Fantastic Fest Archives -

THE WILD ROBOT MOVIE REVIEW Dreamworks Animation is here with another big prestige project, The Wild Robot. With Chris Sanders at the helm, who directed Lilo & Stitch, How To Train Your Dragon, and The Croods, you can be reasonably sure it’s going to be a good one. And lo, it delivers. The story takes […]

HEAVIER TRIP MOVIE REVIEW One of the low-key hits of 2018 among folks who actually go to see bizarro foreign films at movie fests was Heavy Trip. The story followed the four members of the metal band Impaled Rektum and their insane misadventures. Basically, Wayne’s World in Europe but with a more surreal and very […]

SATURDAY NIGHT MOVIE REVIEW The story of Saturday Night Live’s beginnings is one of a show hindered by chaotic creatives, unconvinced executives, drugs, sex, and one very beleaguered but determined showrunner. Director Jason Reitman brings us the story of the 90 minutes before SNL went live for the first time and how close it came […]

ANORA MOVIE REVIEW Writer/director Sean Baker hits Fantastic Fest with the Palme d’Or winner at Cannes this year, Anora. Ani (Mikey Madison) is a stripper whose life in New York City is filled with parties, sex, and fun. Because she can speak Russian, her boss connects her with a young Russian son of an oligarch […]

TERRIFIER 3 MOVIE REVIEW One of the best things about Fantastic Fest is how there’s something very nichey for every taste. And if your taste runs to unbelievably explicit gore and goofy clown killers, then you already know all about director/writer Damien Leone’s Terrifier series. The third entry dips into the beloved subgenre of Xmas […]

THE RULE OF JENNY PEN MOVIE REVIEW John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush play two men in a nursing home who go to war with each other. That’s certainly enough of a selling point alone for the Fantastic Fest film, The Rule of Jenny Pen. But the film we saw wasn’t exactly what we expected. Rush […]

Párvulos Movie Review Mexican director Isaac Ezban returns to Fantastic Fest this year with his new post-zombie-apocalypse film Párvulos. The story centers around a house in the middle of nowhere where a teen boy and his two much younger brothers eke out a scant survival. Both parents are gone, ostensibly dead but it appears as […]

WHAT HAPPENED TO DOROTHY BELL? MOVIE REVIEW Found footage horror isn’t always everyone’s favorite, but if it’s playing at Fantastic Fest, it generally is better than most. Such is the case for What Happened to Dorothy Bell? written and directed by Danny Villanueva Jr. The film follows Ozzie (Asya Meadows) who has lost much of […]

BOOKWORM MOVIE REVIEW You just can’t keep Elijah Wood away from New Zealand. And who can blame him? It’s goddamn gorgeous. He gets to revisit the scenic countryside in his second collaboration with director Ant Timpson, Bookworm. The tale starts with Mildred (Nell Fisher) and her mom who don’t get along well. Mildred lives a […]

U ARE THE UNIVERSE MOVIE REVIEW What would you do if you were an astronaut on a deep space mission and discovered the Earth had blown up? If you were Ukrainian space trucker Andriy, then probably not much different. You’d continue to tolerate terrible dad jokes from your onboard robot trying to cheer you up, […]

WHEN EVIL LURKS MOVIE REVIEW Two brothers Pedro and Jimmy live out in the countryside, scattered among a few other poor residents. But everyone is always somewhat on edge, waiting…for what? As it turns out, many years before there was a epidemic of demonic possessions in the cities (possibly tying this film into director Demian […]

RIDDLE OF FIRE MOVIE REVIEW Three children are on a quest to solve the titular Riddle of Fire (actually just the password to their tv so they can play games on their pilfered hi-tech video game console). But one quest leads to the next, to the next, and really all they need is a specific […]

RESTORE POINT MOVIE REVIEW In Prague in the year 2041, new tech allows people to upload their consciousness at regular intervals so in case they are killed, they can be resurrected with their memories up to that point intact. The catch is, if you don’t back up within 48 hours, you can’t legally be brought […]

THE CREATOR MOVIE REVIEW From the director of Godzilla and Rogue One comes this new sci-fi film NOT based on a previous IP (at least not overtly), The Creator. In the future, the humanoid robots humanity have built have achieved total sentience, despite most of the world’s reluctance to accept their ‘humanity’. After a nuclear […]

KILL MOVIE REVIEW While there’s always lots of great action movies at Fantastic Fest, it’s not very often that one comes along that instantly soars to the category of ‘all timer’. The Indian action film Kill is one of those movies. The film follows two army commandos, Amrit (Lakshya) and his friend Viresh, who have […]

INFESTATION: FANTASTIC FEST 2023 – MARTIN THOMAS REVIEWS We pulled in our old friend and Chris’s old co-worker from Spill dot com, Martin Thomas, to give his perspective on this year’s Fantastic Fest, his first in a decade. Martin, Chris, and Wright talk about the films The Origin, Strange Darling, Cobweb, River, Fishmonger, The Last […]

SPOOKTACULAR! MOVIE REVIEW This new documentary Spooktacular! is perfect for Fantastic Fest as it concerns the rise and fall of the first Horror Theme Park (which is a bit of a semantic stretch, but ok). Spooky World started as just a haunted hayride that was putting in considerably more effort than most, and ended up […]

THE ALTMAN METHOD MOVIE REVIEW Noa and Uri are a married couple living in Israel and things are starting to get tough. It looks like Uri is going to have to shut down his martial arts school as the students have stopped signing up and Noa isn’t getting the acting parts she used to. When […]

THE UNCLE MOVIE REVIEW It’s the 1980s in Yugoslavia and for this father, mother, and teenage(?) boy, Christmas day is very important. It’s when their Uncle comes to visit and spend the holiday with them. A big turkey dinner, presents, dancing, and singing will follow. So why does it all seem to hollow and forced? […]

WHAT YOU WISH FOR MOVIE REVIEW It’s rare a Fantastic Fest goes by that we don’t get some extreme film that has food at the center of it. This year that award goes to What You Wish For. Nick Stahl plays Ryan, a talented chef but one with such a bad gambling problem that he’s […]

THE ORIGIN MOVIE REVIEW Horror directors are always in search of a new twist on the genre and it’s gotten to the point that we’ve come down to animatronic characters coming to life and angry sorority sloths as the offerings this year. But Fantastic Fest presents a new way of delivering the thrills with a […]

SLEEP MOVIE REVIEW While Wright and Chris could certainly use some sleep at this point of Fantastic Fest, this review is about a new Korean movie with that title. Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun previously in Parasite) has been sleepwalking and talking of late. This does not exactly excite his wife, new mother Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi previously […]

VISITORS (COMPLETE EDITION) MOVIE REVIEW Expanded from director Ken’ichi Ugana’s short, Visitors is the sort of crazed affair that some folks come to Fantastic Fest specifically for: wacky Japanese surreal comedy mixed with genre. In this case, picture Raimi’s original Evil Dead only as this type of madness. The story, such as it is, follows […]

INFESTATION: FANTASTIC FEST 2023 – THE LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY Somewhere in between Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah seems to lie the director’s ambition for this new film The Last Stop in Yuma County. Featuring a veritable who’s who of actors who you’ve seen in many films but go, ‘yeah, who IS that?’ At […]

INFESTATION: FANTASTIC FEST 2023 – ONE-PERCENTER Fantastic Fest has become known not only for weird and disturbing films, completely surreal foreign comedies, and insane horror, but for some of the most over-the-top great action as well. One-Percenter is one of this year’s entries in the latter category and it sure doesn’t hurt when Tak Sakaguchi […]