Scott Cooper makes his first foray into horror with the slow-burning creature feature Antlers. It’s effectively atmospheric and delivers a few genre thrills, but it doesn’t quite connect all its pieces in a way that fully satiates.
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Borat isn’t the only good thing to come out of Kazakhstan! Kazakhstani writer/director Yernar Nurgaliev makes his international breakout with his violent comedy Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It. The film had its Texas premiere at this year’s Fantastic Fest, and it sent heads rolling — literally and figuratively — and had the audience in stitches with its hilariously thrilling bloodbath about brotherhood and male bonding.
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Prolific Oklahoman writer/director Mickey Reece is back with another delightfully subversive genre flick that takes audiences for an unexpected ride. With Agnes, Reece and his longtime writing collaborator, John Selvidge, break the habit of standard genre norms to deliver a heartfelt and deeply hilarious dramedy with horror leanings. One thing is for sure, this ain’t your typical nun or exorcism flick.
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Valdimar Jóhannsson’s feature film debut, Lamb, recently had its U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest, and boy, is it a beautifully strange beast! This tantalizing, slow burning, folkloric fable effortlessly blends the real with the inexplicable to create something powerful and unique. Charmingly odd, and hilariously straight-faced, Lamb oozes a compelling mystique that must be seen to be believed.
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Junta Yamaguchi makes his directorial debut with Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes, a light and breezy 70-minute sci-fi comedy that proves you don’t need a big budget to make an amusing time-travel head trip. The film takes a basic plot and stretches it to the outer most extremes, delivering laughs and mind-boggling time loop antics along the way.
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The latest installment into the V/H/S franchise, V/H/S/94, recently had its world premiere at this year’s Fantastic Fest. Featuring five new segments from filmmakers Simon Barrett, Chloe Okuno, Ryan Prows, Jennifer Reeder, and Timo Tjahjanto, V/H/S/94 takes viewers for a gory good ride that attempts to right the wrongs of the franchise’s previous entry.
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Indie filmmaker extraordinaire Jim Cummings returns with another twisted triumph that fuses genre elements into comedy gold. Splitting writing and directing duty with PJ McCabe (who makes his feature film debut and also co-stars alongside Cummings), the pair cook up a sharp, no-holds-barred satire of Hollywood that inhabits the form of an erotic thriller with horror leanings. Slick and controlled, The Beta Test is delightfully unpredictable and features another excellent performance from Cummings.
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Gigi Saul Guerrero turns a bingo hall into a Faustian grindhouse hell with her latest film, Bingo Hell, which recently had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest. It’s a basic tale of good and evil that’s whipped into a goopy, neon-streaked romp. Everything is elevated by the strength of its dueling leads, but Bingo Hell’s crudely drawn social themes eclipse its terrors and dampen the fun.
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Fantastic Fest delighted its audience with their first secret screening of the festival, the U.S. premiere of Edgar Wright’s Last Night In Soho. This soggy, neon-glazed psychological horror/comedy is a stylishly slick visual feast that transports viewers to the swinging 60s of London’s West End, but it unfortunately fails to do much else.
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Franco-British photographer, artist, and filmmaker Charlotte Colbert makes her feature film debut with She Will, which recently had its North American premiere this past Sunday at Fantastic Fest. Starring genre icons Alice Krige and Malcolm McDowell, Colbert cooks up a moody witches brew full of #MeToo revenge that’s largely held up by the strength of its performances.
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Actor James Ashcroft makes his directorial debut with the solidly gripping, pitch-black thriller Coming Home In The Dark. Boiling with tension and bolstered by a chilling performance from Daniel Gillies, the film takes viewers for a bleak and brutal ride sure to shred a nerve or two.
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French visionary Bertrand Mandico creates a queer ode to Kate Bush with his sophomore feature, After Blue (Dirty Paradise), which recently had its U.S. premiere at Austin, Texas’ Fantastic Fest. This esoteric sapphic-surrealist sci-fi acid western reaffirms Mandico’s penchant for conceiving highly imaginative fantastic worlds, but it’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. The film is a frequency, and you’re either on it or you’re not.
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40 years after its initial release, Andrzej Żuławski’s bonkers breakup film, Possession, finally gets the TLC it rightfully deserves! With a new 4K facelift (courtesy of Metrograph Pictures), Possession’s singularly visceral insanity has never looked so damn good. Best of all: a theatrical and digital re-release is slated for October, which means this mesmerizing genre marvel can be seen the way it was always intended!
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The latest twisted vision from French writer/director Julia Ducournau had Fantastic Fest audiences revved up for its U.S. premiere, and man, oh man, is it a torqued up treat! Fasten your seatbelts and hold on tight because this deliciously demented and surprisingly sweet no-brakes tale of love and parenthood is gonna take you for one helluva wild and crazy ride.
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With Cry Macho, Clint Eastwood climbs back in the Western saddle for the first time since 1992’s classic Unforgiven. After nearly 30 years, his return is hardly a triumph. This ambling slow-burn isn’t without its charms, but its soft-boiled sentiments on masculinity don’t amount to much, either.
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Writer/director Janicza Bravo breaks through to the mainstream with her wildly entertaining sophomore feature, Zola. Based on a viral Twitter thread by Aziah "Zola" King (who also executive produced) and David Kushner’s piece in Rolling Stone, "Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted,” the film takes audiences on a darkly comedic and feverish thotyssey that captures the heart of this stranger-than-fiction tale and casts quite a spell.
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Michael Showalter’s latest, The Eyes Of Tammy Faye, is a lightly kooky, holy rollercoaster of a biopic that’s bolstered by the commitment of its leads. Based of the 2000 documentary of the same name, the film dramatizes the well-documented life of beloved televangelists Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker, chronicling their extraordinary rise and their scandalous fall. While it proves to be fairly entertaining (mostly due to its performances), Showalter and screenwriter Abe Sylvia don’t go as far or deep as we’d hoped, culminating in a fairly conventional biopic whose story is better examined in documentary format.
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Director James Wan returns to his horror roots and funnels his Aquaman money into one of the weirdest studio-backed films in recent memory with Malignant. Part possession film, part Giallo, and thoroughly WTF, Wan whips up a stylish and atmospheric potpourri that glorifies the gory and commemorates the silly and strange.
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Writer/director Justin Chon shines a light on an outrageous immigration loophole with his overly weepy social drama, Blue Bayou. Overflowing with melodrama and steeped in tragedy, this bleary-eyed tearjearker goes straight for the heart but lays it on so thick that it nearly eclipses the important topical issues it seeks to illuminate.
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Writer/director Paul Schrader returns with another solid Bressonian thriller that explores solitary men consumed by their occupation. Cool, confident, and calculated, but at times askew, The Card Counter is an exciting new riff on the familiar Paul Schrader tale full of his signature hallmarks and surprises. Bolstered by Oscar Isaac’s performance, Schrader’s bold style, and Robert Levon Been’s moody score, this compellingly mysterious revenge thriller takes you for a dark and twisted ride that only Schrader could cook up. Make no mistake, this is not your typical poker film.
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