The Fantasia International Film Festival is to summer what Pimms, strawberries, and cream are to the tennis grass court season: synonymous. Fantasia Festival begins as the grass court season, and all its majestic tradition ends at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, London, across the Atlantic in Montreal, Quebec. Now in its 28th year, the festival hosts an 18-day showcase of genre films, alongside workshops and launch events at 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.
The carefully curated programme of international films juxtaposes traditional genre works with dramas and comedies. In recent years, Mark O’Brien’s British occult chamber drama The Righteous (2021), Igor Legarreta’s Spanish vampire fantasy-drama All the Moons (Todas las Lunas, 2021), and Jacqueline Castel‘s Canadian supernatural werewolf romance My Animal (2023), have been among the traditional highlights. These have been offset by, for example, Japanese director Miwa Nishikawa’s Under the Open Sky (2021), an adaptation of Ryūzō Saki’s 1990 novel, Mibunchō, about a character trapped between the past and the future who must reintegrate into society after serving a 13-year prison sentence. Other examples include Denis Côté‘s women-led drama That Kind of Summer (Un Été Comme Ça, 2022) and Rachel Lambert’s sensitive and observant dramatic comedy, Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023).
Looking ahead to the 28th Fantasia Festival presents the usual challenge of digesting the vast programme. Anticipation surrounds Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte’s adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ 1844 classic literary tale of revenge, The Count of Monte Cristo (Le comte de Monte-Cristo). At its World Premiere in Cannes, it received a rapturous standing ovation. It arrives at the Fantasia Festival for its International Premiere in the Cheval Noir Competition.
Kevin Reynolds‘ 2002 adaptation of Dumas’ novel, starring Jim Caviezel, Guy Pearce, Richard Harris, and Dagmara Dominczyk, was a satisfying swashbuckling tale. Word out of Cannes suggests this new adaptation takes an interesting approach to the material, retaining the spirit of Dumas’ intentions while leaning into the superhero genre.
Another potential highlight in the Cheval Noir strand is also a literary-inspired work. Director Jay Song’s South Korean psychological thriller, 4PM, is based on Belgian author Amélie Nothomb’s 1995 novel, The Stranger Next Door (Les Catilinaires). The story centres on a teacher who encounters a series of awkward visits at the same time every afternoon at his countryside house. The recurring visits thrust him into what the Fantasia Festival describes as a memorable character joust with engaging twists confronting the audience with questions.
On the theme of cyclical tales, British actress and filmmaker Alice Lowe’s playful and bloody period comedy Timestalker follows Agnes (Lowe), who seeks out her presumed soulmate across multiple lifetimes, each ending in her death. Together, Song’s psychological thriller and Lowe’s bloody anti-romantic comedy are perhaps two soulmates in a cyclical-themed double bill.
In the Selection 2024 strand alongside Timestalker, there are a handful of diverse films to highlight. The first is the post-apocalyptic thriller Azrael, from director E.L. Katz, whose intense 2013 black comedy Cheap Thrills, with an incisive socio-political commentary, thrust him onto the genre stage as someone to watch. Azrael sees him team up with screenwriter Simon Barrett (A Horrible Way to Die (2010), You’re Next (2011) and The Guest (2014)). Void of dialogue, Azrael is a violent struggle for survival and freedom that sees leading actress Samara Weaving reimagine her genre-defining role as the young bride in Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s 2019 survivalist horror Ready or Not.
Japanese director Hiroaki Matsuyama’s Don’t Call It Mystery is a playful whodunit. College student Totonou (Masaki Suda), an observant but social misfit, is hired by a mysterious young woman to solve a family mystery that involves an unsolved riddle and a deadly feud. Then, there’s Irish director Damian McCarthy’s horror Oddity, which follows Darcy (Carolyn Bracken), a blind medium who, with the help of a wooden mannequin, pieces together the truth behind her sister’s murder. Described as a slow burn and suspenseful, coming off the back of McCarthy’s strange and captivating Caveat (2020), the director’s latest could be a darling of the festival circuit.
South Korean director Yoon Eun-kyung’s thriller, The Tenants, is set in dystopian future Seoul, where 20-something Shin-dong (Kim Dae-geon) is threatened with eviction by his landlord. Fortunately, a program called Wolwolse allows Shin-dong to rent out part of his apartment. Unfortunately, he makes the ill-advised choice of renting out his bathroom to a couple. Pitched by Fantasia Festival’s Alyssia Duval-Nguon as “a unique blend of soft science fiction, Kafkaesque absurdism, and dark comedy to highlight Korea’s very real social inequality problems” and picking up the FIPRESCI Prize for best director at the Singapore International Film Festival, The Tenants is one of the irresistible curiosities in this year’s line-up.
The Adams family, John and Lulu Adams, and Toby Poser, return to the Fantasia Festival with two films. First is the Serbian set monster feature Hell Hole, inspired by a road trip through the Canadian oil fields. The story centers on a US-led fracking crew that stirs a monster from its dormant slumber, which will be presented with their short film Plastic Smile. Written by Francesco Loschiavo, it’s an unsettling tale of a porcelain doll that asks a little girl to take her to a dark tunnel in the woods.
Following last year’s impressive Where the Devil Roams, Adams’ tonally thematically layered monster feature and creepy short films round off the recommendations for this year’s Fantasia Festival. A final mention goes to director Maxime Laurin and writer Wil Andrews’ intriguing silent short, Silenced, with its gruelling premise and the promise of secrets that will not stay hidden.