Fantasia 2025 Preview: Celebrating the Wild, Weird, and Wonderfully Original

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For the fourth year in a row, Overly Honest Reviews is proud to return to the Fantasia International Film Festival, and each time it feels like coming home. There’s truly nothing like Fantasia — a place where genre storytelling thrives, where global visions collide, and where you’re just as likely to stumble into a haunting indie as you are an insane midnight oddity. Every year, I’m introduced to films I never saw coming, voices I didn’t know I needed, and stories that stick with me long after the screen goes dark.

This year’s lineup continues that tradition, with bold new works from seasoned visionaries and breakout talent alike. From surreal psychodramas and supernatural thrillers to outrageous animated comedy and underground absurdism, Fantasia 2025 isn’t holding back — and that’s exactly why I can’t wait.

Here are some of the films I’m most looking forward to this year:

FIXED
Director(s): Genndy Tartakovsky
Writer(s): Genndy Tartakovsky, Jon Vitti, Steve Greenberg, Rich Lufrano
Cast: Adam Devine, Idris Elba, Kathryn Hahn, Fred Armisen, Bobby Moynihan, Beck Bennett, Michelle Buteau, River Gallo
Runtime: 85 min

From the visionary director of PRIMAL and SAMURAI JACK comes an adult animated comedy about Bull, an average, all-around good dog who discovers he’s going to be neutered in the morning! (Fixed, seems like such a unique experience from a director with such a specific vision.)

Bull (Adam Devine) is a lovable mutt, and a loyal buddy to his pack, including brawny boxer Rocco (Idris Elba), pretentious dachshund Fetch (Fred Armisen), and neurotic beagle Lucky (Bobby Moynihan). He also has a massive crush on the sexy show dog next door, the Afghan hound Honey (Kathryn Hahn). His pride and joy are his magnificent testicles, at the behest of which he’ll satiate his constant horniness by way of most any household object, though his preference is grandma’s leg. These peccadilloes of his, however, may prove his downfall. Alarmed by indications that a trip to the vet looms in his immediate future, the frantic Bull will do anything to delay the inevitable—or at least unleash his carnal impulses while he still can!

From Sony Pictures Animation and top-tier animator Genndy Tartakovsky (SAMURAI JACK, PRIMAL, HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA) comes FIXED, an adult animated comedy that’s lewd, rude, raunchy, and riotously funny! Tartakovsky carries the torch forward here for the finest craftsmen of classic TV cartoon foolishness, recalling Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, and Hanna-Barbera. Those guys never got away with anything as outrageous as FIXED, though! Parental Advisory: This film contains ferociously foul language, disgusting dining choices, explicit sexual elements, graphic squirrel mutilation, and just about any other nasty thing one or more dogs can get up to. Got that? Okay, now… Pervert Advisory: This film also contains uplifting and redeeming messages about honesty, loyalty, true love, and self-acceptance. You’ve been warned! Genndy Tartakovsky’s FIXED is here, with its mind in the gutter, its heart in the right place, and its balls entirely intact!
– Rupert Bottenberg

FOREIGNER
Director(s): Ava Maria Safai
Writer(s): Ava Maria Safai
Cast: Rose Dehgan, Chloë Macleod
Runtime: 83 min

A new experience in Canada puts an Iranian teen at odds with her family, her identity, and a dark presence.

Yasamin (Rose Deghan), or Yasi, is an Iranian teenager who wants to fit in. She lives with her father, Ali (Ashkan Nejati), and her grandmother, Zoreh (Maryam Sadeghi). She’s new to Canada and worries she won’t make any friends at her new high school. On her first day, she meets a trio of pastel-clad chirpy girls: “Queen Bee” Rachel (Chloë MacLeod, SUGAR ROT) and her followers, Emily (Victoria Wadell) and Kristen (Talisa Mae Stewart, THE CASKET GIRLS). They are intensely interested in Yasi, having never met an Iranian person before, and their insidious racism pushes her to assimilate into white Canadian culture. Yasi desperately wants to fit in, so she does whatever it takes to become a 2004 cookie-cutter teen like her new friends, and dyes her hair blonde like her late mother and Sarah on her favourite sitcom. But those golden locks aren’t a golden ticket to acceptance. When her fading Iranian identity awakens a dark force within, Yasi becomes defiant to her family, rejects her culture, and threatens to destroy her loved ones and the new life she’s building in Canada.

Ava Maria Safai, who directed the award-winning short ZIP, debuts her first feature, FOREIGNER, which was also a part of the 2023 Telefilm Talent to Watch program. She skillfully takes the MEAN GIRLS/HEATHERS/“bubblegum horror” setup and gives it a new spin by adding the immigrant experience through a horror lens. Injecting culturally specific nuances expands on the new Canadian experience, and what we get is a confident pastiche of coming-of-age and folklore mixed with the newcomer narrative. The blend of comedy and horror shines through with MacLeod as the nasty Rachel, and Rose Dehgan’s portrayal of Yasamin in her first leading role is sensitive, layered and heartbreaking.
– Carolyn Mauricette

FUCKTOYS
Director(s): Annapurna Sriram
Writer(s): Annapurna Sriram
Cast: Francois Arnaud, Brandon Flynn, Big Freedia, Sadie Scott, Annapurna Sriram, Damian Young
Runtime: 108 min

In this John Waters-inspired dark comedy, a sex worker living in Trashtown must raise $1,000 to lift a curse in a filthy, absurdist quest through society’s underbelly.

FUCKTOYS opens in the swamp, lush, humid, and vibrating with mystical energy. Fingers, painted and dripping with jewels, lay out a tarot reading. These hands belong to a fortune teller, played by rapper and drag queen Big Freedia, who begins to reveal a mystical warning. Shot in sumptuous 16mm, what unfolds is a fever-dream odyssey. Written, directed by, and starring Annapurna Sriram (BILLIONS), FUCKTOYS reimagines the classic Fool’s Journey through a radically queer, maximalist lens. The story follows AP, a sex worker living in “Trashtown,” who discovers she’s been cursed. To survive, she must raise $1000 to pay a medium who might be able to lift it. So begins her quest, absurd, grotesque, and glittering, with a parade of characters, sexual misadventures, and unexpected acts of tenderness leading her through a distorted dreamscape version of Louisiana.

Steeped in camp, grime, and “bad taste,” FUCKTOYS pays homage to the rebel spirit of John Waters and Russ Meyer. The film is rich with tactile production design and uncanny textures, sticky, lived-in, and strangely beautiful. It’s an ecstatic collision of the sacred and profane, the tender and the trashy, the ridiculous and the sublime. As a performer, Sriram is irreverent, incandescent, and fully committed to the chaos. Her portrayal of AP is hilarious, raw, and full of soul. In a desperate era full of desperate people, FUCKTOYS is strangely resonant as a film about people surviving on the outskirts. Even as it plunges into the depths of perversion, it never loses touch with its humanity. It’s a glitter-coated, piss-soaked fairy tale for the forgotten.
– Justine Smith

HELLCAT
Director(s): Brock Bodell
Writer(s): Brock Bodell
Cast: Liz Atwater, Dakota Gorman, James Austin “JAJ” Johnson, Jordan Mullins, Todd Terry
Runtime: 91 min

Lena finds herself trapped in a trailer of a mysterious stranger who says she’s infected and is being taken for treatment, in a supernatural shocker that journeys deep into unexpected territory.

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, Lena (Dakota Gorman) is finally coming to. Trapped inside a trailer on the move, she’s woozy and unsure how she got there or how she got that mysterious wound. The voice of a stranger named Clive (Todd Terry) tells Lena she’s been infected and he’s taking her to see a specialist named Dr. Janekowski who can help her—as long as she stays calm and inside the trailer. Of course Lena doesn’t trust this man and tries to escape, but he does his best to make her understand that he’s here to help her. Clive may seem crazy, but he’s not a monster; he talks to Lena about his life, about the choices he’s made and his beliefs in the unknown. Sure, he’s a devotee of late-night DJ Jasper Deville (voiced by SNL’s James Austin Johnson) and his paranormal call-in show, but once he gets her to Dr. Janekowski, she’s going to get the help she needs. But this night is going to last longer than either of them anticipate, they won’t be alone, and the road they’re on is going to lead each of them to a fate they’ve both been dreading.

Fantasia prides itself on bringing audiences out-of-nowhere sleepers, and Brock Bodell’s HELLCAT is unquestionably one of 2025’s knock-your-socks off surprises. What makes this small, contained, and yet always on-the-move story so successful are Lena and Clive, both real people struggling to accept the new fates that life has handed them. The excellent performances by Gorman and Terry ground this tale for much of the running time, so that when the story’s supernatural path is revealed, you’re ready to go down that road with Lena and Clive. And Bodell, who previously cut the mindbending ULTRASOUND (Fantasia 2021) among others, thankfully doesn’t take a wrong turn, confidently bringing the characters—and the audience—into unexpected territory. HELLCAT offers Fantasia audiences a thrill-ride of strong characters, shredding tension, and real surprises. You’re in for a hell of a ride with this one.
– Matthew Kiernan

I LIVE HERE NOW
Director(s): Julie Pacino
Writer(s): Julie Pacino
Cast: Lucy Fry, Cara Seymour, Alex Gaumond, Sarah Rich, Lara Clear, Anna Armstrong, Lilia Watkins, Matt Rife, Madeline Brewer, Sheryl Lee
Runtime: 92 min

A surreal, psychodrama starring Lucy Fry, Madeline Brewer, and Sheryl Lee that is haunting, ironic, and Lynchian, as it explores trauma, identity, and the horror of perfection. Shot on vibrant 35mm with striking 16mm sequences, and directed by Julie Pacino in her feature debut, I LIVE HERE NOW is a haunting, dreamlike psychodrama about identity, trauma, and the fragile line between memory and madness.

With her feature debut I LIVE HERE NOW, Julie Pacino plunges us into a vibrant and nightmarish psychodrama that reverberate with echoes of David Lynch, Dario Argento, and the Coen brothers. Starring Lucy Fry as Rose, a woman haunted by trauma and trapped in a motel where reality unravels, the film blurs the lines between past and present, dream and waking life. The film pulses with competing anxieties: the pursuit of perfection, the weight of generational trauma, and the invisible fist of capitalism tightening its grip around the necks of its characters. It teeters on a razor’s edge, capturing the psychic instability of a modern life that’s fractured and disorienting. Pacino paints a world that is strange and bewildering, overflowing with dream-like hallucinations. Yet the film’s surrealism doesn’t feel arbitrary and Pacino understands that dreams are rooted in intuition and collective memory. The film feels lived-in and embodied: never just weird for weird’s sake.

I LIVE HERE NOW charts an eerie emotional terrain, where the specters of the past constantly press into the present, and the struggle to become one’s true self feels like an existential horror. But even amid the dread, the film maintains a sharp, satirical wit. Its dark humour stings with irony, skewering everything from toxic family myths to capitalist grind culture. The supporting cast is incredible: Madeline Brewer (CAM), Sheryl Lee (TWIN PEAKS), Cara Seymour (ADAPTATION.), and an exceptionally slimy Matt Rife, are all perfectly attuned to the film’s tonal hallucinations. With a striking visual sensibility and a firm grasp on mood, Pacino crafts a cinematic experience that’s deeply immersive and unshakably strange. I LIVE HERE NOW marks the emergence of a bold new voice in genre cinema.
– Justine Smith

LUCID
Director(s): Ramsey Fendall, Deanna Milligan
Writer(s): Ramsey Fendall, Deanna Milligan
Cast: Georgia Acken, Caitlin Acken Taylor, Amber Dandelion, John Luna, Vivian Vanderpuss
Runtime: 109 min

Struggling art student Mia Sunshine Jones must discover her artistic purpose or risk being expelled from school. When she takes Lucid, a candy elixir, she opens a dreamscape of memories and a ’90s grunge nightmare.

Mia’s life is messy. She’s a frustrated art student struggling to pass a crucial point in the term. Her professor is hard to please, and he needs “something with heart” in one week. Lashing out at inanimate objects, as well as at herself and her peers, she lacks inspiration and believes she’s a terrible artist. Working at fast-food joint Bitchin Chckn, and being the class outcast, don’t help either. When she tries a special candy elixir, Lucid, to open her mind, Mia ignores instructions not to overdo it and eats a full serving of the candy, opening up memories she didn’t know existed and learns there’s more than a creative block at play. Her brash actions pave the way for a nightmare-fueled journey to finding inspiration, meaning, and self-discovery.

With a DIY punk aesthetic shot on both 35 and 16mm film, and an outstanding performance by Caitlin Acken Taylor (PISTOL) that will leave you breathless, LUCID is a pseudo-experimental odyssey that delves into a young woman’s struggle with art, demons, memories, and forging her own path into darkness. Directors Deanna Milligan and Ramsey Fendall expand the world of their short film LUCID (a 2023 Fantasia Frontierés Market Shorts to Features and Sitges Fanpitch project) into an at times improvisational yet intentional exploration of the ’90s art scene through a raw, surrealist lens. Performances by Caitlin Acken Taylor, who reprises her role from the short film, Georgia Acken (star of the 2023 Fantasia hit THE SACRIFICE GAME) as a young Mia, and Vivian Vanderpuss of RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE, and original songs make for a mad celebration of grunge, art, and self. Described by the directors as a “coming of monster” story, LUCID will transport you back in time as we watch a young artist descend into a demonic wonderland.
– Carolyn Mauricette

MOTHER OF FLIES
Director(s): John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser
Writer(s): John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser
Cast: Zelda Adams, John Adams, Toby Poser
Runtime: 92 min

A young girl diagnosed with cancer turns to necromancy under guidance from a witch in the woods. Can dark magic heal her? At what cost? A brilliant occult fairy tale from the directors of HELLBENDER. (I’m a huge fan of The Adams Family — their films always speak to me. They’re the core of what makes indie horror so heartfelt!)

“One day to die, three days to rise.” Shaken to her core after being diagnosed with cancer, young Mickey (Zelda Adams) turns to necromancy to heal herself after conventional medicine fails to help. Her father, Jake (John Adams), is not a religious man, but any skepticism he might hold takes a backseat to supporting his daughter’s decision. And so, they embark on a journey, driving deep into the woods to meet with a witch who resides there. Her name is Solveig (Toby Poser), and they will be her guests for the transformative days to come. She will guide Mickey through a journey of discovery, ritual, and blood. Solveig is offering her dark magic guidance free of charge. That’s not to say that it will come without costs.

Written and directed by John & Zelda Adams and Toby Poser (The Adams Family), who also star, shot, edited, and scored, MOTHER OF FLIES is the latest creation from the gifted filmmaking family behind such singular works as THE DEEPER YOU DIG, HELLBENDER and WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS, each of which has World Premiered at Fantasia. Described by the filmmakers as their fairytale manipulation of the darkly shadowed yet love-lined pathways between a human life and death, MOTHER OF FLIES is an extraordinary work of personal genre storytelling, gestated through the family’s own experiences battling and surviving cancer. It stands with the strongest of their work, a poetic, haunting, and moving film that glows with otherworldly imagination and morbid grotesquerie, exploring witchcraft through a story of two women who have profound relationships with death. Its chalice flowing over with dialogue and imagery that will sear into your memory, MOTHER OF FLIES conjures genuine horror magic. It haunts as further testament that the Adams Family continue to rank among the most compelling and original artists in the modern genre world.
– Mitch Davis

And finally, a bonus treat for longtime fans of Hong Kong fantasy cinema:

A CHINESE GHOST STORY III
Director: Tsui Hark, Ching Siu-Tung
Writer(s): Tsui Hark, Roy Szeto
Cast: Jacky Cheung, Nina Li Chi, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Shun Lau, Joey Wang
Runtime: 104 min
4K Restoration by Shout! Factory

Beware of sexy ghost vixens knocking at your door! The beloved Hong Kong series concludes with another wild joyride of exhilarating kung fu, flying monks and monsters, and a kinky subtext. (I’ve always been a huge fan of the A CHINESE GHOST STORY film series, so to see the third film get a 4K restoration is incredibly exciting.)

Beware of sexy ghost vixens knocking at your door—they’re there to give you the ultimate pleasure ride, then suck away your life force and condemn you forever to hell. Their master is the Demon Tree, who has a mile long tongue that never misses. Their status quo is challenged one day when a naive young monk and his wise master cross paths with the main ghost, Lotus. Her charms prove futile, thwarting her intentions devour him. Soon, they fall helplessly in love! Jealous reigns over her sister Butterfly, who brings their master and other dangerous devils into the mix. How will they survive these devilishly demonic forces?

The beloved Hong Kong series concludes with fresh new characters and storyline in a new, haunting 4K restoration from the original negatives. Award-winning director Ching Siu-Tung (HEROIC TRIO, SHAOLIN SOCCER) and writer-producer Tsui Hark return with an another wild joyride where laws of gravity are jettisoned in favour of exhilarating kung fu involving flying monks and monsters, mixed with a kinky subtext. The over-the-top set pieces earned a much-deserved action-choreography nomination at the 1991 Hong Kong Film Awards. Starring some of the biggest stars of the era, including series veteran Joey Wang (GREEN SNAKE) returning as a new ghost, and a young Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (also this year’s BULLET IN THE HEAD), as the earnest monk, before he became internationally famous under Wong Kar-Wai’s wing.
– King-Wei Chu

From animated dogs and grunge-fueled dreamscapes to otherworldly witches and cursed trailer park abductions, Fantasia 2025 promises another unforgettable ride through the wildest edges of genre cinema. Let the madness begin.