'Fried Barry' (2020) Movie Review

In the end, I’m not entirely sure what to make of South African oddity Fried Barry. Leaping boundaries of horror, science fiction, and gritty realism, among others, it’s certainly a wild, chaotic, immersive ride. And one I’m glad I had the opportunity to watch. I think. It’s the kind of cinematic madness that the Fantasia International Film Festival is tailor made for.

'The Paper Tigers' (2020) Movie Review

I’ve been tracking the progress of writer/director Bao Tran’s The Paper Tigers for a while now. There weirdly aren’t many indie Kung Fu movies produced in Seattle, so when one does happen, you’re damn right it has my attention. After a long journey, the film finally premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival over the weekend, and doesn’t disappoint when it comes to delivering humor, heart, and face-kicking.

'The Dark And The Wicked' (2020) Movie Review

A remote, isolated farm; a dying family patriarch; estranged adult children; a mentally unravelling mother; wolves. The Dark and the Wicked, the new movie from The Strangers director Bryan Bertino, is just one horror story red flag after another. Leaning hard on mood and atmosphere, the result is a creepy, visceral horror tale that sticks around in a deep, hidden place.

Fantasia 2020: 'Dinner In America'

“Fuck the rest of them, fuck ‘em all but us.” So goes the refrain in a song written by Simon (Kyle Gallner, Veronica Mars) and Patty (Emily Skeggs, The Miseducation of Cameron Post). It also forms the general conceit and overall attitude of Adam Rehmeier’s middle-finger-flying, punk-rock-fuck-you of a love story, Dinner in America. Think Repo Man by way of Bonnie and Clyde and that starts to paint the picture.

Fantasia 2020: 'The Mortuary Collection' Movie Review

Writer/director Ryan Spindell’s The Mortuary Collection has the honor of being the third anthology (or at least anthology adjacent) film I’ve watched at this year’s Fantasia Film Festival that places stories and the craft of storytelling front and center in the narrative. (The others being The Oak Room and Undergods.) 

Fantasia 2020: 'Monster SeaFood Wars' Movie Review

Minoru Kawasaki’s Monster SeaFood Wars is a kaiju movie about a giant crab, squid, and octopus rampaging through Tokyo. And it’s as ludicrous and off-the-wall as that sounds. It’s strange and silly and upholds the Japanese dudes-in-rubber-monster-suits-wreaking-havoc tradition. There’s also the added bonus that it may well make you very, very hungry.

'The Dark And The Wicked' Trailer: Supernatural Horror Goes To The Farm

If horror movies have taught us anything, it’s that chopping vegetables never ends well. Case in point, the first trailer for the upcoming The Dark and the Wicked. For that matter, when a rickety old phone rings, also leave it the hell alone. Check out the trailer below.

Fantasia 2020: 'The Oak Room' Movie Review

A guy walks into a bar. Only instead of beginning a joke, he comes with a story, a debt, deep secrets about to bubble to the surface, and even deeper wounds. Such is the set up for director Cody Calahan’s The Oak Room, the latest offering from Canadian filmmaking crew, Black Fawn Films (I’ll Take Your Dead, Bed of the Dead). Their latest is a chilly, noir-inspired tale that watches like Southern Gothic in the Great White North and just held its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Fantasia 2020: 'A Witness Out Of The Blue' Movie Review

Fung Chih-Chiang’s A Witness Out of the Blue has all the earmarks of a classic Hong Kong crime saga. There’s murder, slick production values, a twisting plot, shades of moral ambiguity, standoffs, shootouts, and a parrot. Wait, what? 

Fantasia 2020: 'The Columnist' Movie Review

It doesn’t take much time on social media to realize that the distance and anonymity of various platforms make people way more comfortable to say horrific things than they would in person. The lack of real-world consequences only further emboldens people. (A commenter once told me he hoped my entire family died in a fire in front of me because a YouTube embed of a trailer was geo-locked where he lived. Shit gets wild.) It’s exponentially worse for women on the internet. And bloody, pitch-black Danish satire The Columnist has some thoughts on the matter.

10 Movies To See At The Fantasia Film Festival 2020

With COVID-19 running wild, film festivals as we know them are, maybe not a thing of the past, but quite different. For the time being anyway. (Hopefully only the time being.) Many have been cancelled, but a few intrepid endeavors have chosen to soldier on digitally. That includes one of our favorites, Canada’s Fantasia Film Festival, a repository of cinematic weirdness, filmic mayhem, and genre nonsense of all stripes. And that’s a good thing, a very, very good thing. The 2020 schedule has been taken entirely online.