Fantasia, everyone’s favourite 3 weeks long bacchanal of genre cinema, stands at something of a crossroads. After having weathered the storms of a global pandemic and a few changes of venues over its steady rise to becoming the premier genre festival in North America, it seems the fest’s programing identity is also undergoing a mutation. The fest originally made its bones out of low-rent underground cinema and the impossible to see movies of the far east, building its geeky credentials over the 90s by introducing strong, previously unknown new voices and unearthing forgotten gems from the trash heap of cinema history. But Fantasia now exists in a landscape where genre cinema dominates. Multiplex fodder is spandex and nostalgic IP as far as the eye can see, and even arthouse fare more and more seems to lean towards horror and fantasy leading to terms like ‘elevated horror’ entering the critical lexicon and endless creature features with questionable central metaphors flooding festivals. This text is not here to suss out whether this is an entirely cynical development or an earnest return towards more fantastical forms of storytelling in the face of a world becoming more incomprehensible each and everyday. No, this is a festival report on an edition where the program forces us to question Fantasia’s uncertain place in this ecosystem. Will it remain the incredibly successful underdog ushering strange mishappen little movies in front of roomfuls of cinephiles, or will it take a victory lap alongside Hollywood royalty and genre heavy hitters. This year’s edition gives us some clues. For one thing, they’ve slashed the Camera Lucida section in half (it has since been completely scrapped), somewhat made up by the addition of the new Fantasia Underground section. For a festival known for having maintained a good number of its core programming group over the years, this sends something of a signal. And for someone who tends to dwell on the Asia side of the Fantasia spectrum, one could sense a shift with a noticeable lack of small Korean indie dramas, always a sure highlight, being the most glaring example. What this ultimately portends is unclear, but Fantasia will have to ask itself if it wants to remain a window into the deep strange world of genre and the underground or if it prefers to become the first marketing step to a Shudder release.

Fantasia’s need to redefine its relationship to genre cinema is perhaps best exemplified by a series of film that seem to be treating genre elements as almost a marketing gimmick, a necessary evil to receive any kind of distribution in a crowded market. For example, Raging Grace (Paris Zarcilla) could have been a riveting look at the life of a migrant Filipina woman and her daughter navigating Great Britain’s thinly veiled neo-imperialism. Its early sections are interesting, aligning the film with Britain’s storied history of social-realist dramas as we follow the pair trying to find a place to stay in a dreary London. The gradual introduction of fantastical elements through a sinister old colonialist at first adds an interesting wrinkle to the proceedings, but the fact is that the film is simply not really scary and quickly loses the plot of its central metaphor. This ultimately leads to a jumbled ending that wipes away any trace of the justified anger that propelled its early sections leaving only a vaguely consensual and toothless betrayal of any political point the film tried to bring forward.

More recognizably a horror film was It Lives Inside (Bishal Dutta), about an Indian-American high schooler followed by a curse that seems insidiously tied to her Indian heritage. In between frights the film tackles issues of cultural and racial identity especially in the Indian diaspora, of assimilation and the bonds that make up a family. With strong, shadowy visuals and some clever set pieces, the film is hampered by a somewhat conventional curse narrative that rarely rises above what we’ve come to expect from the genre. Horror fiends won’t be surprised by this one, but its focus on Indian horror tropes and mythology does make it stand out if only superficially.

The actual A24 product to premiere at the fest, Talk To Me (Danny and Michael Philippou), was the one to nail the horror aspect most convincingly. With tight camerawork and editing coupled with a story that treats its characters as more than stereotypes while keeping things chugging along at an appreciable pace, this is one film I can unequivocally recommend to horror fans. It delivers punchy scares reminiscent of the work of Ari Aster, with a more Gen-Z bent in its themes and overall aesthetic.

Of course, there are the macro stories of funding and programming teams dictating the direction and arc of the event. But a festival is also made up of micro stories, of connections coming to light in the darkness of the theater, of movies whispering to one another across Maisonneuve street making each festivalgoer’s experience both a communal and deeply personal one. Amid the thicket of movies that made up the program, here are some that forced their way out, either as singular effusions or gaining meaning in relation to other like-minded features.

A trio of Japanese films explored the thorny subject of self-hatred in three distinctly different  ways, in the process highlighting the breadth of work still emanating from the archipelago. The more lo-fi and direct of the three, People Who Talk to Plushies are Kind (Yurina Kaneko), is also unsurprisingly the most independent and low budget. Following a painfully shy college student who joins a plushie club that acts more as a safe space for a group of maladjusted weirdos, the film is calm and soothing, taking its time to unfold its low-stakes intensely personal drama, like someone whispering to you that everything is going to be alright. In that sense, the film is something of a warm blanket, slow and quiet but willing to go to some darker places especially when digging into its characters’ backstories. The film has a pleasant analog quality with a delicate use of light that’s enhanced by its soothing sound design highlighting its artisanal qualities both in and outside of the story.

Occupying the middle tier is Insomniacs After School (Chihiro Ikeda), a manga adaptation from Chihiro Ikeda, about two lost souls bonding over their shared inability to sleep and creating their own school club. The film has a more sunny disposition than Plushies, but is still willing to wade into the darker corners of its characters inner worlds, digging into trauma and resentment while keeping things nicely PG rated. A sweet coming of age story with relatable characters and an endearing message, the film scores many points with its central duo of young actors who bring charm and heft to their outcast characters.

On the higher budgeted end we find As Long as we Both Shall Live (Ayuko Tsukuhara), also a manga adaptation, which ratchets up the melodramatics as well as the CGI in its Cinderella-like story of a mistreated girl finding love and companionship when she becomes the promised bride of a mysterious and prickly military officer. There are also wild haircuts, magic spells flying about, secret societies and long-buried secrets. The genre theatrics are standard fare if more geared towards female viewers than the usual Shonen manga more visible in the West, what with its long-haired prince charming saving the day again and again. The film really sings in its rom-com elements playing on the main couple’s inherent shyness to great effect. It also genuinely respects its main character and her trauma not shying away from her darker thoughts and feelings of inadequacy. If one looks past its more ridiculous elements (no doubt a selling point for many I’m sure), you’ll find a genuinely sweet movie about two broken souls respectfully and calmly finding one another.

Manga adaptations had a hot hand this year. Perhaps the most fun I had this year was at The First Slam Dunk (Takehiko Inoue), an adaptation of the last match of mega-hit 90s manga series Slam Dunk, which refocuses much of the drama to a side character, providing an emotional backstory for the diminutive point guard Ryota Miyagi. This is pure popcorn filmmaking, a genuine non-stop crowd pleaser with buzzer beaters and tear-jerking flashbacks galore and in high contention for best basketball movie of all time. The original manga was already a masterclass in how to visually present the sport, the author Takehiko Inoue, here adapting his own series, masterfully directing the eye across the page from panel to panel. Adapting his work 20 years later, he’s now able to directly control the rhythm of the action, perfectly pacing the match along narrative and emotional arcs with the sure hand of a master at work. And the public went wild for it, cheering for every point, holding their breath at tense shots as if Concordia’s Hall building had become the stage of the NBA final. Even knowing the outcome, it had me on the edge of my seat cheering at every point.

The very cute River was a definite highlight finding a sweet emotional story within its time travel shenanigans like only Junta Yamaguchi of Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes fame could do. In it, workers and residents of a traditional Kyoto hotel are stuck within a 2-minute time loop and have to resort to their own wits to find a way out. The film wastes no time setting up its premise, presenting its characters, among them our plucky protagonist Mikoto, and going through the many humorous, sad, joyful permutations an endlessly repeating two minutes can bring. The film oozes charm, bringing together Japan’s unfailing hospitality with wacky circumstances and a gentle approach to its sci-fi elements, always prioritising its characters and their feelings. Most indicative of this mastery of tone is a loop that turns into an impromptu date, giving us perhaps the sweetest moment of the fest.

One of the finest films of the fest was the offbeat Chinese mockumentary Journey to the West (Dashan Kong), a poignantly funny tale of an old man searching for extraterrestrial life that operates some real miracles with its unassuming, gregarious tone. The film is funny and touching, gesturing at some real questions with a grace that is rare to see, building a strong ensemble of characters that are both funny and memorable. A marvel of empathy, it reminds us that sometimes the greatest gifts come in the most modest of packages.

On the action front, the absolute standout was Mayhem (Xavier Gens) a down and dirty Muay Thai inflected revenge story with crunchy hits and bloody unrelenting editing. This is no holds-barred action filmmaking with broken bones and blood flying that manages to maintain its frenetic pace all the way to the end. With a dynamic and physical performance from martial artist Nassim Lyes, the film’s back to basics plot gains a totemic force carrying the entire film from brawl to brawl. The elevator fight alone makes this a must-watch for action fans.

Otherwise, it was a pretty average year for action with big budget Korean fare like Phantom (spends too much time on its cat and mouse set-up before the real fireworks start happening) from Lee Hae-Yeong or Ransomed (competent if overlong and with distracting CGI) from Kim Seong-hoon failing to leave a lasting impression. Also emblematic of this was a trio of sequels that mostly kept to what their series did best as in the third Roundup film Roundup: No Way Out (Lee Sang-yong) which returned to a more comedic feel for the series after a darker detour to Vietnam in the last instalment. Here we are firmly back in Korea with Don Lee as gruff, indestructible supercop fighting against a rogue group of police officers, doing what he does best, breaking things and intimidating criminals in humorous ways. This is very much a case of if it ain’t broke don’t fix it with Don Lee’s physicality and mean mugging doing much of the heavy lifting. There are still openings for new ideas like a sequence involving a samurai sword, but if you’re not already a fan of the series, this is not the one to convince you.

Same deal with Baby Assassins 2 Babies (Yugo Sakamoto) which gives us more slacker humour and offbeat fight choreography in a second part that keeps things lovably ramshackle for our duo of broke contract killers. This is action cinema as hang-out slacker comedy, a surprisingly winning combination, if not a surprising one in this second iteration. It’s hard to complain about lack of originality for a film that seems so lovably tossed-off, like a relaxed riff on a familiar motif by incredibly talented people that still finds a way to smuggle in a few standout fights.

Perhaps typical for Hong Kong, The White Storm 3: Heaven or Hell (Herman Yau) was the most different from its predecessors moving the action to Thailand and with all new players. Apart from an early shoutout, this is more of a war film with big explosions and practical effects than the typical urban crime thriller. But it does harken back to the good old days with its games of double agents and themes of brotherly love and betrayal punctuating a competent action flick brought down by its ugly washed-out digital cinematography. Since about the 80s every Hong Kong film functions as some sort of commentary on the state of Hong Kong and by extension its film industry, here the general age of its main cast, their physical and psychological weariness both acted and felt is somewhat bittersweet. Has Hong Kong cinema ever looked this old?

Bringing back some of that old Hong Kong zaniness was Mad Fate from Seoi Chang, the story of  the fated collision between a psychopathic teen destined to kill, a crazed fortune teller and a methodical serial killer. Chang plays around with big ideas like fate and free will, deftly switching between dead seriousness and slapstick comedy at the drop of a hat. He is followed by a game cast and balletic camerawork bringing the uncertain absurdity of destiny into the film’s mise-en-scene, always hovering above a chasm of pure chaos only to bring us back to moments of blissful, orderly beauty. There is a productive tension between chaos and design, like the film could go off-the-rails at any point, lending a palpable frisson to the proceedings and cleverly turning the whole film into an enactment of its themes. This is whiplash inducing filmmaking like only Hong Kong can make it, zeroing in on the schizophrenic identity and the lack of control over their fate felt by many of its inhabitants.

Of course the film had stiff competition from some Hong Kong classics which reminded us why for a couple of shining decades it was one of the most innovative and purely fun national cinema out there. In 35mm, we had the pleasure to get reacquainted with the bonkers A Chinese Ghost Story (Ching Siu-Tung), a film that throws everything at the screen and somehow sticks the landing, managing to be a deeply romantic ghost story full of gravity defying action set pieces and gross-out juvenile humour. Any single frame is a work of art and endless imagination. The film would be disorienting if it stopped to look back, but it fully commits to every single idea it has bringing us along for the wild ride.

We also got to see a restored version of Patrick Tam’s Heroic bloodshed classic My Heart is That Eternal Rose a synth heavy crime film full of aching and brotherhood where neon and blood mingle freely. The film occupies the middle ground between Wong Kar-Wai and John Woo, and I honestly don’t know what more I can say to convince you to watch this movie.

nd a few more words on the retrospectives that punctuated the schedule. We were treated to some gothic horror gems from Slovak iconoclast Juraj Herz, probably most well-known now for the macabre The Cremator. Across the films shown  which included the tale of a vampire car, one could delight in stunning cinematography and set design united by a mitteleuropa sense of the macabre and a devious willingness to explore the more ridiculous and melodramatic aspects of its stories, always with a winning, winking charm. The restauration work did an admirable job of bringing the peculiar faded colours of the films’ soviet celluloid, especially in Morgiana and its purplish late autumn splendour.

And if modern Korean cinema failed to really leave a mark at the fest, a welcomed retrospective reminded us of the breadth and depth of a national cinema that stretches back farther than 2004, even if an Oldboy (Park Chan-Wook) restauration was a great way to send off the festival. Among a slew of classics, let’s single out the working class drama Chilsu and Mansu (Park Kwang-su) for its laid-back rhythm, observational charm and mounting political anger in its story of two sign-painters of different generations both being ground-up by South Korea’s hyper capitalist society. On the other side of the spectrum was Take Care of My Cat (Jeong Jae-eun), a movie that shines in its simplicity and lack of conflict, following a group of friends slowly drifting apart as they pass from adolescence to adulthood told with rare care and consideration. For a national cinema that is often stereotyped as being brash and violent, this was a nice little surprise and the ideal reminder of another side of the Korean industry that was strangely absent otherwise.

Let’s end on one of the stranger films of the fest; Hideaki Anno’s love letter to the Kamen Rider franchise Shin Kamen Rider. Less a reimagining than a frenzied re-enactment of the first season of the venerable Tokusatsu franchise, it uses modern filmmaking techniques not to update a classic to today’s taste, but instead to fully embrace its 70s cheesiness and try to get at the emotional truth of the work. In that sense, the film can feel overstuffed, cramming a season’s worth of intrigue and monsters of the week into a 2-hour package. The concept remains interesting however, a creator revisiting a formative childhood obsession and treating it as seriously and with as much respect as humanly possible even at the risk of seeming anachronistic or ridiculous, digging up the optimism, but also the ambivalence and hurt of a particular time through a piece of children’s media that became emblematic of a period when Japan was becoming ascendant economically and coming out of a raucously political decade.

All in all, this was more of a mixed-bag of a year with many films coasting on being simply fine, but as always there were still a number of interesting and outstanding works on offer. If this year exposed some of the philosophical fault lines at work behind the scenes and pointed towards an uncertain future for the festival, I know that as long as Fantasia remains a place where you can watch a touching exploration of humanity’s quest for meaning in the universe and wash it down with some high-octane anime b-ball, I’ll keep showing up.

Volume 28, Issue 6 / June 2024 Festival Reports   anime   japanese cinema   korean cinema   manga   the fantasia international film festival