Fantasia International Film Festival returns for its 28th edition from 18th July to 4th August 2024. The event will play host to an overflowing abundance of new and exciting genre films, with it set to screen over 125 features and more than 200 short films. With so many movies to choose from, it can be hard to know where to start when it comes to picking what to watch. Fear not though, we at THN have created a small selection of titles that we whole-heartedly endorse.
We’ve trawled our way through the massive list of titles, and have found several that have caught our eye. Each of our picks have one thing in common: they are all new projects from filmmakers whose previous work has impressed us. Read on to find out which films you should put on your watch list.
Bookworm
In 2019, Ant Timpson’s Come to Daddy took the festival circuit by storm. The quirky crime thriller comedy, starring Elijah Wood, was a ton of fun. Now Timpson returns to Fantasia with Bookworm, which also happens to be the opening film for this year’s event. Billed as a much more family-friendly affair, Bookworm sees Timpson reunite with Wood for a whimsical tale of father and daughter bonding. Whilst the poo pen might be holstered this time around, we are certain that Bookworm is going to be a hoot.
Eleven-year-old Mildred (Nell Fisher) is a super-precocious bookworm, wise beyond her years, with no patience for slackers or the generally uninformed. Despite living in stunning New Zealand, she’s being driven mad by a mundane existence, taking refuge in cherished novels where adventures live without limit. A sudden family crisis rattles Mildred’s world, causing her absentee father, Strawn Wise (Elijah Wood), a washed-up American illusionist, to fly into New Zealand in an attempt to be… helpful? Or even the slightest bit present. You see, Strawn has been an absentee father in the most absolute sense, in that he and Mildred have never once met. Now, he’s there, much to his daughter’s unimpressed annoyance. As a bid at bonding, Strawn agrees to take Mildred out into the New Zealand wilderness for a camping adventure in search of a mythological beast that’s long held her fascination: The Canterbury Panther. A string of increasingly absurd and treacherous adventures unfold. Bonding isn’t always easy!
Oddity
Damian Mc Carthy’s Caveat is one of the most terrifying feature debuts in recent history. Having screened at several festivals, word of mouth about the film built up, and when it eventually landed on Shudder it was responsible for many a sleepless night. Now comes Mc Carthy’s follow-up, Oddity. Although an entirely different story, the dread-soaked atmosphere and creepy architecture that have become Mc Carthy’s calling card remain. There might even be another glimpse of that horrifying rabbit toy from Caveat. Spotting it will require keeping your eyes both peeled and open, a feat that might be harder than it sounds as Oddity’s scare factor is especially malicious.
Darcy (Carolyn Bracken) is a blind medium blessed with genuine occult abilities. She runs an antique shop, secretly collecting haunted and cursed items. Through a chance encounter, Darcy begins to decipher terrible secrets about her twin sister’s unsolved murder. A murder once presumed to have been perpetrated by a patient from a nearby mental-health institution, who was soon afterwards himself found dead, his head crushed to pieces with only a glass eye remaining unscathed. With the otherworldly help of a nightmarish wooden mannequin, Darcy embarks on a fact-finding mission of supernatural retribution, opening doorways into pure horror.
Frankie Freako!
Psycho Goreman is one of our personal favourite films of the last few years and so we are itching to see what director Steven Kostanski has cooked up this time. Frankie Freako! is the latest title from the FX artist turned director, and if it is even a tenth of the insanity of the hunky boys loving Psycho Goreman, Fantasia is in for an epically entertaining time.
Conor (Conor Sweeney) is a square. He doesn’t swear, thinks holding hands with his gorgeous wife Kristina (Kristy Wordsworth) is a wild night, and goes to bed well before 9pm. When his slimy boss, Mr. Buechler (Adam Brooks) and Kristina call him out on his squareness, Conor is deeply offended. Determined to prove them wrong, he’s lured by a 1-900 ad promising the party of a lifetime with a creature named Frankie Freako. Calling the hotline opens a world of chaos, and Frankie, joined by two other “Freako” friends, trash his house. Who are these little monsters, and why have they decided to torment him endlessly? Conor must get rid of them before his wife returns from a weekend trip, plus appease the creepy Buechler. These interdimensional beings are more than pesky, bringing their troubles and interplanetary terrors right to Conor’s door!
Timestalker
Alice Lowe is an incredible woman. Not only is she an amazing actress, but she also wrote, directed, and starred in her directorial debut, Prevenge, when she was heavily pregnant. The film was a wickedly dark comedy that saw an expectant mother spurred on to avenge her dead lover by her unborn child. Since then everyone has been waiting to see what Lowe would birth next, and Timestalker sounds absolutely delightful.
We first meet Agnes (Alice Lowe) in 1688 Scotland, attending a village-square execution. In a soul-altering instant, she locks eyes with the condemned (Aneurin Barnard). Agnes can sense that she’s encountered the man she’s destined to be with, rushes towards him and dies quite spectacularly in the process. In her last breaths, she vows to find him in her next life. Over a century later, Agnes has been reincarnated and is now a 1793 English noblewoman, soon to come across the reincarnation of her past life’s love. Things… could go better. And again, she dies. Next, 1847, third verse, no different from the first. The cycle continues. Can Agnes ever move on from the presumed love of her lives?
Wake Up
The directing trio better known as RKSS have been beloved by the Fantasia audiences for years. This love was cemented with the low-fi sci-fi spectacle that is Turbo Kid, but deepened with the more sombre Summer of ‘84. For this year’s festival the threesome are presenting Wake Up, a film that places a slasher within the confines of a furniture store and deals with some very timely environmental and political issues.
After recording a cell-phone-camera message warning, “The world is changing,” a group of young people enter the expansive House Idea store, hiding until it closes for the night. Their goal is to use spray paint and butcher-shop blood to vandalize the place as a protest against its exploitation of the Amazon rainforest’s flora and fauna. The minimal security doesn’t concern them—but they don’t know that Kevin (Turlough Convery) is on duty. He’s a mountain of a man with a fragile, dangerous mental state whose hobby of choice is “primitive hunting.” Once he gets wind of the intruders on his turf, these environmental activists find themselves becoming an endangered species.
Hell Hole
Having screened a film at the festival every year for the last four, it really wouldn’t be Fantasia without something from The Adams Family. The wickedly talented team have already wowed audiences with The Deeper You Dig, Hellbender, and Where the Devil Roams. This year audiences get not one, but two offerings from Toby Poser and John Adams. First up is a brand new short called Plastic Smile, which follows young girl Abigail and her relationship with her porcelain doll, Betsy. Directed by the Adams family, Plastic Smile has been produced as part of the new Screambox Original series: Tales from the Void, a horror anthology based on the most viral and haunting stories from r/NoSleep. Then comes the latest feature from the pair, Hell Hole.
Far away, in the desolate Serbian wilderness, a U.S.-led fracking crew uncover a dormant monster gestating inside a centuries-old French soldier. Now awakened and exposed in its most dangerously fragile state, it tears through the men on the grounds in search of a new womb.
Fantasia runs from 18th July to 4th August, tickets are on-sale now.
