Fantasia 2023: The Monster Within

Blackout (Larry Fessenden, 2023)

Fantasia started off strong this year for my own personal picks with Larry Fessenden's Wolfman entry Blackout, with Fessenden and plenty of his crew (and some cast but with the SAG strike they kept a low profile) in tow. It is Fessenden's continuation of his revisionist treatments of classic Universal horror, with Habit (vampire), Depraved (Frankenstein) and now the wolfman. Compared to those two this is more conventional but still yields plenty of Fessenden styled differences to the conventional mainstream mold. And his usual liberal take on real life situations. In some respects his is a horror version of John Sayles, whose films are always a blend of strong narrative with an equally strong sense of social justice. Interestingly when asked during the Q & A for other wolfman films he admired Fessenden mentioned the underrated and lesser known Late Phase (aka Night of the Wolf, 2014) with Nick Damici.

Blackout opens with a couple having sex in the open woods by the blue moon. A POV shot encroaches on them and they are attacked by a savage beast. The man has his neck severed, the woman survives. The next scene opens with a slow, long pan across a room adorned with paintings which ends on a nude man sleeping. The shot recalls the opening of Rear Window in the sense of the camera narrating through props that tell us who the character is (sports photographer in Rear Window, painter in Blackout). The signs of markings and bruises on the man's body suggest he is the man attacked in the opening, our protagonist/antagonist. From this point on we see the man, a lean, buff drifter named Charley (played by William Hurt's son Alex, with remarkable physical similarity) going about this small town taking stock of his life. Charley meets friends, ex-co-workers, a possible former lover (lawyer Barbara Crampton), his former fiancée/love Sharon (Addison Timlin), Alice (Ella Raoe Peck) and his nemesis, Sharon's father Hammond (Marshal Bell), who as the town's pulp mill owner has the town in his pocket. The one person he can't buy is the Mexican Sheriff Luis (Joseph Castillo-Midyett), who drives around with his funny and smart female partner, Officer Warren (Stirling DuBell).

Charley's first transformation occurs as he is driving, a scene reminiscent of the end of Lost Highway when the Bill Pullman characters transforms. On a Lynch note, Fessenden includes a running gag where sheriff Luis asks for a coffee and then tosses the contents away, surely a reference Twin Peaks and Agent Dale Cooper’s love of coffee. The weight of his actions during his blackouts begin to take its toll and culminates in the decision to enlist the help of his artist friend Earl (Motell Gyn Foster) to make silver bullets that can be used to kill him. The settling of accounts before Charley ends his tormented life is to undo the wrongs of his father, who helped Hammond push aside environmental laws to "make Talbot Town prosperous" (the name of the town a reference to Lon Chaney’s character in The Wolfman). Hammond underpays the skilled Mexican workers and when they refuse to work Hammond plants a seed that incriminates their leader Miguel for the many murders occurring in the town. Both Luis and Charley defend Miguel, even when Hammond tries to motivate a lynch posse to arrest Miguel (we can read Trump references here to the Capitol Hill raid).

Charley asks his friend Stevie to tie him up in a chair -Lon Chaney Jr. style- and shoot him with the silver bullet when he changes. The suicide attempt has a ring of desperation to it. The Sheriff and Officer Warren arrive at the wrong moment. As the Sheriff enters he sees a black man pointing a gun at him and shoots him dead (a social message perhaps a little too on point but expected given Fessenden’s political leanings towards the underdog). Charley bolts out of the trailer home, startling Officer Warner who impales herself on a steel structure (I was sad to see her die and surprised Fessenden would kill such a good character). Once Charley awakes he goes to confront Hammond, who continues to insult and belittle him, accusing him of not having his father's guts. When Hammond discovers Charley is behind the lawyer inquests he threatens him and ends up taking him to the police station at gunpoint. Charley sabotages Hammond by locking themselves in the cell, giving Hammond a front seat view of his transformation. The posse and Sheriff Luis are summoned by the noises and shoot Hammond by mistake. The whole town now see Charley fully transformed into a gnarly wolf man. The scene cuts to Charley’s ex-partner Sharron with her new beau, indie starlet Joe Swanberg. Swanberg goes out to the car for some weed but does not return (keeping up Swanberg’s habit of dying in most of his roles). Charley stalks Sharron throughout the house, even mounting her (a nice echo with the opening scene). Sharron shoots Charley with the remaining silver bullet. He runs away through the woods, in slow motion, slowly transforming back to human self. Unlike most other wolfman films, he does not die once he changes back.

The final scene sees Charley walking down a country road, where he is crossed by a tall creepy looking man. Charley turns to look at the tall figure. Who is this stranger? I did not recognize him right away but there was clearly a murmur of recognition in the audience. Then it dawned on me: the figure was the Frankenstein monster from Fessenden’s Depraved, a clever self-reference to Fessenden's Marvel-style cross-over gesture. And if we are to take Fessenden’s post-screening comments seriously, his gambit to do a House of Dracula/House of Frankenstein Universal style mashup. Hopefully Fessenden will get around to making his own monster tag team movie.

The most inventive aspect of this take on the wolfman, apart from the social commentary, is the idea of making the wolfman a painter, and one who draws inspiration for his art from his blackout visions. The paintings are very dark, and a stark contrast to his benign landscape paintings. It is almost as if they represent his human and wolf sides. The film also has a brief animation sequence. The paintings (and there are many ) are done by a painter named John Mitchell, who was amongst the crowd at the screening.

My Animal (Jacqueline Castel, 2023)

My Animal makes an interesting comparison piece to both Blackout (above) and Ginger Snaps (John Fawcett, Canada, 1999). Both Ginger Snaps and My Animal are Canadian and set in small town Ontario and have leads that turn to werewolves. My Animal is directed by a woman, and Ginger Snaps, while directed by a man, was written by a woman with a strong feminist sensibility, Karen Walton. Both interject Canadiana with their depiction of hockey, Ginger Snaps only minimally with kids playing street hockey and a high school scene featuring field hockey, while in My Animal lead protagonist Heather plays goalie for her town’s ice hockey team. The leads Ginger (Katherine Isabelle) and Heather (Bobbi Salvör Menuez) are around the same age. My Animal is less concerned with the transformation aspect and we only see Heather in full wolf mode once near the end. And while Heather is more clear on her lesbian identity in her desire for Jonny (Amanda Stenberg), Ginger while appearing straight toys with the idea of sex with her sister Brigitte in at least one or two scenes. Most of the male characters in both films are weak, sexist or non-existent. The exception is Heather's wolfman father Henry (Stephen McHattie) who runs the diner and is the traditional hockey dad. Cory Lipman as Jonny's toxic male homophobic boyfriend Rick is one of the most despicable characters I've seen at Fantasia 2023! Heather's twin brothers Cooper and Hardy (played by real life twins Charles F. and Harrison W. Halpenny) are also werewolves which explains the non-wolf mother's terrible state of mind, an alcoholic and perhaps bi-polar character whose behaviour is totally understandable. Ginger’s mother (great performance by Mimi Rodgers) also struggles to cope with Ginger’s condition. Like Fawcett, director Castel sticks to a realist style except for the first love scene between Heather and Jonny, which is highly stylized with a reddish color palette and a swirling camera movement that encircles and abstracts their bodies.

Booger (Mary Dauterman, 2023)

Booger takes a slightly more askew, comic approach to the ‘monster within’ theme of the previously noted movies, with call backs to horror films where women transform to animals other than wolf (cats, snakes, etc., such as The Cat People, The Cobra Woman, Hisss, Night of the Cobra Woman, The Panther Woman). A young woman named Annie (tall, lanky blond Grace Glowicki) has just lost her best friend Izzy (Sofia Dobrushin) to a bike accident and has inherited Izzy’s black cat Booger. The cat bites Annie and then runs out the window. Annie panics and is desperate to find the cat. But as she descends into grief mode she begins to slowly show 'cat' symptoms: hair sprouts from her bite wound; she begins to crave birds and fish; she purrs, she vomits furballs, and alienates her well meaning but self-absorbed boyfriend Max (Garrick Bernard). Izzy's mother Joyce (Marcia DeBonis) tries to help but Annie falls deeper into her funk, stopping to go to work, eschewing hygiene, letting her apartment go to rot, eventually being evicted after she allows her toilet to overflow.

Now evicted, sitting on the sofa on the sidewalk a rat waddles by and Annie grabs the rat and bites its head off. A visit to a pet store where she sees a Booger look-a-like cat that jumps back into her apartment triggers a turning point that leads to a happy ending. Booger ends with Annie finally accepting help from others (Izzy's mom) and begins to sing Izzy's favorite Karaoke song "Pina Colada". She is in a new apartment where all the walls are newly painted and her boyfriend arrives, happy to hear her singing in the shower. The film has a few moments of subjective visual abstractions to render Annie's cat identity but otherwise the film is a somewhat forced attempt at indie quirkiness. And the direction of the story is fairly predictable. Before the screening a volunteer was giving out barf bags warning that the film was 'gnarly' (to use her term), but outside of a few moments of vomiting furballs and coddling the bite wound, I never felt the urge to partake of the barf bag.

The Monster Inside My Head (Maude Michaud, Canada, 2023)

The Monster Inside My Head deals with the werewolf/wolfman ‘monster within’ theme but in a more figurative manner. The eight minute single set short is mainly without dialogue. A young woman (Karine Kerr) arrives home for a quiet evening alone but is 'visited' by a dark armed, scaly monster who attempts to control the protagonist’s mind and body. The first view of the monster (played by Shelagh Rowan-Legg) is its hand running alongside the open refrigerator door, with each appearance being more intrusive. The tone established through sound design and low key, mainly bluish lighting is meant to unsettle but the ‘acting’ (movements) of the monster’s hand cleverly shifts the tone, for example veering to flashes of comedy when the flippant nature of the hand movement seems to irritate rather than frighten the woman. The centerpiece is when the tone shifts from psychological to body horror as the hand installs a series of hooks into Kerr's body and plays her like a marionette (a nice meta reference to Michaud ‘directing’ the performers). The final scene has the woman accepting her 'monster' (which should be taken figuratively rather than literally) and allowing it to rest behind her as the darkness of the monster envelopes her whole body in bed. The end credits –in a fancy old fashion curly font– speak to the meaning of the 'monster' in a surprise twist I’ll leave to the viewer to experience.

Mami Wata (CJ Fiery Obasi, Nigeria, 2023)

Though Mami Wata does not feature women who transform into animals, women do transform emotionally and socially. And, well, there is a water goddess. Mami Wata is lifted by a collective of outstanding performances, from the beautiful Evelyne Ily Juehn as Prisca and later Mami Wata, Uzoamaka Aniuno as her adopted sister Zinwe, hunky Emeka Amakeze as the deceiving rebel from an adjoining village, Jasper, and Rita Edochie as the matriarch elder and Intermediary to the spirit world, known in West African folklore as the water Goddess Mama Wati, Mama Efe.

Mami Wata is a searing study of the play for power between tradition and the modern, Africa vs the West(ernized aspects of Africa), Man vs Woman on a small Nigerian village community called Iyi. The omnipotent presence of Mama Wati is felt through Obasi and cinematographer Lílis Soares’ long takes of the ocean at night.  When a few deaths of young people occur the townsfolk begin to doubt Mama Efe's (Rita Edochie) powers and think she may be losing her ability to protect the village from disease, famine, encroaching modernity and any other potential threat. Prisca (her biological daughter) and Zinwe (adopted daughter) seem more open to change, stopping short of denying the mythic water spirit who is the figure of the provider. Even though the film's title suggests the spirit is real, at least as a myth, director Obisa sculpts the film's ontology as living in literary theorist Tvetan Todorov's transitory state of the Fantastic, casting some of the characters and the audience, into doubt as to whether the spirit can activate or not. When educated Westernized people come to provide the village with vaccines and medical science Mama refuses their help, leading to the possibly avoidable death of a young boy. A former lover of Prisca, Jabi (Kelechi Udegbe) is also pro-change and the doubting men of the village kill Mama Efe over her inability to save the dying.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Mama Wati is the forceful, striking cinematography, a unique monochromatic, high contrast black and white which highlights the ornate, luminous facial and body markings whose white are set off against black skin. At times or most of the times the contrast is super high, with pools of black and white markings vying for our attention. The faces are sometimes sunken into the black background, the sky, the water, or the woods. Other times the image appears lower contrast, especially the supernatural like shots of the white-haired, paler skinned woman who appears now and then.

There is a wonderful sense of timelessness in the film, ruptured by the scene where a car arrives with a white man selling guns to Jasper. A moment which shifts the idea of the modern into a negative (guns and political power and not medicine or community welfare) and interjects a political subtext, with the white gunrunner substituting for colonial forces coming to conquer the African continent. The aesthetic is immersive because of how ground and perspective is hard to decipher.

Jasper is introduced spewed out from the sea, found lying on the beach. A savior or a monster? The woman of lye save him and nurse him back to health. He is groomed and turns Prisca's head. Jasper is a literal wolf in sheep's clothing, charismatic, charming, handsome but dangerous and duplicitous. The 'courtship' scene where Jasper and Prisca walk along the beach is gorgeous and seductive for both us and her. The camera tracks back along the white sand shores at an equal pace to them. Dozens of crabs scurry across the sand cutting the frame horizontally. Prisca is falling in love, but she will soon learn that Jasper bears a sting in his tail. His story is that he is from another village and part of a rebel outfit trying to take power. But when the Rebels turned on him, raping and murdering his wife, he left for other shores. Whether this story is true or not is never made known. His whole appearance could have been planned. Or maybe it was a case of him taking advantage of the situation he finds. Jasper sports a cross necklace for everyone to see, a hold-over of Africa's colonial past and as a Christian symbol a contrast to the Native village Pagan belief system. Christianity and emergent Capitalism, represented by the cross, the white man selling guns and the material desires the village craves, are the true villains of the story.

His image as a sexualized figure is also an illusion. Jasper selects a village woman as his lover, but when she moves into his bedroom quarters unannounced he turns angry and hits her. Why? Later near the end when Prisca literally 'emasculates' him by pulling down his drawers and exposing him to the other men they see that he is missing a penis, and is a castrated eunuch (or has a tiny penis). Now exposed and weakened, the men shoot Jasper dead. He has the same fate as Mama Wati. Leaders are first lauded then dethroned.

Is Mama Efe a genuine intermediary with her people's best interests at heart? Or is she grasping on to her power? Jasper turns the community against Mama and anyone who believes in the Water spirit. He usurps Mama Efe's authority at every step, promising them if they give over their money and food to him he will build them the modern conveniences they crave, a school, a hospital, electricity, etc. Jasper establishes his leadership of the men by defeating the current alpha male. Rather than using the collected wealth to 'buy food', or build roads, he buys weapons (like real governments have done in the past, i.e. Stalin during world War 2 and the Cold War). The Jasper led doubters “prove” that the spirit world does not exist by throwing Zinwe into the sea, and telling the people, if Zinwe comes out of the river it means Mami Wata exists. If she doesn't, they must concede everything.

Unseen, Prisca rescues Zinwe and slowly forms a counter-revolution to usurp the military authority of Jasper. The last title cards spells out everything you need to know: Yes fear the woman. Prisca returns with Zinwe and gets the momentary upper hand, until Jasper begins shooting. Prisca is so bad ass that when she challenges Jasper to a physical combat you are convinced she can defeat him, and she nearly does. As the men are about to shoot Prisca, she thrusts her hands at them and magically makes them disappear. Up until this moment the film was in the pure Fantastic mode as we had no sure signs of the supernatural. Once we see Prisca’s powers the film turns Fantastic-Marvelous (according to the Todorovian schema). The clearest sign of the spirit’s existence is the shot near the end where we see a giant female figure in the image of Prisca standing at the shoreline (shades of Allison Hayes in the Attack of the 50 Foot Woman!), dwarfing the foreground image of Prisca’s double. We then see a crowd looking off in rapture, but we never cut to what they are seeing. Perhaps a subtle indicator that Prisca is imagining this, which would return us back to the pure Fantastic.

Pett Kata Shaw (Bangladesh, Nuhash Humayun, 2023)

It is rare that an anthology horror is consistent but that is the case with this Bangladesh folklore horror Pett Kata Shaw. Maybe it helps that there is no wrap around story just four separate stories each with their own title card. And perhaps having one director helm all four stories helps keep a consistent tone across the four stories, even though the stories take place (mostly) in interiors (first and second) or exteriors (third and fourth). Sound design is important in all stories to generate unease or dread. In the opening story “Sweet Shop” a middle-aged man (played by Chanchal Chowdhury) is showing signs of early dementia, with his memory failing him and his wife letting him know. At work he forgets customer orders and is happy to close his shop after a long day. But a menacing stranger overlooks the closed sign and enters the shop. The stranger (a Jinn or demon) 'gifts' the man with flawless memory. For a while the man becomes a celebrity impressing with his boundless knowledge of trivia. But the gift comes with a price, as the power to recall everything becomes an insupportable burden that leads to his death.

Humayun adds more humour to the next tale, “No Girls Allowed.” A young man buys a fish and is followed home by a 'fish hag' who has killed his room mate and traps him in his home as he must figure out how to appease her. The actress who plays the fish hag is great. Her makeup is off-putting but not enough to disguise her sexiness. Her teeth are razors, her complexion greyish but she has devilish eyes and a lithe body. He tries feeding her with different fish recipes until finding the right one. In an effort to distract her he props up his dead friend at the kitchen table with cans for his head and tape to pry his eyes open and seats him opposite the hag. It is a cat and mouse game with the hag eventually winning out. The story is told in flashback and we cut back to his friends seated in his living room. When they ask him how it ended, he introduces his new wife to them, the fish hag!

In the third story, "Hearsay", a young couple on a hiking trip get into an argument and meet an elderly couple who try to help them through their problems by telling them a folk tale for every occasion. It ends badly for the man, who is trapped in the woods by a boy who covets his long hair. The fourth and probably best story is "Call of the Night", a more low key story dealing with a young man haunted by the guilt and loss of his girlfriend's suicide. Ghosts call out loved ones only to lure them into the ocean. In the end the protagonist follows a young boy into the ocean.

Daughter of the Sun (2023, Ryan Ward, Canada/Manitoba)

Daughter of the Sun is a lyrical magic realist tale about a powerful Father-Daughter relationship. Reminiscent in some ways of Aftersun, with touches of Malick and Sean Baker's The Florida Project. Ward (who also stars as the father Sonny) keeps modern technology out of the mise en scene (no cell phones, computers, social media to be found anywhere) to give the film a timeless quality, although aesthetically the film goes for a 1970s film look, with a digital film look of fake grain, light flares, dirt and 70s style credits shot by cinematographers Craig Range and Mandeep Sodhi. The film makes good organic use of digital visual effects, like a crack in the sky that only the daughter Hildie Jonns (Nyah Perkin) and father can see, an effective northern lights shower of light and an interesting effect where sunlight and light flares are confused. In one striking shot Sonny is blocking the sunlight but his hand is a blazing hot spot of orangish light. The film’s tone  is perfectly complemented by a wonderful score by David Bartok that blends soaring orchestral music (for the dramatic finale) and more ambient music. Ward also uses sourced music selectively, including a song by Nick Drake that fits the film's pastoral mood perfectly.

Ward stars as Sonny, a man with Tourette Syndrome, who hits the road with his 12 year old daughter Hildie (Nyah Perkin), on the verge of womanhood (she has her period during the film). After the screening I learned that this is a follow-up to Ward’s feature debut Son of the Sunshine (Ryan Ward, 2009) where Ward plays the same character of Sonny. Portions of the story and their drive is narrated by Hildie's voice-over (reminiscent of Sissy Spacek in Badlands) as she expresses the strong bond they share. Sonny is strongly anti-social and has difficulties keeping jobs, with either his temper or intolerance to prejudices toward his condition sparking his anger. Sonny and Hildie befriend another motley group of nomadic 'outsiders' and Hildie strikes a friendship with like-aged children, much to the envy of her jealous boyfriend Glover (Lennox Leacock).

The gang of rovers bond over their being 'different', something they see in Sonny and Hildie. Although as the story develops and sinister moments increase we realize that they see something more than different but special in Sonny. The diverse community includes a blind man, an amputee, a single mother with a mute boy who spontaneously tries to harm himself (something Sonny relates to and he strikes a friendship and relationship with the boy and his mother) and a Downs Syndrome woman named Samara (Courtney Sawyer). Samara has a few scenes lounging on the ground star gazing with Hildie where she tells her things about her that seem fantastic, like having previously known her. She tells her about a dream where she saw Hildie at the bottom of the river (which ends up being a foreshadowing gesture).

When Sonny's car breaks down the community offers to put them up until the car is fixed, but when the mechanic calls to tell them the car is fixed, they do not relay the message. What do they want from Sonny and Hildie? Are their intentions malicious? Hints of Sonny's hidden powers are shown in glimpses. Like when the cat is bitten by a venomous snake and dies but is healed after being touched by Sonny. The final 30 minutes changes direction as the motley community kidnap Sonny, Hildie and Glover with the intention of harnessing Sonny's powers. When we see Samara's room we see her walls are adorned with paintings of Sonny and Hildie that foreshadow events and thoughts shared between Sonny and Hildie, giving credence to the supernatural bond shared between Samara and Sonny. The group (are they a cult or aliens?) lock up Sonny, the single mother and her son in a closet. They kidnap Hildie and Glover, tie them and drop them into the river to a certain drowning. Underwater shots echo the dreams Hildie and Samara shared about a sinking glass unicorn. Sonny senses the danger, smashes down the door and rushes to the exact spot in the river, saving Hildie and Glover (as he told Hildie many times, he would always find her if in peril). Sonny's act seems to have come with a price, as he appears unconscious and unresponsive. In the final shot, which may be a dream or memory, we see Sonny standing in front of the glorious river and sun drenched sky.

It is interesting to speculate on the intentions of the community. Did they really intend to kill the children or plan it knowing the threat of Hildie's death would trigger Sonny's powers? The reading of the community as aliens reminded me of the science fiction work of Zenna Henderson (1917-1983) who wrote a series of stories (short and long) centered on humanoid aliens called "The People", with special powers who settled on earth as their "chosen land".

Late Night With The Devil (Cameron and Colin Cairnes, Australia, 2023)

Whereas Daughter of the Sun borrows a 1970s aesthetic, Late Night With The Devil is set in that decade. Just when you think the found footage horror film (or more accurately, real-time or ‘reality’ horror) has hit a dead end, a film like Late Night With The Devil arrives to demonstrate the form is still ripe for innovation. Late Night With The Devil is set entirely on a 1970s TV studio of a Johnny Carson style entertainment interview show, filmed in a full frame aspect ratio to replicate the TV ratio of the time. The film is a masterclass in period style recreation, along with the 4:3 ratio, the 1970s is recalled through the muted tones of Eastman color for the live footage and black & white for the behind the scenes footage, video style dropout and standby title cards to signal off air moments. It even includes a subliminal shot of Lilly’s ghost during the exorcism scene (perhaps a nod to The Exorcist, 1973). David Dastmalchian (who seems to be showing up in everything lately) plays host Jack Delroy and Rhys Auteri is his Ed McMahon side-kick Gus McConnell. Anyone familiar with the TV landscape of the 1970s onwards will remember how popular the late night interview formula was, with star turns by people like Jack Parr (pre-Carson), Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, Dick Cavet, Arsenio Hall, Tom Snyder, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Gary Shandling, Jon Stewart, Bill Mahr, Phil Donahue, Conan O’Brian, and many others. The film opens with a text crawl that sets up the time and show and tells us that what we are about to see is the full recording of that eventful night plus any off-camera footage. Jack is upset at not being the top rated show and banks on a wild gambit to run up the ratings: have a live on camera exorcism. He invites attractive exorcist June (Laura Gordon) with her young accomplice Lilly D'Abo onto the show to perform an live on set exorcism. The film is rewarded by a great performance from Ingrid Torelli as Lilly, who is a cross between Regan/Blair from The Exorcist and Juliet Mills from Beyond the Door (Ovidio G. Assonitis, 1974).

Jack invites a panel of spiritualists and mediums, starting with Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), and skeptic Carmichael Hunt (Ian Bliss) along with the marquee performers, June and her possessed teen Lilly (June prefers the term ‘psychic infestation’ over possession). Lilly seems off center from the start, like Jack Torrance in The Shining. And is in full demon mode when called upon, gnarly voice, levitations, spewing bodily fluids, the whole proverbial demonic nine yards. Skeptic Carmichael’s attempts to prove June a fraud and trickster is the centerpiece of the film. He hypnotizes Gus (and most of the audience we learn) and plays up his fear of worms. Before long Gus is imagining worms under his skin, in his stomach, and the camera reveals what he sees in his head. It also appears real to everyone on the panel and most of the audience. But when Lilly urges Jack Delroy to replay the video tape of the exorcism moment, a frame by frame advancement reveals a subliminal image of Jack’s dead wife. This then leads to the film’s first (and false) climax, where Dr. Wiggles the demon manifests itself as an electrical force that zaps all the panelists to gruesome deaths, except Jack. While the pyrotechnical lightshow was perfectly executed in 1970s visual effects style and sets itself off from other possession films, I found it to be the only false note of an otherwise good little film. Thankfully the film pulls back from this ending and after a “technical difficulties” pause returns with an epilogue that plays as Jack’s nightmare of the personal casualties laced along his greedy ascent to the top of the ratings pile, helped along by none other than the devil. This revelation brings in a clever reference to Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), where the struggling actor Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) offers his first born child in exchange for career success, echoed here by Jack’s unwitting sacrifice of his wife for career success.

The Sacrifice Game (2023, Jenn Wexler)

A third 1970s inflected film is Jenn Wexler’s The Sacrifice Game, which is set on a few days before Christmas, 1971. Jenn Wexler returns to Fantasia following her presence here in 2018 showcasing her debut slasher The Ranger. The Sacrifice Game manages to invoke the 70s grindhouse feel by opening with a brutal home invasion which establishes a group of four Charles Manson-inspired satanists, led by a young attractive woman, Maisie (Olivia Scott Welch). The other three people in the cult group are James Dean-ish Jude (Mena Massoud), stringy-haired, skittish Doug (Laurent Petrie), and hulking shell shocked Vietnam vet Grant (Derek Johns). Invoking the narrative set-up of The Holdovers, the bulk of the narrative is set at the prestigious Blackvale Academy during Christmas Break. Chaperoning the two students, Samantha (Madison Baines) and loner, introvert Clara (Georgia Acken) is young teacher Rose (Chloë Levine, who starred in The Ranger). The two students are ‘Christmas Holiday’ holdovers, which means the school grounds are sparsely populated. Adding to the backdrop is the past history of the Blackvale academy, which was built on the site of a town that was burned to the ground centuries ago out of a fear of witches.

In an act of foreshadowing Samantha accidentally sees Clara self-scarring in the toilet stall. And in a later scene when Samantha is asked by Rose to go to the basement for vodka, we see Clara perusing the black magic books in the basement library. A fourth character is Rose’s boyfriend Jimmy (Gus Kenworth). After a run-in with the police the satanists take refuge at the Blackvale school, which sets up the battleground between these two groups of characters, and a narrative filled with twists and turns. While Rose does her best to discourage the unwelcome cult members from entering, they force themselves in and begin their reign of terror, culminating in a Texas Chainsaw inspired Christmas dinner table scene where the first victim becomes (not surprisingly) boyfriend Jimmy. We learn that cult leader Maisie was a former student of Blackvale in 1964, and used a book from the school library to plot a plan to summon a demon. The titular game involves a series of ritual acts to summon a demon, which includes erecting a map with human skin (the flaying performed on-screen, in gruesome Terrifier 2 style). Rose is surprisingly offed as well which leaves Samantha and a surprisingly cool Clara as the two final girls. The middle section of the film is a cat and mouse game as the cult attempts to complete all the ritual acts. But the group begin to turn on each other. With no demon in sight the film takes its first major twist: Clara is revealed as the demon who has been orchestrating this action all along. Maise makes the connection by verifying that Clara has been in school photos dated back to the school’s origins (a la Shining) and Clara was behind Maise’s discovery of the book.

One act remains to complete the ritual–the death of a guilty person. With many potential victims to choose from, Clara ties them up and plays her own sadistic game, where each of them has to give up a body part. She goes easy on Maisie, taking a lock of her hair; Doug has his fingers lobbed off. Rather than escaping, Samantha returns to save Clara, then discovers the twist for herself when coming across the body count.

Georgia Acken steals the show as the petite, anti-social wall flower student who turns into a sadistic demon who enjoys her power and craves the freedom of leaving the school that has been her prison for decades. The next twist comes when Samantha, rather than being repulsed by Clara, wants to join her; and completes the ritual by killing ‘guilty’ Maisie with an axe blow to her back. This ‘frees’ Clara, who joins up with Samantha in the film’s final close-up hand clasp. Maisie and Clara mirror each other in terms of character growth. While Maisie devolves from powerful alpha leader to victim –she spends the final scenes running around in her bra and undies– Clara evolves from quiet introvert to all-powerful demon. Two ‘outsiders’, Samantha and Clara, find comfort in a community of two. While modestly budgeted the film manages to capture the 1970s feel in its setting, props, costume, etc., and moments of grim violence. The characters are engaging enough to make us forget they are stock to the genre. Clara is the showstopper, while Chloë Levine is good (though short-lived) as the eager to please school teacher, who you’d much rather be your supervisor during a holdover than Paul Giamanti! On the down side is some of the least convincing snow ever put onto film. It looks like white stuffing from a bad pillow, or a fake Santa Clause beard. But heck, if you are going to cut corners, better the snow than the blood.

New Life (John Rosman, 2023)

New Life stars twin female leads that are kept apart narratively until the end, twentysomething Hayley Erin as on-the-run Jessica Murdock and Sonya Walger as middle-aged human tracker Elsa tasked by the FBI to track down Jessica before she reaches the Canadian border. Jessica is first seen in the woods blood-faced and suspicious of her surroundings, stealing food from farms, hitching rides in pickups. Scenes of Jessica are intercut with freelance human tracker Elsa following her leads.  Tension is generated from the uncertainty of the search. Why are the FBI looking for her? We get snippets of a backstory as Jessica sneaks into her home to get her engagement ring before she is scared away by a man with a gun. Flashbacks fill in the backstory of her relationship with a man named Ian (Nick George) in a camping trip where Jessica befriends a stray dog, against Ian’s better judgement. This encounter with the dog, we later find out, triggers the main plot device and reason she is a quarry. Jessica contracted a virus, perhaps big pharma generated, from the dog and while she remains asymptomatic (at least until the end) is unwittingly a carrier who leaves behind a trail of dead. Whoever she comes in contact with ends up being infected and dies an ugly death –turning puss-filled, bloody and rabid. The moments where the infected attack  -the elderly farm couple Frank and Janie Lerner (character actors Blaine Palmer and Betty Moyer), fiancée Ian, barmaid/owner Molly Presser (Ayanna Berkshire)- don’t really work as horror, largely because the scenes do not fit the overall tone of the film, which is more character based and mystery driven.

The aspect which makes this film stand out from many other similar viral/pandemic films (the fact that an animal is the trigger recalls most directly 28 Days Later and the Korean TV show All of Us Are Dead, but goes back to The Crazies, Contagion, The Last of Us, Z Nation, and many others) is Elsa having to deal with the onset of ASL, a highly progressive, debilitating nervous system disease (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, once called the Lou Gehrig disease after its first celebrity victim). This ‘disease’ is what connects Elsa and Jessica in that the disease attacks quickly, without morals and places both characters in the titular condition of having to start life anew. Elsa must confront the physical and psychological damages of knowing her life will change in drastic ways. The film treats this with sensitivity, as Elsa approaches this trauma with a wide range of emotions which the film never exploits. Elsa connects with a ALS Support group, a man looking after a woman with advanced ASL. In their first Zoom meet the woman asks Else bluntly: Have you thought of suicide? She takes her time and responds yes. The upshot is that the film places a realist but ultimately positive spin on people with ASL or any debilitating illness, with the message that life still has a lot to offer. The penultimate scene carries an emotional weight that sets up the final scene of Elsa coming to terms with her illness. Elsa has caught up with Jessica, who has finally become symptomatic, in an open field. Elsa has Jessica at gunpoint urging her to give up. Jessica, puss-filled and sobbing, pleads “I just want to see the world”. Elsa replies, “Me too,” which cements the parallel between Elsa’s medical condition and Jessica’s infected body. Jessica decides to continue running away from Elsa, forcing Elsa to shoot her. In a touching moment Elsa clasps on to Jessica’s open hand so she does not die alone.

Retrospective Selections at Fantasia 2023

Since its inception Fantasia has always set aside space for older retrospective titles and (thankfully) this consideration for genre history continues. Here is a sampling of some discoveries and restorations on show at 2023.

Io Island (Iodo, 1977, Kim Ki-young, Korea)

Among contemporary young directors and historians of Korean Cinema director Kim Ki-Young is something of a legend. I first heard his name in 2001 when Peter Rist and I interviewed director Park Ki-hyung on his film Whispering Corridors and Ki-hyung cited Kim Ki-young as an influence. Many well-known contemporary directors have cited Ki-young as a influence, including Kim Ki-Duk, Park Chan-Wook, Hong Sang-soo, Bong Joon-ho and Lee Chang-ho. Kim Ki-young’s best films such as Lady Hong (1969), Insect Woman (1972) and his Housemaid trilogy The Housemaid, Woman of Fire, Woman of Fire 82’ (1960, 1971, 1982) are marked by a strong and often perverse psycho-sexual undercurrent. Io Island is no different: a super weird sexual thriller with strong flashes of folk-horror.

The film takes place on a beautiful island inhabited largely by women who fear that any man brought to the island will be sunk by a water demon (shades of Matti Wata). The storyline is frankly difficult to follow because of its nested narrative structure, with flashbacks, a la Citizen Kane, that fall inside of themselves. Nam-suk Chun (Yun-seok Choi) and hotel contractor Woo-hyun (Jeong-cheol Kim) travel together on a boat to the island. When Woo-hyun tells Chun about his plans to open a hotel on Io Island Chun gets angry and eventually goes missing. Woo-hyun is suspected of throwing Chun overboard but we discover through nested flashbacks that Chun was born on the island and fathered a boy with one of the inhabitants of the island. The women did not want him to stay on the island because of the myth of the water demon that steals away men. Chun's former boss Yang (Am Park) joins Woo-hyun to investigate the island for Chun's backstory.

The film is livened up by the appearance of the beautiful and mysterious barmaid Min-ja (Hwa-shi Lee), who brings a menace and eroticism to the film. Along with the enchanting landscape the interior mise en scene moves away from natural beauty by alternating a vivid color pattern of blue and red lighting and exotic costume selections. Much hype was made of the shocking ending, so I was geared up for something special and was indeed surprised by the nature of the ending, a mashup of Nekromantik and In the Realm of the Senses. Min-ja is desperate for a child. So she enlists an older female shaman to do a ritual that includes making love to Chun's corpse, on the notion that even a dead man's semen is active. Min-ja inserts a wooden knob shaped instrument into the tip of Chun's erect penis to keep it firm, then mounts him and rides him to intercourse. Apart from this brazen concluding set-piece, the strength of this film is the visual landscape of the setting, the island, the ocean, the mountains and its natural beauty, all of which serve to contrast the harsh and twisted gender dynamics of the island inhabitants.

The Primevals (1978, 1991, 2023, Dave Allen)

Seeing the long in gestation film The Primevals with producer Charles Band and visual effects artist Chris Endicott in attendance was one of the highlights of the festival for me and my Kaiju loving son. This World Premiere labor of love for Full Moon producer Charles Band is one of those things that makes Fantasia so special. The packed house at De Seve was lucky to see the world premiere of this much anticipated –at least for fans of old school stop motion animation blended with live action, a la Ray Harryhausen– feature film. The Primevals in its narrative, acting and look is a throwback to the family friendly adventure-science fiction films of the 1970s, titles like The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970), The Land that Time Forgot (1975), and The People That Time Forgot (1977). In fact The Primevals was almost the film that time forgot. And it would have been if not for the persistence of Charles Band and the industry of visual effects artist Chris Endicott.

As noted in the 1978 issue of Cinefantastique (8/1), The Primevals had its origins as a project entitled Raiders of the Stone Ring by Dave Allen, Jim Danforth and Denis Muren (of Star Wars fame). The Primevals developed in the mid 1970's and had a stuttering start and stop production history throughout the 1980s and eventually materialized in 1994, with principal photography in Romania and Italy. By this point the project was in the hands of Charles Band and Full Moon Pictures, which suffered financial problems which stalled the completion once again. Dave Allen sadly died of cancer in 1999 which put the film in further limbo. But Band made a promise to Allen that he would bring his film to completion. And Band was true to his word. Allen's colleague special visual effects artist Chris Endicott curried favors from friends and a modest Kickstarter campaign in 2018 to finally bring the film to completion. And lo and behold, the World Premiere in Montreal, July 23, 2023!

Charlie Band, Endicott and a few other people involved in the film were on hand to make the screening extra special. And if you don't go into the viewing with your hopes too high, The Primevals is an enjoyable, leisurely paced throwback fantasy-science-fiction adventure story in the mold of Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs. The film starts off with a bang, as a group of Sherpa in the mountains of Nepal track down and kill a large ape-like creature they refer to as a Yeti (it looks more like Mighty Joe Young than a Yeti). A young American PhD anthropology student Kathleen (in the Caroline Munro eye candy role, Walker Brandt) sequesters the Yeti corpse back to America for Emeritus Anthropology Professor Claire Collier (an up-for-it Juliet Mills) to study. She reveals the Yeti as a major discovery to a rather small University gathering, where one of the invited guests is her ex-student, hunky Doug McLure stand-in Matthew Connor (Richard Joseph Paul). Collier notes how the corpse of the Yeti has a marking that suggests it was experimented on and she gathers an expedition team to go to the site in Nepal to search for a living specimen. Tacked on to the Matthew and Walker team are safari guide Rondo Montana (who is introduced in an obvious Nepal city set), played by Leon Russom and local guide Siker (Tai Thai), in the thankless role of the token non-white who gets unintentionally belittled and condescended at every turn. Once there they pass through a mountain opening that takes them into the typical land of wonder, a naturally splendorous forested area with a river that leads them to an area that seems prehistoric and alien at the same time. Two huge silver silo like structures seem to give off heat. They find a cave with ape hominids and they fall into a pit that leads them into the alien lair ruled by lizard like aliens who sport warrior attire and are aggressive and violent. They communicate with sign language and grunts. Once captured the humans become prey in a Roman Coliseum like arena where apes are tossed into the arena with the Yeti. The Yeti is actually not aggressive but has a chip in his brain that is activated by an alien's laser blast which makes the Yeti violent. This is the best set piece of the film, especially the shots of the audience watching the spectacle, which is formed by dozens of independently animated lizard men (are there no women among the aliens?). Matthew escapes his cage and destroys the laser, which calms the Yeti down and helps the humans escape by forcing open the huge wooden door. The Yeti is killed by arrows and spears thrown by the aliens. Collier is hit by an arrow and ends up dying, but not before she gives her blessing to Matthew and Walker to co-author the book that will tell the world about the Yeti. A final impressive set piece is the collapse of the damn, which kills the remaining aliens, who had set up shop here for thousands of years, smart enough to use the river to generate electricity. Apart from Mills, the acting is adequate and the dialogue is comprised of at least 50% exposition ("Look out." "Watch out." "There's the Yeti."). But the compositing of stop motion with process shots is seamless and the creatures, though not many, are unique in the annals of stop motion.

Bitter Ash (1963, Larry Kent)

As part of the tribute to the Canadian Trailblazer Award honoree Larry Kent, Fantasia programmed several of South African born, Canadian cinema legend Larry Kent’s films, A Bitter Ash (1963), Sweet Substitute (1964), When Tomorrow Dies (1965), Yesterday (Gabrielle, 1981), in a 35mm print, and She Who Must Burn (2015). Kent was awarded the statuette at the screening of a new 4K transfer of Bitter Ash. 1 It was a treat to see Bitter Ash (1963, Larry Kent) in the presence of Larry Kent (90 years old) and actor Alan Scarf 2 , and moderated by Concordia's very own professor and Larry Kent specialist Dave Douglas. The film comes across as a blend of French New Wave, British Kitchen Sink Realism and Antonioni alienation trilogy. Shot silent with a 16mm hand cranked Bolex it has a vibrancy that still feels authentic today. The scene where Des (Scarf) and disenchanted Laurie (Lynn Stewart) take a ride and stop overlooking the beautiful BC landscape and talk about their stations in life reminded me of the scene where Claudia and Sandro drive and stop off in an abandoned rural town overlooking a vast open space in L’avventura, 1959. This is essential Canadian cinema viewing. A classic that deserves to be lauded and given more exposure as a landmark of independent Canadian feature filmmaking at a nascent period of Canadian feature narrative film.

The Burning Hell (Ormond Family, 1974), If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do? (Ormond Family, 1971)

The Ormond family were a group of exploitation filmmakers who after surviving a plane crash converted to Christianity and devoted themselves to making some of the most bizarre home made Christian propaganda “horror” films. If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do? begins with a rather impressive long lateral tracking shot following Civil War horsemen (stock footage I wondered?) all through the credits, but then is static and talky for the rest of the film. Arguably, this is an effective (?) Christian propaganda film about the perils of not converting to Christianity and not allowing Jesus to be your savior. The film is also about the perils of Communism, not really for its anti-capitalism but its anti-religion. This one feels like it is a juiced up version of the earlier Anti-Communist propaganda film, Invasion USA (1952). I thought that was pretty hyperbolic when I first saw it but it pales in comparison to the heightened paranoia of this one. The communist 'footmen' don't take over the minds and bodies of Americans here but just plain kill them. Men, women, children. In one scene a family with a young boy come out of a church mass and the Footmen soldiers kidnap the parents. When the boy protests and resists becoming “a child of the state”, he says that Jesus sacrificed himself for me and now it is my turn. And he is decapitated!

In the Ormond family films there is always a skeptic who sees the light and converts to the Lord. In this case it is a young 20 something woman who wants to have fun but her heathen ways essentially kill her God fearing mother, and then, during a sermon which forms the present of the story, she is guilted into submission and the film ends (as does Burning Hell) with the woman walking to the minister Estus Pirkle, to "be saved".

The Burning Hell plays with the same structure, with a young biker played by Tim Ormond (credited as ‘The Wayward Christian’) in the role of the woman who is eventually converted to the side of the Lord. When Tim Ormond’s heathen friend dies in a motorcycle accident Tim seeks out solace at the church where the preacher fills his head with horrible images of hell, terrifying him into guilt submission. With tears running down his face he walks up to bow to the Lord of Estus Pirkle to be saved.

This year's Fantasia for perhaps the first time features a mini theme of filmmaking families, with the appearance of two films by the Ormond Family and the latest film by the Adams family, Where the Devil Roams (2023). Both sets of families are vehemently independent, standing miles apart from conventional Hollywood. The Adams family is comprised of husband John Adams and wife Tony Poser and daughters Zelda Adams and Lulu Adams. The Ormond family echoes this with son Tim Ormond, mother June Ormond and father Ron Ormond. Of course that is where any similarities between the two family’s end! The screening of the Ormond double bill was accompanied by the book sale of the Jimmy McDonough lifelong obsession book on the family, a beautiful nine pound tome published by FAB Press, The Exotic Ones (which after much deliberation I bought). I was surprised to learn from the book that Ron Ormond's family was from Italy and the true family name was Vittorio Di Naro.

A Chinese Ghost Story (1987, Siu-Tung Ching, Hong Kong)

Another retrospective screening was the popular Hong Kong supernatural adventure film A Chinese Ghost Story (1987, Siu-Tung Ching, Hong Kong). Ace fight choreographer Siu-Tung Ching takes over the reigns and acquits himself well in this traditional genre mash-up Hong Kong style, which means a little bit of comedy, romance, martial arts, and horror. A temple is the resting spot of a beautiful ghost woman Nieh Hsiao-ting played by Joey Wang who falls in love with scholar and would be tax collector and all around innocent Ling Choi-San (Leslie Cheung). This opens up the traditional 'impure' romance between ghost and human. In the end it can only end sadly, as the ghost woman dies and Ling moves on with the Taoist swordsman Yen Che-Hsia.

Below the floorboards of the temple are the dead remains of Hsiao-ting’s past, men she had to kill in self defense. I was pleased to see that the skeletal ghouls were treated by stop motion animation. Overseeing the forest is the evil tree devil Siu-Ming Lau who orders Hsiao-ting to seduce men to her benefit and the defender of all good is the Taoist Swordsman Yen Che-Hsia played by Wu Ma, who is the funniest thing about the film. Che-Hsia feels an outsider everywhere, too human for the ghosts, too ghostly for the humans. He evens takes a break from being protector to do a solo dance and song.  Outside of a few romance scenes which slow the pace down, this is a fast-paced, exciting display of flying ghosts, practical effect tree monster stuff (with a huge tongue that slithers everywhere), great fight choreography with corpses with flowing garbs flipping and tossing through the air, landing on branches and rooftops and defying gravity. Par for the course are the poor subtitles which are filled with missing words, grammatical mistakes and awkward translations. It is part of the charm of these Hong Kong films.  

Good news: A Chinese Ghost Story 2 (1990, Siu-Tung Ching, Hong Kong) will be featured as part of the 2024 Fantasia roster!

Notes

1. The transfer was incomplete as of the screening but has since been completed and released on Blu Ray by Vinegar Syndrome’s partner label specialising in Canadian film, CIP. ↩
2. Sadly Alan Scarf, who I knew was sick at the time of the screening passed away about 8 months after this appearance at age 77, on April 28, 2024. A legend of the Canadian stage and screen who has left behind an important legacy. ↩

Volume 28, Issue 6 / June 2024 Festival Reports   canadian cinema   fantasia international film festival   horror   independent cinema   larry fessenden