International 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: 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: LEVITATING, Get Swept Up In This Ecstatic Vision Of Folk Cinema
The drums pound, the guitar drones, the flute splashes a chaotic layer of color over it all as the guru chants, the spirit addicts undulate, enraptured by their ecstatic trance, directed by the spirits of the Indonesian jungle. This vision...
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,...
SHEEP IN THE BOX Review: Tale of Not So Artificial Intelligence
It is indeed a perilous fate to be a film festival darling. On the one hand, sure, you might have a standing invitation for your next work in one of the “Big Five”. The downside is that, after a while,...
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...
SMOKING BEHIND THE SUPERMARKET WITH YOU Review: Cigarettes Spark Uncertain Yet Smoldering, Troubling Romance
Crunchyroll's series takes a far different approach to the smoking habit, compared to Netflix's crass take in 'Chainsmoker Cat.'
CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH 4K Review: Anger and Desire in Post-War Japan
In western cinema, the 1950s and 1960s are often portrayed as a time of youth in revolt: the birth of a teenager as a particular cultural and social entity, and with it, the problems of education, social life, work, and...
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...
Karlovy Vary 2026 Review: 3 WEEKS AFTER Turns High-School Cruelty Into Social Horror
Miroslav Terzić's high-school drama pairs Ruben Östlund's austere formalism with Hanekean social horror in a study of adolescent cruelty and social exclusion, punctuated by unexpected mannerist flourishes.
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...
Karlovy Vary 2026 Review: THE GUEST Serves Nordic Cringe as Family Dramedy
A restrained yet incisive Nordic tragicomedy, The Guest spins the dysfunctional-family drama for a millennial generation through claustrophobic staging, corrosive microaggressions, and Trine Dyrholm's meticulously ambiguous performance.
