FANTASIA’S 28th EDITION AWARDS FILMMAKER MIKE FLANAGAN, CLOSES WITH THE WORLD PREMIERE OF ANDRÉ FORCIER’S ABABOUINÉ

Eugene Kotlyarenko’s THE CODE, Jay Song’s 4PM, Steven Kostanski’s FRANKIE FREAKO, Pedro Kos’ IN OUR BLOOD, Koji Shiraishi’s HOUSE OF SAYURI, Jefferey St. Jules’ THE SILENT PLANET, Shen Jie’s THE UMBRELLA FAIRY, Jérémy Clapin’s MEANWHILE ON EARTH, and Stanley Tong’s A LEGEND are among the third wave titles announced by the Montréal festival

 
The Fantasia International Film Festival will celebrate its upcoming 28th edition with an electrifying program of screenings, workshops, and launch events running from July 18 through August 4, 2024, returning to the Concordia Hall and J.A. de Sève cinemas, with additional screens and events at Montréal’s Cinémathèque Québécoise, Cinéma du Musée, Théâtre Plaza, and BBAM! Gallery.

Head to www.fantasiafestival.com for the full lineup!

With hundreds of films showing this year, here are a few that stuck out to me that I'm looking forward to!

Azrael

Directed by E.L. Katz

It’s the post-apocalypse and after escaping captivity from a cult of mute religious fanatics, losing their ability to speak in the process, Azrael (Samara Weaving, READY OR NOT) and her partner Kenan (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, FEMME) are traversing the treacherous forest in an attempt to evade their captors and keep their freedom. However, after falling back into the clutches of evil, Azreal learns that she will be sacrificed to appease an ancient evil that lurks within the shadows of the trees. Not willing to become demon food for a cult that has only caused her harm, Azrael must fight tooth and nail to secure her and Kenan’s freedom in E.L. Katz’s (CHEAP THRILLS) vicious AZRAEL!

With virtually no dialogue to speak of, Katz invokes the spirits of silent cinema and challenges them to a knife fight with lightning-quick pacing in the vein of MAD MAX: FURY ROAD and an intensity reminiscent of EVIL DEAD that’ll have you gripping the armrests of your seat! Rather than be limited by the lack of words, Katz takes AZRAEL back to the purest form of cinema to deliver a film that plays with the most basic of human instincts… SURVIVE! Spearheading this rapid descent into madness is Weaving, who delivers a powerhouse performance, cementing her place on the Mount Rushmore of modern scream queens. Weaving commands the frame with such emotion and ferocity that you will find yourself dodging and weaving past bullets, fanatics, and demons (oh, my)! AZRAEL unleashes screenwriter Simon Barret (YOU’RE NEXT, THE GUEST) into the woods as he delivers one of the most vicious revenge stories of the year! Rooted underneath the blood-soaked ground is an all-too-real tale of working through trauma, and the fight of allowing yourself to move past it and live with your demons. – Vincenzo Nappi

Darkest Miriam

Directed by Naomi Jaye

Hosted by Director/Writer Naomi Jaye

Miriam Gordon (Britt Lower, SEVERANCE) works in a library. Set in the middle of Toronto’s Allan Gardens, it’s a lively place filled with an array of patrons ranging from the “fainting man” and “suitcase man” to the talented young “piano girl.” Miriam and her co-workers take the unusual patrons in stride, and Miriam’s day is documented by incident reports about semen-filled books, lost dentures, and exchanges with the forgotten, marginalized populations who take refuge in the library stacks. Solitary and patient, her head is filled with memories of her eccentric late father, who loved the Verdi opera Rigoletto. Her measured existence is disrupted by threatening letters found in books, but she also meets a handsome taxi driver and artist named Janko (Tom Mercier, THE ANIMAL KINGDOM). Their romance is sweet and shrouded in mystery that unravels as they become closer, but Miriam must decide what road to follow when the unexpected upends her sheltered life.

Like reading a gothic romance in a secret nook, DARKEST MIRIAM draws you into its introspective examination of love, loss and the ghosts that live forever in our hearts. Based on the acclaimed, Giller Prize-shortlisted novel “The Incident Report” by Toronto author Martha Baillie, director Naomi Jaye’s film captures the tragedy of Rigoletto with fragments of the famous opera in the score and weaves in themes of mental illness to add a modern-day twist. With a standout cast that includes Sook-Yin Lee (SHORTBUS) and Jean Yoon (KIM’S CONVENIENCE), produced by Julie Baldassi and Brian Robertson, and executive produced by Academy Award-winning Charlie Kaufman (I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS, ANOMALISA) DARKEST MIRIAM is a mystery that floats through the psyche like a bittersweet memory. – Carolyn Mauricette

Frankie Freako

Directed by Steven Kostanski

Hosted by Director Steve Kostanski

Steve Kostanski, a mainstay in Canadian indie genre, has brought his unique style of makeup FX, writing, directing, and producing to hits like MANBORG, THE VOID, and the recent breakout PSYCHO GOREMAN. In his latest film, FRANKIE FREAKO, he taps into the nostalgia of Saturday morning cartoons, the charm of old-school puppetry, and gonzo comedy!

Conor (Conor Sweeney, MANBORG, THE EDITOR) is a square. He doesn’t swear, thinks holding hands with his gorgeous wife Kristina (Kristy Wordsworth, BLAZE) is a wild night, and goes to bed well before 9pm. When his slimy boss, Mr. Buechler (Adam Brooks, THE EDITOR, PSYCHO GOREMAN) and Kristina call him out on his squareness, Conor is deeply offended. Determined to prove them wrong, he’s lured by a 1-900 ad promising the party of a lifetime with a creature named Frankie Freako. Calling the hotline opens a world of chaos, and Frankie, joined by two other “Freako” friends, trash his house. Who are these little monsters, and why have they decided to torment him endlessly? Conor must get rid of them before his wife returns from a weekend trip, plus appease the creepy Buechler. These interdimensional beings are more than pesky, bringing their troubles and interplanetary terrors right to Conor’s door!

Kostanski has crafted a creature comedy that’s a loving tribute to the ’80s, with echoes of GHOULIES and the PUPPETMASTER series, wrapped in a package of zany absurdist comedy. As key members of the Astron-6 team, Kostanski, Sweeney, and Brooks maintain their signature off-kilter tone, delivering quirky puppets, VFX straight out of a cartoon, and tons of fun. A must-see that's sure to awaken your inner child! – Carolyn Mauricette

Penalty Loop

Directed by Shinji Araki

Hosted by Director Shinji Araki

When his girlfriend was murdered, part of Jun’s soul died with her. Since then, his only thought has been to take justice into his own hands. Having tracked down the murderer, Mizoguchi, and prepared a meticulous plan to achieve his aims discreetly, the time has come to take action. Jun slips in among his target's colleagues, spices his coffee with poison and finishes him off out of sight. The perfect crime. The problem is that the next morning, he's plagued by a feeling of déjà-vu. Worse still, Mizoguchi is back at work as if nothing had happened. Jun resumes his Machiavellian plan, but something goes wrong as his target seems far more suspicious than the day before. He succeeds, but in a much more muddled and imprecise fashion. When the routine is repeated yet again, Jun has to face up to the fact that he is trapped in a hellish time loop in which every day, he will have to kill Mizoguchi, who is also well aware of the situation he finds himself in, and is becoming increasingly difficult to kill.

It would be a big mistake to reduce this gripping black-comedy thriller to its simple time-loop concept, because PENALTY LOOP is full of stunning twists and turns, and ingenious ideas that border on the fantastic, to keep its audience on the edge of their seats throughout. Inspired by a real series of murders during the pandemic, director and screenwriter Shinji Araki (THE TOWN OF HEADCOUNTS) uses his unflinching storytelling style to offer a deep reflection on the notion of justice, grafting on a host of purely enjoyable moments, all with impeccable direction and mindblowing visuals. The complicity between actors Ryuya Wakaba (ICHIKO) and Yusuke Iseya (FLY ME TO THE SAITAMA) is palpable, helping to develop an engaging relationship between the film's protagonists. With this second work that is as entertaining as it is innovative, we'll be keeping a close eye on auteur Shinji Araki. – Translation: Rupert Bottenberg

Rita

Directed by Jayro Bustamante

Hosted by Director/Writer/Producer Jayro Bustamante

Thirteen-year-old Rita (Giuliana Santa Cruz) finds herself incarcerated in an all-girls protective custody facility, after fleeing a horrendously abusive home life to seek freedom in the city. The girls in her overcrowded section tell of a prophecy, that a warrior angel will arrive to free them all from a life of destitution, incarceration, and enforced prostitution. When she’s handed a pair of wings of her own, which all the girls in her quarters wear too, it’s up to Rita to work out whether she will fulfil the prophecy, and if so, how far she’s prepared to go to let the outside world know what’s really going on at the facility.

Following up on the international success of LA LLORONA (2019), director Jayro Bustamante fuses notes of mythical fantasy with themes of childhood innocence and female friendship, and the potent emotional register of a story based on a harrowing real-life event, where 41 young women horrifically burned to death inside a Guatemalan orphanage in 2017, in the midst of a protest about inhumane conditions.

Much like the early work of Guillermo Del Toro, RITA employs a fantastical mood, and oftentimes whimsical imagery, to dig into a core of grim real-life themes. At the heart of the piece is the powerful performance of Guiliana Santa Cruz, who speaks for all the young women who suffered at the orphanage—those who lost their lives, the survivors, and those who still have to endure such difficult circumstances. As a result, the story speaks much to the power of female anger, and yet, not once does the director lose sense of the fact that at its heart, Rita’s tale is one of girlhood, of dreams, of an innocence lost and regained within the bosom of female solidarity. – Kat Ellinger

The Soul Eater (Mangeur d'Âmes)

Directed by Julien Maury, Alexandre Bustillo

A pair of quite different investigators arrive in Roquenoir, a town in the French mountains, and wind up approaching the same case from two different directions. Commander Elisabeth Guardiano (Virginie Ledoyen, 8 FEMMES) has been sent to look into a married couple’s grisly murder, and Captain of the Gendarmerie Franck De Rolan (Paul Hamy, DESPITE THE NIGHT), from the “department of alarming disappearances,” intends to track down a group of missing children. Their missions turn out to be linked, and one of the elements tying them together is “The Soul Eater,” a local bogeyman legend intended to encourage kids not to wander off into the woods. This creature may not be a myth after all, and as strange details about that double killing come to light and more bizarre deaths occur, Guardiano and De Rolan are drawn toward discovering a shocking truth.

THE SOUL EATER is something of a change of pace for directors Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo. As opposed to their previous films, from the modern classic INSIDE to 2021’s THE DEEP HOUSE, this is less a straight-up horror film than a morbid procedural mystery/thriller, albeit one with graphic, brutal flashpoints and significant undertones of the occult. Adapting the popular French novel by Alexis Laipsker, scriptwriters Annelyse Batrel and Ludovic Lefebvre deliver a series of reveals and reversals that up the tension and the stakes for its dual protagonists. Each is motivated by different personal demons that inform the driven performances by Ledoyen and Hamy, and Maury, Bustillo, and cinematographer Simon Roca elicit bleak, forbidding atmosphere both within the terrorized community and in the forests surrounding it. The emphasis is more on suspense than shock for quite a while, punctuated by direct and visceral moments of bloodshed—until a final act in which the true, tragic scope of the horror is revealed. – Michael Gingold

Wake Up

Directed by Anouck Whissell, François Simard, Yoann-Karl Whissell

After recording a cell-phone-camera message warning, “The world is changing,” a group of young people enter the expansive House Idea store, hiding until it closes for the night. Their goal is to use spray paint and butcher-shop blood to vandalize the place as a protest against its exploitation of the Amazon rainforest’s flora and fauna. The minimal security doesn’t concern them—but they don’t know that Kevin (Turlough Convery) is on duty. He’s a mountain of a man with a fragile, dangerous mental state whose hobby of choice is “primitive hunting.” Once he gets wind of the intruders on his turf, these environmental activists find themselves becoming an endangered species.

RKSS, the Fantasia-favourite filmmaking collective consisting of Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell and François Simard (TURBO KID, SUMMER OF 84, WE ARE ZOMBIES), returns to the fest with their first slasher film. This is no typical killer-vs.-kids flick, though; with a savage, uncompromising screenplay by Alberto Marini (SLEEP TIGHT), it puts Gen Z through a violent reckoning. The sextet of wannabe reformers wear animal masks as part of their protest of House Idea’s crimes against nature, before Kevin turns these adopted protective identities against them, targeting them in his own personal hunt. The youths mean to show House Idea that corporate actions have consequences, without ever considering the repercussions their own activities might bring down on them. Beyond WAKE UP’s ideological interest, the filmmakers make fine, tense and frequently bloody use of the labyrinthine store setting and the many potential weapons found on its shelves—with one especially impressive sequence involving UV paint. – Michael Gingold

Witchboard

Directed by Chuck Russell

Hosted by Director/Writer/Producer Chuck Russell, Actors Jamie Campbell Bower, Madison Iseman and David La Haye

A robbery at the New Orleans Museum of Natural History goes awry, and the object of the theft—a circular “pendulum board” that predates the Ouija by centuries—is discovered by Emily (Madison Iseman, ANNABELLE COMES HOME). She and her fiancé Christian (Aaron Dominguez, ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING) are getting ready to open a restaurant, and at first Emily thinks the board is simply a mysterious and possibly valuable antique. Then it helps her find a missing engagement ring, and Emily becomes fascinated by the board’s spiritual powers. As she falls under the board’s sway, Christian calls on occult expert Alexander Baptiste (Jamie Campbell Bower, STRANGER THINGS)—who has his own connection to the board’s history, and his own dark secrets.

A remake that finds its own direction away from Kevin S. Tenney’s cult-favourite original, 2024’s WITCHBOARD distinguishes itself from the very start by establishing a new mythology and a fresh look for the titular totem. Director/co-writer Chuck Russell (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS, THE MASK, ERASER), who helmed the bravura reboot of THE BLOB in 1988, gives his take on the occult icon its own atmosphere via the New Orleans setting (largely filmed in Montreal) and brings a sumptuous baroque sensibility to the visuals. Russell and Greg McKay’s script leans deep into the history of the pendulum board, employing 17th-century flashbacks to flesh out its origins while setting up a major story twist in the film’s second half. WITCHBOARD features gruesomely imaginative setpieces, including a sequence in Emily and Christian's restaurant—an environment that incorporates luscious Creole food porn. Like that style of cuisine, WITCHBOARD combines different flavours, the old and the new, for a dish that horror fans will find quite tasty. And as a bonus, David La Haye (TRUE NORTH) tears into the role of a determined witchfinder with vicious relish. – Michael Gingold