Festivals Reviews
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...
Fantasia 2026 Review: TIGHT LETTUCE, Addiction Both Binds and Tears Families Apart
There are many kinds of addiction stories on film, from the invigorating buddy shenanigans of Transpotting to the stylish personal infernos of Requiem For A Dream to the gritty autobiographical redemption arc of The Basketball Diaries. Harrison Houde’s Tight Lettuce discovers...
Fantasia 2026 Review: PENNY LANE IS DEAD Is Not For The Weak Of Heart
A celebratory girls’ night at the family beach house devolves into a night of unrelenting, brutal terror in Penny Lane is Dead, the debut feature from Australian filmmaker Mia’Kate Russell. A blood-soaked throwback to the wild days of ‘80s Ozploitation,...
Fantasia 2026 Review: ATTACK ON PARADISE, A Belgian Single Setting Siege Story With Heart
In a dystopic corner of urban Antwerp stands Paradise, a ten-story apartment block that houses some of the baddest dudes and dudettes in all of Belgium. Packed to the gills with drug hustlers, arms dealers, illicit brothels, and every other...
Fantasia 2026 Review: TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA, Bold Queer Exploration
Opening with flesh and blood, Jane Schoenbrun's latest work, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, is a continuation of the queer exploration found in their previous films, We're All Going to the World's Fair and I Saw the TV...
Fantasia 2026 Review: HER PRIVATE HELL, A Nightmare Neon Opera
At one point in Nicolas Winding Refn’s oblique, morally agnostic, performatively high-camp melodrama, a character pontificates, “You know, this movie is not going to fix us.” They are probably right. The director is far more interested in mise-en-scène still-lives...
FID Marseille 2026 Review: MOTHER, YOU HAVE NOT DIED YET. BUT YOU WILL. AND WHEN YOU DO, YOU WILL FINALLY BE ALIVE AGAIN, Impressionistic Take on Grief and History
Directed by Advik Beni. Merging past and present, personal and historical, the film has a quality of a lucid dream.
New York Asian 2026 Review: COLONY Puts Yeon Song-ho Back In The Undead Driver's Seat
Zombies in a mall, you say? It’s been done before but leave it to Korean genre master Yeon Song-ho to take everything you think you know about the living dead and crank it up to eleven and you’ve got another...
THE SEOUL GUARDIANS Review: Fighting for Democracy in South Korea
Late at night on December 3, 2024, President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea declared martial law, staging a coup that threatened the country's government. The only way to reverse the declaration was for politicians to vote against it at...
Sheffield 2026 Review: LIFE SUPPORT Follows Doctors Volunteering in Gaza
Solving the humanitarian crisis in Gaza seems impossible given the politics involved. That hasn't stopped doctors in Life Support from volunteering their services. Daniele Rugo's documentary shows how difficult it is to try to help. Made up primarily of talking...
