In Review: Fantastic Fest 2019 (Noah)
It’s been a week since I crowbarred my ass out of an Alamo Drafthouse seat, thirty-two pounds of fries and Lone Star slowly digesting in my gut and headed home to the City By The Bay. I packed in 25 movies across four and a half days at my second year of Fantastic Fest, and though the mild brain damage is probably irreversible, I saw some truly great films, a solid number of perfectly okay ones, and one so disturbing its greasy fingerprints never truly left me.
In all honesty, year two was more consistently enjoyable than year one with less outright duds, but (and this most certainly speaks for the lack of flat-out bombs) a smaller sense of outright cinematic experimental adventure. Bigger budgets, bigger stars and bigger distributors brought some blockbuster quality flicks to the Alamo, but I wouldn’t be speaking truthfully if I didn’t say the avant-garde, flat-out weirdness on display in my first year wasn’t missed.
Regardless, too many films were watched, many brain cells were destroyed, and I came out with a list of the best and the rest.
The Best (from 10 to 1):
10. The Lodge, d. Severin Fiala/Veronika Franz
As soon as The Lodge starts, you’re just waiting for everything to go terribly wrong for every character on screen. It’s a bleak and remarkably creepy spin on the cult genre, with Riley Keogh giving a strong performance as a woman trapped in a snowbound lodge with her soon-to-be step kids. It’s a well made film that never lets up on the doom and gloom. A true product of the current obsession with the dark and darker genre of modern horror.
9. Night Has Come, d. Peter Van Goethem
In the midst of mainlining two-hour movies full of gore and shocks and general depravity, a truly artistic, 57-minute film that uses found footage from WWII to tell a story of modern dystopia is downright refreshing. Van Goethem’s eerie collection of vintage clips paired with the thrumming baritone voice over of an unseen narrator is a fever dream, a purgatory of images trapped between today and yesteryear.
8. Come To Daddy, d. Ant Timpson
Timpson’s debut feature feels like an early Coen Brothers’ film jacked up on crystal meth. A brooding hipster (Elijah Wood) gets a cryptic message from his estranged father (Stephen McHattie), prompting a visit to a deeply out of the way coastal retreat. From there, things go, in no way, how you would expect them to go. Timpson has a crafted a twisted look at what familial reconciliation looks like via an exposed brain, a secret cellar, and whole lot of bloodshed.
7. The Pool, d. Ping Lumpraploeng
A set dresser on a perfume commercial gets trapped in an empty pool with a crocodile. This was the so-dumb-it’s-amazing crowd-pleaser of the fest, and though I sometimes waver on dumb over good – The Pool’s unceasing torture of its main character and his increasingly frantic response is truly enjoyable. Have a few beers first, it’ll be even better.
6. Sweetheart, d. J.D. Dillard
Sweetheart is a bullet of a film with a hard charging, surprisingly simple narrative and a fantastic internal performance by Kiersey Clemons. A woman washes up on the shore of a tropical island and has to survive both solitude and a sea monster. Dillard gets big points for dedicating himself to a simple, well-executed premise (as he said in the pre-interview, “Sometimes you just want to see black people kill monsters”). The monster is creepy, Clemons character is a smart, capable adversary and even though Dillard almost upturns the apple cart with a decision in the third act that over-complicates, well, everything – it’s a strong creature feature.
5. The Platform, d. Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Fantastic Fest is full of high-concept science-fiction that tends to feel more like an overwrought episode of Black Mirror. The Platform is absolutely not one of them. A man (Emilio Buale) wakes up in a vertical prison where a platform of food starts at Level 1 and slowly descends, each floor eating only what the prior leaves them. This reflection on food scarcity and class division manages the rare combination of well-made entertainment and purpose-driven cinema. Gaztelu-Urrutia extrapolates the idea at the center of the film to its farthest reaches, sating the exploratory want of the viewer while managing to put enough off-screen to leave us wanting more.
4. Sea Fever, d. Neasa Hardiman
I was shocked to learn that Sea Fever is Hardiman’s first film. A group of fishermen/women make contact with a mutant sea creature and everything goes very badly. Hardiman injects what could be a braindead-creature feature with smart, well-written characters who make realistic decisions based on their own circumstances. And she does it all without sacrificing the gross-out moments and creeptastic monsters inherent to the genre.
3. Swallow, d. Carlo Mirabella-Davis
Haley Bennett – in a career-defining performance – is a fragile woman, stuck in the clutches of a horribly controlling, ultra-wealthy family. When it becomes too much, well, she starts to swallow household objects. There’s a ten minute sequence in the film where Bennett’s Hunter joyously swallows, shits out and washes everything from a jack to a battery that ranks as my favorite of the fest. But the film places gross out on the periphery, instead focusing on what we do to take control of our situation in the micro and the macro. Mirabella-Davis starts a film claustrophobically small, artfully exposing the larger nature of Hunter’s issues as the film quietly advances. Absolutely the surprise of the event for me.
2. The Death of Dick Long, d. Daniel Scheinert
It’s like low-budget, Southern-fried Coen Brothers, Blood Simple with hicks. A trio of dudes get royally fucked up and one of them ends up dead, the other two scrambling to cover it up. Figuring out the secret behind Dick Long’s death is a spiraling, sweat-soaked, paranoia painted mystery that never ceases to be enjoyable. Scheinert (one half of Swiss Army Man’s The Daniels) captures the baked-in weirdness of the Southern character without making fun. You’ll never see a movie that uses Papa Roach and Staind better.
1. JoJo Rabbit, d. Taika Waititi
I have to be honest, it feels fucking predictable to pick Waititi’s “anti-hate satire” as my favorite of the fest. I feel almost like I’m setting myself up for ridicule for actively loving this beautiful film about a kid whose imaginary friend is Hitler. But, guess what? JoJo Rabbit is a fantastic movie, another near perfect notch in Waititi’s belt. A film that manages to showcase the humanity that exists not only in the darkest of times, but in the worst of organizations. The Nazis were the worst, absolutely true, but Waititi manages to find humor and grace and a glimmer of hope for our mindless humanity in a bunch of people discovering who they are and then celebrating it. The best of the festival and handily one of the best of the year.
A Few Thoughts On Everything Else:
First Love, d. Takashi Miike
Miike’s 103rd film is a blast that sticks around too long and never really digs below the surface. It does have the best moment of violence I saw in Austin, a jaw-shattering punch that nearly knocked me off my chair.
The Vast of Night, d. Andrew Patterson
A mildly experimental, 1950s set, small-town UFO flick that I loved when I saw it but enjoyed it less and less the further I got from it. Props to the ballsy camera work though.
Synchronic, d. Andrew Moorhead/Justin Benson
I love Moorhead and Benson (The Endless is a low-budget gem) and Synchronic is a fun flick that takes on too much and can’t fully handle the weight.
Color Out of Space, d. Richard Stanley
The return of Stanley! A batshit crazy performance by Nicolas Cage! EVERYONE AT FANTASTIC FEST MUST LOVE THIS FILLLMMMMMMMM! Stanley gets Lovecraft right (the flowers, the ooze, the appendages, oh my) but never secures any real connection between the family at the heart of it.
Vivarium, d. Lorcan Finnegan
Poots and Eisenberg and a super-high concept get close to being something special, but where it needed to go crazy, it just went … on.
Dolemite Is My Name, d. Craig Brewer
A solid return to form for Eddie Murphy stuck in the bland tropes of a bio-pic.
The Wave, d. Gille Klabin
Justin Long returns in a drug-trip flick that makes a small amount of sense and makes an even smaller amount of impact.
In The Tall Grass, d. Vincenzo Natali
A wet blanket of a film that eschews common sense for a spooky rock and people with grass buttholes for faces. Patrick Wilson is the king of acting nice but actually being a fucking dick.
Koko-di Koko-da, Johannes Nyholm
A deeply fucked up Groundhog’s Day riff with a frightening trio of villains and an ending that makes almost no sense.
The Whistlers, d. Corneliu Porumbolu
A neo-noir with the illusion of an intricate plot that adds up to absolutely nothing. Also, knuckle whistling is a thing.
Deerskin, d. Quentin Dupieux
Another year, another Dupieux film that trades abstract conceptual experimentation for any connection with characters. I mean, I liked this film, but did I get this film? No, no I didn’t.
The Golden Glove, d. Fatih Akin
A very, very well made film about an absolutely disgusting person doing disgusting things to other disgusting people. One of the least enjoyable film viewing experiments of my life. It’s as brutal as everyone is saying. Watch it at your own risk.
In The Shadow of the Moon, d. Jim Mickle
The kind of bloated, should’ve-been-a-television-show Netflix loves to stock the pantry with. Entirely forgettable.
Nobadi, d. Karl Markovics
I slept through most of this one, but John said it featured “the most casual amputation of all time.”
Tammy (Tanny?) and The T-Rex, d. Stewart Raffill
It’s a film about a guy who’s brain gets put in an actual animatronic T-Rex. And then that T-Rex and Denise Richards fall in love. And then Denise Richards dances in lingerie and Paul Walker’s exposed brain has a sparking orgasm. So, yeah, I mean, I didn’t not enjoy it.
