Back to the "de Sève in the afternoon, Hall in the evening" grind (for one of the more pleasant definitions of "grind")!
We start off with composer Freya Berkhout, actress Jess McLeod, and writer/director/producer Alice Maio Mackey for
Our Effed Up World (with host Justine Smith), which feels like an interesting turn for Mackey in that the trans and nonbinary characters are supporting roles and there was a lot of wanting to see folks like herself up front in her previous films. Maybe not that big a deal, but interesting in terms of whether she's going to have a more commercial career at some point; she mentioned "an IP thing" as part of what's next at the end of the Q&A.
She mentioned that they lucked out finding a video store that could be used as a set, including the genuinely sketchy basement which apparently smelled terrible, but you don't have time or money to clean it on an indie budget. The range of influences for this one was an odd mix, more Kevin Smith and Australian soap operas than the genre elements. I must admit that it's kind of odd to hear "gen-X" as more of an aesthetic description than "the people you grew up with", and folks from Australia talking about something as CW-inspired is kind of like seeing "Black Friday" sales abroad; it feels like it should be a specifically American term since they would be connecting it to something else within their culture, right?
(Also, did Mackey have a tremor last year? She had this thing where she was swinging the microphone back and forth in front of her mouth and it wasn't quite like we could only catch the syllables where it passed in front of lips, but it was oddly distracting!)
After that, I took a meal break because I have not see
Pontypool since its original release and wasn't really up for a Bruce McDonald/Steven McHattie talk (though some friends back home would have loved it). After that, it was back to de Sève for the Korean shorts block, with filmmakers Lee Chang-bee ("I Love Your Alter Ego"), Lee Min-hyun ("Wish You Were Dead"), and Park Jung-yoon ("TROPIC") between the Fantasia hosts/translators. Very fun group of shorts!
Then, across the street for
Beasts Clutching at Straws and
Penny Lane Is Dead, with writer/director Mia'Kate Russell and actresses Alexandra Jensen & Sophia Wright, the latter of whom create very different impressions without the costumes and hairstyles from the movie, with Wright joking that half of being able to be Kat was wearing that outfit, and also joking about how the days when it was an all-woman set were different than when men were around, even if it was just as violent and gory.
Then to bed. Tuesday wound up being
Big Break,
Levitating,
Hayop Ka!, a good burger because I was very late to the pass line for
Someone's Daughter, and
Los Vampires. And, man, I can't believe this has taken me so long to finish that today's the festival's last day, where you'll likely find me at
The Peril at Pincer Point,
City War,
The Fox,
Freaks Part II, and
Jim Queen. Kind of half tempted to rearrange things to see
Gozu, but also trusting that it playing here means some midnight shows back home and a spiffy new disc are on the way.
"Borbulha" ("Pimple")
☆ ☆ ☆ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2026 in Cinema de Sève (Fantasia Underground, DCP)
A pretty simple but entertaining gross-out short from Portugal with Tiago Rodrigues as a kid with a really noticeable pimple getting picked on by bullies until they decide to pop it and, man, they are not going to like what comes out.
I'm pretty sure that this isn't the first pus monster I've seen, but it's impressively gross and filmmaker Fernando Alle uses an impressive combination of gore effects, stop-motion, and puppetry to have it manifest and take out the little brats. The movie is just four minutes long, but Alle crams every beat needed from Rodrigues being sullen to the three victims having individual reactions and a funny denouement. Simple idea exceptionally well-executed!
Our Effed Up World
☆ ☆ ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2026 in Cinema de Sève (Fantasia Underground, DCP)
Alice Maio Mackay has been making micro-budget genre movies that festivals pick up even when they were very rough since she was a teenage girl, and even without the way she spoke in the Q&A after the screening, this is the first time that I find myself wondering what kind of filmmaker she's going to wind up being. She's clearly still learning and straddling the line between making a movie for a broader audience and making it for herself, but
Our Effed Up World is fairly watchable.
It follows Sheri (Sara Thompson), who works in a supermarket with bestie Poppy (Annapurna Sriram), hanging out afterward with Finn (Jess McLeod) and Ash (Karis Oka) at the video store Finn's uncle left them. She's just resolved to dump boyfriend Harry (Jordan Dulieu), who doesn't take it particularly well, wandering about until he comes upon a strange and dangerous meteor - the sort of thing Sheri's astronomer father Hank (Scott Major) knows about because it's his job to watch out for such things.
A major part of the growing pains here are that, both by the amount of time spent and from what she said in the introduction, Mackay is mostly trying to make a hangout film with alien zombies to spice things up, and the latter almost feels like a crutch: The sci-fi/horror is not particularly memorable, and rather than resonating with the characters, mainly seems like an excuse to have them do something other hanging around and saying catty things. That's enjoyable enough in large part because Mackay has a more seasoned cast than usual - Sara Thompson has plenty of higher-profile credits, Scott Major is a bona fide veteran actor, and Annapurna Sriram is a natural goofy best friend - who are mostly able to slip comfortably into character rather than just recite lines on cue.
Those lines are sometimes more than a bit in need of a polish - the scene where Sheri dumps Harry especially makes her feel mean rather than frustrated or fed up - and It's kind of important to remember how young Mackay is because, although she's become a staple of festivals and other programs that want to showcase trans filmmakers, she's actually just now at the age where young filmmakers start working professionally, and only starting to actually be good. This movie still clanks, but not as often or as badly as the last one, which wasn't as rough as the one before that.
Which means I'm not sure whether I'd rather see her continuing to hone her skills or see how she does directing someone else's script, because you can really feel how this film lacks a lot of the connective tissue that ties one moment or aspect of a character to another, or does it awkwardly. Working with a more professional cast helps, but this is still very much someone learning the ropes and feels like it.
"SPEEDY!"
☆ ☆ ☆ ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2026 in Cinema de Sève (Fantasia: CineMapsosa 2026, DCP)
"Child learns the awful truth that adults lie" isn't necessarily a plot that scale to a feature-length film, but it's something that can certainly sing at the length of a short, and this one is charming as all get-out, getting a lot of great mileage from how ridiculous this speed-reading scam can seem when it's not held up by folks you should be able to trust, but, hey, Jung-min might have a bit of a crush on the teacher's prodigy son. The actress NAME turns in a really delightful performance as a bright girl who is shouldering a lot and but still feels like a kid.
The movie also hits its period marks nicely on top of being very earnest about what it can be like on a family that's striving for better but knows it might take some luck, or suddenly finding yourself complicit in something that's maybe not a crime but isn't right.
"Soulmate" '26
☆ ☆ ☆ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2026 in Cinema de Sève (Fantasia: CineMapsosa 2026, DCP)
There may be one too many alter-egos in this movie, between Ji-eun (Jeong Ji-eun), "hot girl Ji-eun" - the persona she adopts as a young actress - and Eun-ho (Kim Mi-ran), the result of dissociative personality disorder brought on by her stepfather's abuse. I spent an embarrassing chunk of this 20 minute movie thinking it was going to be a teenage actress trying to find a way to form a friendship/relationship with the boy next door who mostly knows her screen image.
That's not what this is, though there's a bit of it; instead, it's about Ji-eun being exiled to a mental landscape based upon the spot in the middle of nowhere where her abuse took place It's got all the pieces that go with that, from the taunting internal dialog to the enabling mother, to ultimately deciding to assert oneself, and for the most part done pretty well. Writer/director Lee Chan-bee does a very nice job finding the details that drive certain points home, particularly how there's this sexualization of teenage girls that's not entirely imposed by older men even as it often caters to them, and how Ji-eun's mental prison is abstracted but not cool in any way: It's empty and undeveloped and the sort of thing a city girl like a young actress would find boring.
"Ijen jugeosseumyeon jokenne" ("Wish You Were Dead")
☆ ☆ ☆ ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2026 in Cinema de Sève (Fantasia: CineMapsosa 2026, DCP)
Lee Min-hyuk and co-writer Park Kyu-eun know how to make a good short film: They kick off with a neat premise that has some resonance, kick off in media res, and build a lot of beats around jumping straight to the result of a bad move rather than playing out the bits that are going to require a lot of tricky effects work. You could probably build a feature around a funeral for the controlling patriarch that has him coming back as a zombie and continuing to destroy the family after his death, but this really reduces it to its essentials.
It's got a lot of neat little bits in it, as well: The fact that the male heirs who can deliver offspring are privileged feels annoying and arbitrary as a zombie-movie rule (down to Seo-hyun's father being vulnerable in the way her brother isn't because Dad's had a vasectomy), but it's also annoying and arbitrary in everyday life; Seo-hyun taking a Go board and using it to try and plot an exit - visually, it's a sort of Go/Clue hybrid - is fun improvisation. And Park Seo-yoon is sneakily great as Seo-hyun in part because, while she's clearly the smartest member of the clan and the one with the best chance of figuring out an exit and probably running the family business afterward, there's something a bit unsympathetic about her, like she's not
that upset that the family members who treated her as less important than her dimwit brother and cowardly father are being murdered as they try to execute her plans. This isn't a woman who needs to prove herself to her family so much as one whose potential doesn't have to be linked to their approval.
There's a pretty good path to a longer feature if director Lee wants it, and I suspect a feature would look a bit different from the short, which is why this film is worth twenty minutes whether it leads to something bigger or not.
"TROPIC"
☆ ☆ ☆ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2026 in Cinema de Sève (Fantasia: CineMapsosa 2026, DCP)
Anything can be a metaphor if you work at it enough, such as an aloha shirt, which reminds Choi Sun (Bae Min-su) of both how her sister Seou (Kim Da-a) committed suicide and how she really wanted to get to a happier, more carefree place, even if neither she nor Sun could make it happen. It kind of suggests the Swamp Thing-looking monster and headspace that Sun finds herself in as writer/director Park Jung-yoon bounces her between the present and the past, her two young actresses playing two people with no-one closer even though being together isn't easy.
I really love how Park ends the movie, with Sun wearing a shirt that is clearly faded, either from far too much detergent or repeated washings. That's probably how you have to remember a loved one who has ended her life like that, and it's a nice visual for how Sun will keep as much of Seou with her as she can, even if she can only handle part of her.
Wara Nimo Sugaru Kemonotachi (Beasts Clutching at Straws)
☆ ☆ ☆ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2026 in Théátre Hall (Fantasia Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream
the Korean version (
Prime link for Korean version), or
buy the disc for the Korean version at Amazon
I must admit to being curious about both previous iterations of this story: I recall the Korean film from 2020 being entertaining but also being kind of a miserable viewing experience (the festival streaming platform used in 2020 was terrible), and there are just enough differences between the two movies to make me wonder if this Japanese adaptation of a Japanese novel is closer. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be an official English translation - more mysteries and thrillers from that country are crossing the Pacific than ever before but there are so many! - but both adaptations being pretty good suggests good things about the source material.
It starts with Kanji (Ouji Suzuka), who doesn't seem like much of a "beast"; he's trying to make it as a Vtuber without really having a hook as he works in an internet cafe with private booths and looks after his grandmother with severe dementia in the apartment above her late husband's shuttered barbershop. Things potentially change when a guy who rushed out without paying his bill leaves behind a bag of money. Elsewhere in Tokyo, Ryosuke Ebato (Hiroki Narmiya), a corrupt cop deep in debt to the Goda syndicate, has a line on a college regent who has defrauded his employer. Is that the man who dropped the bag at the internet cafe, or the one who recently started visiting sex worker Mina, who has made a new friend in femme fatale Maria. Speaking of Maria, she seems to know the drill a bit too well when Mina needs to dispose of her abusive husband's body.
There's a twist or two to this, of course, which isn't completely surprising when you get to it, although to be fair I may have had the Korean version in mind when it happened. One thing director/co-wirter Hideo Jojo does fairly well is keep Kanji just busy enough, considering that most of the other threads are more obviously connected. They're not going to collide for a while, but his various frustrations at home are worth watching and entertaining for being darkly comic in a different way than the folks less innocently connected to various crimes. It means the tone doesn't really cause whiplash but the audience doesn't get completely mired in the pure cynicism of backstabbing and threats elsewhere, and there's just enough of that lurking around the edges that it doesn't feel completely separate.
It doesn't hurt that there's a nice supporting cast of characters around the main folks; Kanji's got a cute co-worker who might be a potential partner but doesn't have to be, and his grandmother is out of it in a way that plays as chaos comedy from a remove but which is also a pure nightmare from up close. Ebato's often paired with a driver who seems to haplessly wind up deeper than he intends because he (perhaps unwisely) considers Ebato a friend and a new partner investigating the very fraud he's trying to cover up, with the Goda chief having a hulking and horrifically eccentric good on hand. Mina's got an avid younger client, and Maria's lone-wolf status is fitting but things also lock in when her other connections are revealed. It's not a huge, messy ensemble, but it's one where the "hubs" are very solid indeed and none of the folks in their orbit are entirely one-note jokes.
There's also something very pleasant about how Jojo and company often seem to have come out on the other side of trying to chase the kind of cool that many were after with their intersecting crime narratives in the wake of
Pulp Fiction - Kanji's streaming is small-time enough to be kind of pathetic, and everyone bit Maria is more dork than badass, with Maria explicitly pretty awful. The repetition of a zipper splitting a black screen as a scene transition renders it cute rather than too-clever, and there's fun knowing chaos to how the opening gag is used later.
It's always an odd experience to catch a remake of something after just long enough that the original isn't fresh in one's mind and not know whether good surprises are legit or differences and need bits are not quite pulled off versus vaguely remembered. I'm leaving towards this basically being well done, a chaotic but generally fun caper.
"Best Friends with the Devil"
☆ ☆ ☆ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2026 in Théátre Hall (Fantasia Festival, laser DCP)
Hugo de Sousa comes up with a neat idea for a short here that's really well-positioned between innocent mayhem and something sinister, as Lola (Ellyn Jameson), worried about the disappearance of her friend Amy (Kailee McGee), files a missing person report and follows her trail to David (de Sousa), the last person to see her on a hike. Maybe not wise on the face of it, but when you're starting from the premise of "unfortunate accident" rather than "foul play", not indefensible!
I like how de Sousa plays this both as writer/director and actor, not really tilting the tone into obvious danger but also recognizing that the world can be especially dangerous for women on their own and letting the audience see various red flags without actually waving them in one's face. He gives out new information in ways that recognize that this is a short and maybe shouldn't be too vague for too long, forcing the viewer to really evaluate the situation without it being a slow-down/nod-sagely beat. The end's a mess, but it's a mess from how things started out.
I also always dig when a concussion is an actual big deal.
Penny Lane Is Dead
☆ ☆ ☆ ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2026 in Théátre Hall (Fantasia Festival, laser DCP)
You've got to hand it to writer-director Mia Kate Russell for the title "Penny Lane Is Dead", because when you stand back a bit and look at the movie, it's not necessarily terribly different from others like it, but centering the title character like that sure makes the movie feel like people don't fit into the roles they're supposed to. The movie delivers impressive blood, guts, and women in peril, but feels a lot more off-center than it might.
It starts by introducing us to Penny herself (Bailey Spalding), a pretty blonde with a nice family who just graduated after being accepted into a good school and who genuinely seems to acknowledge and enjoy her good fortune without trying to exploit it. She's heading out to her grandparent's cabin for a girls' weekend with her best friends: Toni (Tahlee Fereday), a tall and sporty girl whom the Lanes took in when her own parents couldn't handle her coming out as gay, and Amy (Alexandra Jensen), mousy and maybe autistic, which is probably not something you'd use to describe an Australian girl in 1986. Not invited is Kat (Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn), Penny's cousin and a constant source of drama, but she shows up anyway, with drugged cupcakes and her boyfriend Angus (Ben O'Toole) not far behind. Angus is a bad'un, the son of a crime boss, and has two goons in tow, with Merrick (Fletcher Humphrys) and old pro who would rather deliver the drugs they have with no fuss but Rodowsky (Steve Le Marquand), like Angus, more inclined to have a little fun with Kat's cousin and her friends, whether they want it or not.
Penny's the title character and Toni's the conventional protagonist, but the movie's center of gravity is Kat, who kind of fascinates in that she's clearly a monster from the word go, but Russell and actress Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn seem to have a pretty good handle on how girls like her get like that. There's not a moment when the movie stops and she explains her sad origin story, but every time Russell finds a way to remind the attackers (and the audience) that these sexy young girls are 17 or 18, you can't help but remember that this applies to Kat as well as Penny, and she's an outcast for what she did as a teenager. Wright dives into the role with abandon, fully committed to Kat's awfulness, but there's always a streak of desperate need to her bad behavior and skimpy outfits, and there are moments when Angus treats Kat terribly and it's very clear she knows this and one wonders if this might be the time she wobbles.
It's a great performance, but doesn't push the rest off the screen; the girls especially are a strong ensemble. Tahlee Fereday and Bailey Spalding are impressive as Toni & Penny; there are early scenes where they discuss the possibility of being more than friends and while they're maybe a bit nervous about letting Amy or Penny's parents in on this, they're both likably confident in who they are and trusting in each other, even if Toni's future isn't quite so certain as Penny's seems to be. Alexandra Jensen's Amy isn't the same - she's seventeen and carries an emotional support stuffie around - but I really like how Jensen doesn't play Amy as a collection of tics and nervousness; she seems to take a second to think before speaking even if she misjudges her words. On the boys' side, Ben O'Toole is entitlement unleashed as Angus, ninety percent repugnant but with the sort of self-assurance that one can see why he might be kind of appealing to someone like Kat or go unquestioned by someone like Fletcher Humphys's Rodowsky who doesn't allow any sympathy into how he helps himself to Angus's scraps. Steve Le Marquand does really well with one of my favorite archetypes, the unrepentant criminal who nevertheless wants to be friggin' professional both for what he tells himself and because leaving a bunch of corpses around is bad for business.
And there will be corpses; it's a pretty gnarly movie where folks are likely to get maimed before being outright killed, and Russell is adept at using that to both make Angus & Kat seem more vicious and Toni's wins more satisfying. The gore team is on point throughout but Russell doesn't entirely lean on them to make the movie work: She doesn't exactly do a slow build but she tends to add momentum more than stopping for a breather, and she's crucially aware that Penny unconscious or dazed is going to create a lot more tension that the audience can grasp than various nasty injuries that much of the audience is going to read as "fun" special effects, and she's good at making sure there's really nothing sexy about it without making things more outwardly grotesque.
Indeed, I think what's kind of exciting about
Penny Lane Is Dead and makes it feel noteworthy more than the setting or the quality of the gore is how the screenplay seems to reflect all the toxic forces at work in good balance: It is absolutely older guys preying on younger girls and even the surfer dudes at the local shop who are basically unproblematic don't serve as a "not all men" counterweight to that, but the engine that drives much of the violence is the jealousy and resentment among young women that is its own real thing even if Penny and her friends are great and casually supportive. Russell doesn't exactly bend things toward a definitive statement here, but she mixes these various impulses together in ways that give the movie a ring of truth even though it is, also, a revenge thriller with a ton of bloody action. It's good stuff, apt to satisfy the gorehounds but play like a real movie to those who want more.
