FANTASIA 2021: It’s finally here - My top picks!

One of my very favorite times of the year is the month of August, when the good folks at Fantasia in Toronto put on one of the best genre festivals in the world. There's always a little something for everyone, and for the past four I've made some wonderful discoveries, from horror to drama and all in between. This year's Fantasia Film Festival in Toronto, Canada -- celebrating it's 25th year! -- runs from Aug 5th - 25th in a hybrid in-person and virtual festival presentation. Per usual, the line-up is eclectic and varied -- and began Aug 4th with a special presentation of James Gunn's blockbuster DC Comics spectacle, The Suicide Squad (in theaters and on HBO Max now), and then formally with Julien Knafo's fun looking, Quebec zom-com Brain Freeze on the 5th!

I'll get a few things of note out of the way that I'll likely have no chance of seeing by covering the fest remotely. It's still early, some of these may end up popping up, who knows!

The one I'm most anxious to see is David Bruckner's supernatural Sundance hit The Night House, starring Rebecca Hall. Bruckner directed one of my favorites in 2017, The Ritual, as well as having a hand in anthologies like The Signal and V/H/S. But the wait isn't too long for that one, as it's in theaters on August 20th from Searchlight Pictures! The directing team behind one of my top 10 horror movies of all time, 2007's Inside (and literally nothing else I've liked since), Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo shows off their second film this year, a deep sea diving, supernatural thriller called The Deep House. I'm sadly unable to see Sion Sono's first English language feature Prisoners of the Ghostland with Nicolas Cage and Bill Mosley, one that I've had three previous opportunities to see a missed out on. And finally, Takashi Miike's long awaited follow up to 2005's The Great Yokai War, subtitled Guardians, closes out the festival this year.

And now, for my top picks this year!

MAD GOD - Visual effects pioneer Phil Tippett (Jurassic Park) has finally completed this passion project of literal decades, a dazzling combination of stop-motion, practical, and CGI animation. It looks bizarre and beautiful and utterly mesmerizing. 

RAGING FIRE - The final film of the late Benny Chan (Who Am I), who passed away during post-production. This action-packed cops vs criminals tale with Donnie Yen opened to a healthy amount in China this past weekend, and is a late-addition to the festival that subsequently knocked down everything a peg on my list. Does it look original in the slightest? Absolutely not! Does it look awesome? Yep!

IDA RED - Director John Swab's follow up to this year's addiction recovery-expose Body Brokers, this crime-drama is anchored by the always great Melissa Leo, joined by Josh Hartnett, Frank Grillo, and William Forsythe. I'm all in for another of Swab's honest, grim angle on crime.

KRATT - An Eastonian fantasy-horror hybrid that sounds straight out of the Amblin playbook and looks straight out of Guillermo Del Toro's mind, in which two children, tired of performing chores for their grandma, create an entity to do their work for them, a Kratt. But things don't quite turn out the way they envisioned it, when the demonic presence they brought about threatens to bring about the end of their village. 

THE SADNESS - A Taiwanese zombie(ish) flick from Giddens Ko (Mon Mon Mon Monsters) which carries a "trigger warning" on Fantasia's page for the film, something I've never seen. By all accounts based on the handful of screenshots and everything I've read, this is a truly wild, unfiltered horror film that defies expectations, and the less said or seen beforehand, the better off you'll be. 

VOICE OF SILENCE - First time director Hong Eui-jeong looks to deliver a deftly plotted and utterly gorgeous, Korean thriller about two crime scene cleaners for the mob who end up stumbling into a kidnapping, only to discover that it's somehow tied to their new employer. It sounds like a Coen brothers movie, but looks like solid, South Korean crime cinema fare.

 

ULTRASOUND - Another one that I unfortunately missed seeing recently for another festival, and I keep reading great things - and lots of "go in blind" recommendations - about Rob Schroeder's endlessly twisty directorial debut. I don't plan to miss it again.

There are also a handful of features I caught at previous fests which I would highly recommend, the best of which is a blood-soaked horror film made entirely with puppets, Jesse Blanchard's Frank and Zed, which I absolutely adored last year. Coming Home in the Dark is a harrowing, complex, suspenseful thriller from New Zealand from James Ashcroft that will certainly divide audiences, but will also get them talking. Alien On Stage is the best feel-good documentary this year about an amateur, low-budget, stage play performance of 1979's Alien that left me alternately smiling and laughing constantly. And The Spine of Night didn't do it for me (at all) as a film, but it's kind of still a must-see for the stellar rotoscoped animation and jaw dropping level of violence.

Reviews and more for Fantasia Film Festival 2021 to come over the next few weeks! Stay tuned.