiring herself out to comfort and talk to people who have locked themselves out of...
Fantasia 2026 Review: YOU ARE THE FILM, A Meta-Cinema Romance That Tears a Hole in the Universe
As someone who typically goes to the movies on a Sunday night for the 10:30pm show, and typically to go watch the stranger side of cinema, I am often given a ‘private screening’ from the local Cineplex chain. Because,...
Fantasia 2026 Review: PERMANENT DAMAGE, A Loosey-Goosey, Drug-Addled, Hanging-Out Thriller On Housing Insecurity
Reborn in the opening scene by tearing his way out of a black garbage bag after being tossed in the trash from a prison van, Tommy irrevocably changes his life through a chance encounter in a Dollarama, the house of...
Fantasia 2026 Review: ANCESTRAL BEASTS, An Indigenous Creature Feature About Generational Trauma
Generational trauma manifests as a deadly creepy crawler in Tim Riedel’s debut feature, Ancestral Beasts, which just celebrated its world premiere at this year’s Fantasia. Set among the indigenous Métis community, the film is a glowing reminder of the festival’s...
