Today sees the kickoff for the 2024 edition of Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival, the most prestigious genre film festival in North America. Showcasing a wide array of international and independent horror, science fiction, fantasy, and cult films, with diverse and cutting-edge programming, Fantasia has a history of leading the conversation when it comes to genre cinema,
We’ll have many reviews to come including of the festival’s 2024 premieres, but first let’s take a look at six films we’ve had the fortune to see ahead of time at other fests this year, and that we loved. Every one of these genre offerings is a strong recommendation from us!
6. Hunting Daze (Annick Blanc, Canada)
When no-nonsense stripper Nina is left without a ride in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, she’s forced to buddy up with a set of hunters on a bachelor party trip. But something ominous is up with the group, and its only exacerbated when another stranger joins them. This is a mysterious, poetic, but robust look at the sometimes toxic side of masculinity, the gap between man and nature, and the steps a woman must take to protect herself – and it marks Blanc out as a major talent to watch.
5. The Roundup: Punishment (Heo Myeong-haeng, South Korea)
Philippine fisticuffs as everyone’s favourite curudengonly uncle Detective Ma (Ma Dong-seok) once again goes full Best Mode on various swarms of screechingly overconfident hatchet-wielding nincompoops. Comedic joy as he fails to understand a lick of cybercrime terminology, and there’s even an 80s throwback freeze frame shot to cap it off. The spirit of the VHS rental actioner lives on in Korean cinema, in the best possible way – although that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t grab this chance to to lap it up with a big crowd!
4. Timestalker (Alice Lowe, UK)
Star-crossed heroine Agnes (Alice Lowe) takes a karmic journey across multiple lifetimes, reincarnated every time she makes the same mistake: falling in love with the wrong man. Timestalker is a film for the incurable erotomaniac in all of us, Alice Lowe’s reincarnation quasi-romcom gamely asks: what if Virginia Woolf’s Orlando kept getting decapitated, plus there were dildo gags, dance aerobics, and Nick Frost grunting like an angry little dog? A delight from beginning to end, or should we say: from century to century.
3. Azrael (E.L. Katz, USA)
After a religious apocalypse, a girl (Samara Weaving) is on the run from a silent religious cult. Weaving is electric in a dialogue-free role, as survival horror is stripped down to its desperate, violent basics, and then garnished with a bonkers religious twist in E.L. Katz’s post-Rapture bloodbath. Azrael‘s bold concept may alienate some, but I loved the way it combines an experimental edge with a full-bloodied embrace of gonzo grindhouse thrills. This nail-biting white-knuckle bloodbath is a cult smash in the making.
2. Cuckoo (Tilman Singer, Germany/USA)
Life is already hard for Grethen (Hunter Schafer), who is being forced to move to a spa in the German Alps with her father, stepmother and stepsister… and then she starts to discover sinister elements, including dazed guests, strange woodland noises and the menacing spectre of a woman running through the night. Cuckoo is the giallo-tinged, health-spa-set, hallucinatory monster movie you didn’t know you needed. It’s queer, it’s deranged, it romps along like an early-80s Argento flick… and it gives Dan Stevens his best role since The Guest. I adored it.
1. Oddity (Damien Mc Carthy, Ireland/USA)
In this supremely scary supernatural chiller from Caveat’s Damian Mc Carthy, a widowed psychiatric doctor is joined by his wife’s sister, a blind medium, in a bid to investigate his wife’s death. So far Oddity is the most terrifying film of the year. Dripping with tension, laced with sly humour, and unafraid to go for the jump-scare jugular. Plus there’s a bonus cameo from Caveat’s rabbit puppet to boot. What more could a horror fan ask for? This oddity comes recommended!
The Fantasia Film Festival runs from July 18 to August 4 in Montrael, Canada. Tickets here.
Whitlock&Pope 