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Fantastic Fest Review: Ali Abbasi's Strange & Beautiful Fantasy 'Border'
The concept of strange love and finding the one person in the world meant for only you is a strong one when it comes to cinematic storytelling. These films are often tough to recommend outright, the weirder nature of some of the entries in this category being a little too outside the box for most mainstream moviegoers. For the cinephile, however, the results of these films are often magical. So, too, is the case with the Swedish film, Border (aka Gräns), a film that tells a story that is, you guessed it, full of strange, creative wonder and eye-opening reveals about our world. Co-written and directed by Ali Abbasi, Border is a film that not everyone will be able to wrap their expectations around, but one that comes with undeniable results for those who do.
› Posted on October 15 in Fantastic Fest 18, Review | 1 Comment
Fantastic Fest Review: Shinichiro Ueda's Zombie Comedy 'One Cut of the Dead'
It's another year of horror movies, all ranging in subgenre and tone, and you know what that means. Bring on the zombies. Granted, the zombie subgenre has been running rampant for about 15 years straight now, the tropes and setups becoming increasingly banal as time goes by. There's a reason filmmakers continually go back to the zombie well. They keep coming up with new and innovative ways of handling the sub-genre. Take One Cut of the Dead, for instance. On the surface, it seems like another, stale attempt at breaking new ground with old equipment, but this film has something else hidden up its sleeve. One Cut of the Dead ends up being a sweet, funny, little magic trick of a movie that once again reinvents a been-there premise.
› Posted on September 26 in Fantastic Fest 18, Horror, Review | 1 Comment
Fantastic Fest Review: Luca Guadagnino's Intoxicating New 'Suspiria'
We've long-since moved past the belief that all remakes, horror remakes in particular, are inherently bad. From John Carpenter's The Thing to David Cronenberg's The Fly and even as recently as Fede Alvarez's take on The Evil Dead, the horror remake is wide open in terms of quality and sense of purpose. Even so, the thought of a filmmaker bringing a new vision to a classic tale of horror is met with trepidation regardless of the quality of that filmmaker's previous work. Now we have Luca Guadagnino taking on Dario Argento and his classic tale of a witch's coven at a dance academy, Suspiria. In a nutshell, Guadagnino's take on the story is transcendent, taking all the best elements of Argento's classic, reworking them for improvement, and even fleshing out the things that didn't work in the 1977 film. It is sure to leave you breathless.
› Posted on September 24 in Fantastic Fest 18, Horror, Review | 1 Comment
Fantastic Fest Review: Julius Avery's WWII Horror Thriller 'Overlord'
The horrors of war have rarely found their way into big-budget horror, even though it seems a natural fit to set genre pictures during the most horrendous moments in human history. These have often been relegated to lower-budget efforts often with unsuccessful results. Those days may be close to over, as Overlord, the latest from J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot production label, blasts its way onto screens. Set during the moments just before D-Day, the film offers an intense and explosive men-on-a-mission tale but with the added bonus of supernatural horrors. One side of the film's genre coin works much better than the other, but Overlord is through-and-through a thrilling action movie that should satiate action fans as well as horror fans alike.
› Posted on September 23 in Fantastic Fest 18, Horror, Review | 5 Comments
Fantastic Fest Review: Henry Dunham's 'The Standoff at Sparrow Creek'
A little Reservoir Dogs, a touch of Fail Safe, and a heaping dose of 2nd Amendment commentary at its core, writer/director Henry Dunham for his feature debut delivers a tightly constructed and incredibly intense thriller in The Standoff at Sparrow Creek. Packed with sharp dialogue, intriguing characters through and through, and masterful performances from a slate of very talented, character actors, the film builds mystery as well as any, modern whodunit on its surface-level. Underneath, though, Dunham's The Standoff at Sparrow Creek brings with it a mountain of ideas, most of them fervently politically-charged and more than appropriate in the 2018 climate of gun rights debates and continual, mass shootings.
› Posted on September 23 in Fantastic Fest 18, Review | 1 Comment
Fantastic Fest Review: Gareth Evans' Violent Cult Horror Film 'Apostle'
A mysterious cult stationed at a secluded island. A "lost soul" of a man searching for his kidnapped sister. The ancient entity known only as "The Goddess" who is seemingly able to speak through the cult's chosen mouthpiece. These are the main pieces of the puzzle at work in Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans latest horror endeavor, Apostle. Most known for his action chops, Evans delivers the bloody, brilliant goods in his newest film, a horror, period piece that turns the screws of tension one, small click at a time. It does take a good, long while before the craziness at the heart of Apostle kicks in, but it is more than worth it. The last hour of the film presents all the macabre, cult insanity you would expect from the man who directed The Raid and its epic sequel. However, the first hour of Apostle is borderline grueling.
› Posted on September 22 in Fantastic Fest 18, Horror, Review | Comments Closed
Fantastic Fest Review: David Gordon Green's New 'Halloween' Sequel
Michael Myers is back, and, this time, he isn't returning alone. 40 years after her original introductory role of Laurie Strode (and 16 years after the Strode character was “killed off”), Jamie Lee Curtis returns to the role that made her the original final girl, this time to exact some much needed revenge. But Halloween, directed by indie legend David Gordon Green, and co-written by Green with Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride (yes, that Danny McBride), is keen on shaking things up in the horror series for the sake of the film's deeper message. That's something many of the throwaway sequels to the John Carpenter original were missing. While the 2018 Halloween sequel is a gloriously shot slasher flick with all that entails, it's also a deep dive into trauma, victimhood, and survivors finally taking a stand against their attackers.
› Posted on September 21 in Fantastic Fest 18, Horror, Review | 1 Comment
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