Preston Barta // Features Editor
It’s time for all the weird genre movie lovers to travel south down I-35 to Austin. The weeklong film festival Fantastic Fest is set to kick off on Thursday, and it has a lot of exciting titles to premiere.
A movie featuring a Danny Devito/Penguin-looking Elijah Wood, anyone? How about four secret screenings that could be absolutely anything? The possibilities are endless, and making picks is going to be difficult.
Below are five projects to pay attention to. Stay tuned for our festival coverage throughout the week. Happy festing!
THE TOXIC AVENGER
Director: Macon Blair
Cast: Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay, Taylour Paige, Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon
Screening: 9/21
Why watch? Umm. Hello? Look at that incredible cast and the director at the helm. The Toxic Avenger, written and directed by Macon Blair (I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore) is not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s a Troma Entertainment movie with a Legendary Pictures budget, which is an amazing thing. Trust me.
This sold-out festival opener reimagines Lloyd Kaufman’s 1984 low-budget cult classic about a toxic waste-basted janitor who becomes a beefy, unmasked Jason Vorhees-like superhero. Knowing Blair’s work (also Blue Ruin, Green Room and Hold the Dark), you can expect things to get wickedly awesome, brutal and spectacularly strange. The studio’s first images – featuring Elijah Wood channeling The Penguin (or a Gregg Turkington character) and Peter Dinklage wearing a pink tutu – tease what’s going to be a memorable opening night feature. Can’t wait!
RAGE
Director: Jorge Michel Grau
Cast: Adrián Aguirre, Marco Antonio, Gilberto Barraza, Francisco Barreiro, and Mayra Batalla
Screening: 9/22 & 9/26
Why watch? An all-time favorite movie of mine is Julia Ducournau’s Raw, a horror drama that held its regional premiere at Fantastic Fest in 2016. Anything with vibes like that film or Let the Right One In — something that puts supernaturalism or its genre elements on the back burner in favor of human drama — will appeal to me. Jorge Michel Grau’s Spanish-language werewolf father-son film Rage (a.k.a. Rabia) seems to have that same flavor. A young boy and his father are looking for a fresh life. They wind up in a rundown, gated community. Some bad people surface, and some bloody things unfold. Give me a contained story with compelling characters and otherworldly/genre activity—a recipe for gold. Watch the trailer here.
THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
Director: Thomas Cailley
Cast: Romain Duris, Paul Kircher, Adèle Exarchopoulos, and Tom Mercier,
Screening: 9/21 & 9/25
Why watch? Speaking of Raw vibes, this French-language thriller has an appetizing premise: a new illness is spreading across the globe, slowly mutating people into animals. Is this the Animorphs movie every ‘90s kid has ever wanted? Jokes aside, The Animal Kingdom sounds gripping. It’s about a human mother turning into a wolf and a government operation trying to treat her. She escapes, and her family goes looking for her. Then, suddenly, the son starts to develop strange new, animal-like behaviors. At least, that’s what I could gather from the descriptions I read. It could be a whole other, uh, animal entirely. Either way, it should be ambitious, and I’m down.
SECRET SCREENINGS
dir. Unknown
Cast: Unknown
Screening 9/23 (#1), 9/24 (#2), 9/26 (#3) & 9/27 (#4)
Why watch? Besides “ice cold,” what’s cooler than being seated for a mystery movie? Let me tell you, it’s one of the most thrilling experiences ever. Sometimes, it could be as massively exciting as Guillermo del Toro or M. Night Shyamalan introducing their new film or as curve ball-y as watching an international release that wasn’t on your radar at all but winds up being fantastic. Anything goes! And there are four secret screenings this year, all of which promise to be new releases. Maybe it’s the Nic Cage-starring A24 film Dream Scenario, Saw X, or Richard Linklater’s Hit Man. Let’s keep the predictions going!
PET SEMATARY: BLOODLINES
Director: Lindsey Anderson Beer
Cast: Jackson White, Henry Thomas, David Duchovny, Samantha Mathis and Pam Grier
Screening: 9/23
Why watch? Pet Sematary is one of my favorite Stephen King novels if not my favorite. The 1989 and 2019 film adaptations are both excellent. So, the idea of adding to the spooky world of reanimated corpses, creepy dead animals and people up to no good sounds like my cup of tea. Throw in an impressive ensemble cast, a new director and a 1969 setting, and you got something that’s sure to disturb and amaze you. Not to mention that this story centers on a young Jud Crandall (Jackson White). Fingers crossed the filmmakers expand themes and take the material to some dark and interesting places.
Other films/series to watch: The Fall of the House of Usher, The Creator, The Origin, Cobweb, V/H/S/85, Your Lucky Day, Eileen, Sleep, The Last Video Store, and Jackdaw
Fantastic Fest will be active Sept. 21-28 in Austin, Texas. It will be located at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar. All screening and badge information is on fantasticfest.com.
