In Review: Fantastic Fest 2018 (Noah)
It’s been a few days since I walked out of the 8:00PM showing of Mid90s, my final screening of my very first Fantastic Fest. And to say the least, I’m beat. I can’t tell if it’s the steady intake of fried foods, hamburgers, milkshakes, coffee and beer or the fact that sometime during my second to last movie my brain slipped into a different reality where nothing made sense or some combination of the two. But yeah, 26 films over the course of 5 days, it’s a doozy.
But I’m back, I survived, and I’d like to tell you about some movies.
I’ll be dropping films into the categories of: THE BEST, VERY GOOD, GOOD, MIDDLIN’ and BAD.
— THE BEST —
Mid90s, d. Jonah Hill
A beautiful, pure distillation of what it was like to try and fit in – regardless of the scene or locale – as a kid pre-internet. Jonah Hill’s first foray into directing is a tone poem wrapped around a nugget of nostalgia. And though the idea of strange kids trying to find their place in the world is universal, if you’re a child of the 90s, well shit, this movie is going suck you up in a bear hug of feels.
Hold The Dark, d. Jeremy Saulnier
After Blue Ruin, Green Room and now Hold The Dark, I’m ready to follow Jeremy Saulnier into whatever dark, seething abyss of badness he wants to lead me towards. Hold The Dark is a bigger, more thematic film, but it’s still about the bad that lives in all of us and what we do when we can’t hold it back anymore. Alexander Skarsgard gives his best performance as a vengeful father and Jeffrey Wright’s emotionally addled wolf-guy is just another notch in his amazing character belt. The film doesn’t stray far from it’s dark intents, but Saulnier manages to keep it moving with brutal action and grit. Try to see it in a theater.
The World Is Yours, d. Romain Gavras
The World Is Yours is like Ocean’s Eleven set in France and bent towards realism. A lower-tiered thug wants to go straight, but his only chance is to turn the table on a whole lot of people. Gavras has a subtle touch with his bonehead characters, a mind for soundtracks and when the film hits its final act and all the pieces start slipping together – it’s really a thing of beauty. My most anticipated and quite possibly my favorite film.
School’s Out, d. Sebastien Marnier
A low-key, Hitchcockian thriller set in the gifted world of an upscale high school. It’s an unsettling look at generation gaps in a time when the world feels like it’s falling apart. The ending begs for a rewatch.
The Nightshifter, d. Dennison Ramalho
A morgue attendant who can speak to the dead uses his power for revenge and well, shit goes bad. It’s a gore-filled, psychological, ghost story with a bleak as fuck ending and I absolutely loved it. Ramalho’s concept is great, but the way he expands and plays with it is even better. It’s a film where no character is particularly lovable, but you root for them all the same.
— VERY GOOD —
Suspiria, d. Luca Guadagnino
A remake of the classic Argento giallo set in 1980s Berlin in a dance school where much is not what it seems. Suspiria is a strange, strange film, shot through with witchcraft, modern dance and feminine struggle. It also features two scenes that made me retch a little bit and both Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson at their very most odd. It won’t be for everyone, but for those interested in abstract, artistic horror, you’re in for a treat.
The Night Comes For Us, d. Timo Tjahjanto
Two straight hours of martial arts, exploding heads and badasses doing badass things. Don’t come for the story, come for Joe Taslim, Iko Uwais, and more beating the hell out of everyone on two legs. It never gets old and when it finally grounds down to its final moments, all I wanted was more.
You Might Be The Killer, d. Brett Simmons
A meta take on the killer at camp motif ala Friday The 13th. Supposedly this film is based on a conversation between Chuck Wendig and Sam Sykes, and as novel as it is that human interaction can breed stories, even ones good enough for movies, the film is quite good. A camp in the middle of nowhere becomes victim to a machete-wielding, mask-wearing killer and when the camp director tries to suss out the carnage with his comic book shop working confidante, the story starts to twist and turn and mutate in a savvy take on the genre.
The Perfection, d. Richard Shepard
Without giving anything away, The Perfection tricked me more than a few times. Shepard’s crafted a De Palma-esque exercise in style and it works surprisingly well. Allison Williams and Logan Browning play cello prodigies whose past and present rivalries take them down some decidedly dark paths. If any film’s final moment made my stomach squirm more, I must’ve blacked it out between beers and burgers.
Terrified, d. Demian Rugna
It’s like Argentinian Poltergeist but with old people. Rugna has crafted a movie sheerly with the intention of scaring your tights off. Bad, ghostly stuff starts happening in a neighborhood and a trio of elderly ghost-hunters are called in to figure it out. It’s atmospheric and jump scary, and you’d be better off emptying your bladder before you saunter into it.
Dog, d. Samuel Benchetrit
A nice guy gets dumped by his wife, ignored by his kid and slapped around by society. In response he turns into a dog, or something. I fell asleep during this movie and when I did I was watching a quirky, if not sad story about a guy trying to get his shit together without stepping on anyone’s toes. When I woke up, I was suddenly watching a pretty brutal tale about loneliness and what we’ll do to counter it. It won’t be for everyone, but it grabbed me from start to finish.
Chained For Life, d. Aaron Schimberg
You’re going to hear about this film in the near future. The lead, Adam Pearson, has a unique facial disfigurement and the film rides, purposefully, a thin line of what the concept of disfigurement means in the vacuous halls of Hollywood. There’s layers and layers of meaning here – some that don’t stick particularly well – as well as layers and layers of storytelling that are stacked messily upon each other. It’s a little Lynch-lite, but Schimberg does a fine job of tying it together to invoke a feeling of discomfort and then discomfort with that discomfort.
— GOOD —
Overlord, d. Julius Avery
A big, fun WWII horror/action film with Nazis and strapping fellas. Overlord is a good time, I’ll say that. It’s loud and gory and has a lot of gun fights and punching duels (and boy can Wyatt Russell throw a haymaker). And yeah, if that’s what you’re looking for, this is going to do it for you. If meaning and thematic resonance are what you’re looking for, well, move along soldier.
The Guilty, d. Gustav Moller
My brain imploded from cinematic overload exactly ten minutes before I saw this film. But, from what I can glean from the syrup of images and sound that The Guilty dribbled into my slack-jawed mouth, it was a fine, tense, one-room thriller. Beyond that, I can’t tell you much.
May The Devil Take You, d. Timo Tjahjanto
Tjahjanto’s second piece in the festival finds a family mourning for a dead father while being haunted by a scary witch ghost looking for someone to pay for the sins of the past. May The Devil Take You is a wild ride with intense, face-peeling gore, but it stumbles a little in tonal execution. It can’t decide if it wants to be Evil Dead or something more subtle, and both sides lose a little in the indecision.
The Unthinkable, d. Crazy Pictures
The Unthinkable is the most emo-disaster film I’ve ever seen. A film where some sort of gas is causing people to forget everything and its up to a sociopathic piano prodigy, his small town crush and his conspiracy theorist dad to stop it. It’s got piano playing in the rain, a dam turned into a deadly Home Alone set and a character I like to call Unstoppable Bjorn. And you know, it’s pretty enjoyable if not a little long and little heavy on the sap.
Laika, d. Aurel Klimt
A rough claymation musical about the Russian space-dog Laika. This is my first claymation musical from the Czech Republic, and hopefully not my last. The music is bedroom Eastern European industrial pop and the second act of the film finds a bunch of abandoned space animals finding solace on a planet full of sexually curious aliens. There’s a sexy monkey named Ham, and an alien made up of shiny clay penises who just wants to squeeze some udders and fuck an American astronaut. It’s rough, but beautiful in its own way.
Keep An Eye Out, d. Quentin Dupieux
Quentin Dupieux makes weird movies about the intersection of creating art and watching art. His first film Rubber, about a murderous, sentient tire, was abstract to the point of boredom. Keep An Eye Out is equally weird, but there’s a soft humor that finds its way into the cracks and some strong performances that gave it a little more footing. I’d explain the plot, but it doesn’t matter.
— MIDDLIN’ —
The Apostle, d. Gareth Evans
The combination of Evans and Dan Stevens in a period piece cult film was tempting, but in execution it struggles. Dan Steven’s character – a PTSD-addled veteran of war – tries to find his sister in a creepy cult on a barren island with ocean gods and secrets. It’s long and dense and light on action and it ended up more boring than anything else.
Murder Me, Monster, d. Alejandro Fadel
The first thirty minutes of this rural Argentinian “monster movie” are beautifully atmospheric and feature one of my favorite characters and scenes of the festival. Somewhere in the back half though, mood overtakes logical story telling and the film slows to a crawl. There is a whipping penis tail though and again the nude dance scene in the mirror made my mouth drop.
Burning, d. Chang-Dong Lee
A solid, low-key thriller about jealousy and economic parity that needed an editor. It felt like a film made for film nerds who could grasp the thematic meaning of playing the theme song from Elevator to the Gallows while a stoned woman danced half-naked in the magic hour. I couldn’t, so maybe blame my dislike on my own inadequacies.
Level 16, d. Danizhka Esterhazy
A YA dystopian film made on a budget of seemingly cereal box tabs and a friendship. Esterhazy still manages a consistent, creepy mood and a fine performance from her lead, but the world-building is a bit lacking and the denouement doesn’t exactly hold together.
Donnybrook, d. Tim Sutton
The story of a bunch of poor folk trying to survive while making their way to a secret fighting tournament is too depressing for its own good. Frank Grillo gives a strong performance as a veritable angel of death, but the film just wallows in it’s own grimness. Maybe it’s a reflection of how shitty our times are, but I was expecting fisticuffs and all I got was a reminder of how shitty the world we live in is. Too sad Tim Sutton, too sad.
— JUST BAD —
The Wind, d. Emma Tammi
It’s like The Witch but on the plains of frontier America. It starts atmospherically creepy, but when the sheen of that wears off, all that’s left is boredom.
Ladyworld, d. Amanda Kramer
Lord of the Flies but set in a buried McMansion in the wake of an all-lady slumber party. I couldn’t discern what the point of this movie was exactly, but seemingly if you put a bunch of teenage girls in a house, they’ll put on make-up, argue, eat cake, and then cry a lot. Which, unsurprisingly, isn’t my cup of tea for a post-disaster community and/or two hours of my life.
Between Worlds, d. Maria Pulera
Outside of the fact that Nicolas Cage utters the line “Why don’t you try wrasslin’ a man-gator?” and the fact that the story revolves around Nic Cage trying to ward off the sexual advances of his new girlfriend’s daughter who’s been possessed by the spirit of his dead wife, this is handily one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. There is nothing else to say.
