6 Films at the 2023 Fantasia Film Festival to Look Forward To
A preview of six exciting films at the upcoming Fantasia Festival, from July 20 — August 9, 2023
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the films being covered here wouldn’t exist.
I’m in full support of the ongoing strikes. To the best of my knowledge, none of the films previewed here were produced by struck companies, as per the WGA list. I will also not be conducting interviews at the festival so as to avoid asking anyone to do promotional work.
This will be my fourth year virtually attending the Fantasia Film Festival, a genre festival that takes place in Toronto. As in years past, I’m looking forward to getting eyes on some of the most exciting films around, and I’m looking forward to writing about the ones I like best! Here are five films I can’t wait to check out, and you can find the full program here.
#MANHOLE (dir. Kazuyoshi Kumakiri) [Japan]
I love a single-location thriller where someone gets trapped somewhere, and that’s where most of the movie takes place. ATM, Trapped Sisters: 12 Feet Deep, 47 Meters Down, Frozen, The Pool… I’ll watch ’em all. In director Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s Japanese thriller #Manhole, a man falls down a manhole. As you do. He’s played by J-POP boyband member Yuto Nakajima from Hey! Say! JUMP!, and Fantasia’s description of the film suggests the good-looking star gets put through quite the ringer.
A single location like this forces a film to get inventive to keep from becoming boring, and by all accounts it seems like #MANHOLE finds enough to do in order to keep things fresh.
Current Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 86% Fresh
FEMME (dir. Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping) [UK]
I love a revenge thriller, and I love drag queens, and Femme combines both in one! What could go wrong? The movie is about a drag queen (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) who is gay-bashed one night after a show. Months later, he runs into one of his attackers (George MacKay) in a sauna, and he decides to seduce him as a pathway to revenge.
Femme got rave reviews out of the Berlinale, and I am looking forward to checking it out for myself! Fantasia’s description of the film promises a film that is “incredibly layered, and built around two astounding performances.”
Current Rotten Tomatoes rating: 90% Fresh
HOME INVASION (dir. Graeme Arnfield) [UK]
I love an experimental found-footage documentary film (LXHXN, Road Movie, or Self-Portrait). We, as a species, are generating so much footage of ourselves at all times now; I like seeing directors sift through the assorted castoff footage on the internet in order to craft a film. Director Graeme Arnfield’s Home Invasion is a film about the history of the doorbell, tracing it from its invention all the way up through the Ring cameras that now capture so much of daily life around the home. He uses footage from those cameras to tell stories of people having their homes invaded… a classic horror premise.
Fantasia writes, “Part experimental horror film (recalling, in its affect, 2022’s cult sensation SKINAMARINK), part nightmarish essay film framed through an oppressive peephole, this [is a] rigorous, genre-defying documentary.” Sign me up.
This film is not yet on Rotten Tomatoes, but it played at the Berlinale.
LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL (dir. Cameron and Colin Cairnes) [USA]
I love David Dastmalchian. I got to see him do a Q&A for The Boogeyman recently, and he was just as enjoyably weird as you would hope. In Late Night With the Devil, he plays a 1970s TV host planning a devilish broadcast for Halloween night. It’s a found-footage documentary about a night that went horribly wrong, centering around the early days of the Satanic panic — something else I love. (I didn’t get a chance to review Satan Wants Her out of the Chattanooga Film Festival, but it’s fantastic and is sure to be a hit when it gets released).
Fantasia writes, “Coming at you like an anxiety-wracked bat out of mass-media hell, Late Night with the Devil is an innovative horror treat with heaps of wicked tricks.” Hit me, David Dastmalchian.
Current Rotten Tomatoes rating: 100% Fresh
THE SACRIFICE GAME (dir. Jenn Wexler) [Canada]
I love Christmas horror. The Sacrifice Game takes place at a boarding school over Christmas break, as a bunch of students who stayed there over break find themselves besieged by a group of people who want to hurt them. Holiday horror almost always works for me; something about Christmas lights in a horror setting feels inherently cinematic in a way I can never get enough of.
Fantasia writes, “They go toe-to-toe with ruthless, Manson-esque villains headed by Mena Massoud, who does a 180 from his role as the lead in Disney’s Aladdin to become the sinister, egotistical Jude.” I thought Massoud was by far the best part of Aladdin, and I’m excited to see him take on a role like this.
This film is not yet on Rotten Tomatoes; it will be released by Shudder this fall.
VINCENT MUST DIE (dir. Stéphan Castang) [France]
I loved the beginning of Beau is Afraid. All those scenes where Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) finds himself overcome with paranoia that everyone on the street is out to get him… great stuff. In Vincent Must Die, everyone on the street is, indeed, out to get Vincent (Karim Leklou). Everyone he meets — from his coworkers to people in the store to randoms on the street — is trying to kill him.
Fantasia’s writeup calls the film a “paranoia-driven nightmare.” This kind of movie is exactly why I love the Fantasia Festival.
Current Rotten Tomatoes rating: 100% Fresh
Stay tuned for my continuing coverage from the festival! I’m covering it remotely, so I’m not certain which of these films I’ll actually get to screen quite yet. Regardless, I’ll have numerous reviews from the festival in the coming weeks. You can follow me on twitter or threads to keep on top of my Fantasia Festival experience!
