Fantasia 2026.02: Trauma or, Monsters All; "Yucky Guy"; Dance Freak; "Cardigan"; Mum, I'm Alien Pregnant; and Blaise

I started the day by misreading the time for Trauma or, Monsters All as 1:45pm rather than 1:15pm, which means when I got there at 1:30pm, the film was just starting because it had a nice long intro. I occasionally complain about that sort of thing causing films to bump into each other, but in this case it worked out for me, so I'll try not to whine later!

It did mean there wasn't a whole lot of time for the post-film Q&A with DP Sharif El Neklawy, producers Tilson Allen-Merry & Gaby Leyner, actress Aitana Doyle, and writer/director/editor/producer/co-star Larry Fessenden. One thing that sort of made my eyebrows go up but wasn't followed up on was that he called it "a late film and maybe a last film", which is a bit surprising - though a lot of folks are thinking about retiring at his age, artists generally have another decade or two in them - but as a producer, I suspect he knows the reality of his viability as a director. Horror's often a young person's game, and one of the things he did was thank Doyle and the other younger cast members for pointing out when he was behind the times, which she laughed at in a "yeah, we had to do that" way (as opposed to "Larry's just being silly and self-deprecating").

It was also apparently an unusually tricky shoot, even though he lives in the town where he shot it - not only did he have to find two houses right next to each other that had the right properties, but co-star Alex Breaux was doing Stranger Things on Broadway, which means he was only available to shoot on Mondays. It also meant getting the cast of Depraved and Blackout together, and while I suspect it's not as hard as it might be if you're based in New York and have a lot of friends like Fessenden, but with that schedule it's probably some work. That's also where he mentioned that James Le Gros doesn't really like horror, but they go back.

Next up: Justine Smith with Dance Freak director/DP Alan Resnick and director/writer/actor Robby Rackleff, and I must admit, though I like Justine a lot, when she's hosting a screening, it's probably the Underground section she programs, and that's kind of an empty-slot choice for me most of the time. I've enjoyed some, but that's getting lucky.

Anyway, I didn't really like their movie, and I sort of enjoyed their Q&A mostly as a comedy act where Resnick was the pro trying to make his friend look good. Sometimes you just aren't quite sure whether folks making a movie like this and taking it to festivals did it as a lark and are enjoying the ride even if they're kind of out of their depth, sort of contemptuous in an "I can't believe you paid money for this thing we crapped out" way, or doing a bit. It's usually the first, but, man, can this sort of thing not be my sort of thing.

Next up, crossing the street and having writer/actor Hans Obma of "CARDIGAN!" ask how many of us have ever heard Welsh, and, you know, I don't know if I've ever seen a short or a feature in Welsh before. His was fun!

It played before Mum, I'm Alien Pregnant, with "THUNDERLIPS" - Jordan Windsor (holding the alien baby) & Sean Wallace, because I guess music video guys have to also be named like a band - talking about how, yeah, it is kind of odd that a couple of dudes were making a movie about pregnancy and childbirth. Windsor pointed out that, once you have a kid (even as a father), you find out that every woman has some sort of horrific pregnancy story, and they made sure that they got a lot of outside input while making their film, and they requested to get more questions from folks who weren't dudes when the first few were guys. Aside from that, they mentioned that it took a circuitous path to production - they wrote a feature script, got told that it would sell easier with a short, so they pulled ten pages out, made a short, brought that to a Melbourne film market, and then got to make the feature. Hannah Lynch stars in both, and they said they cast her in large part because her personality is fairly close to Mary.

After that, I had some time to kill before heading up to the Museum for Blaise, amused to overhear in line that Nicolas Winding Refn had been at the Ultraman documentary because he's a major fan.

Next up, an oddly late start on Saturday with some gaps as it's mostly events before the "Anime no Bento" package, then Break Free and Unidentified Murder; Sunday looks like Niko, the International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, You Are the Film, and Attack on Paradise, with Blades of the Guardians, Pontypool, and Redline all recommended. Just a coupleof those weird days where you've got to stay in one screen to maximize movies but I'm apparently building in meal breaks.


Trauma or, Monsters All

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2026 in Cinema J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival, laser DCP)
One gets the feeling that Larry Fessenden had the idea for doing a crossover when he realized that Blackout would mean he'd directed vampire, Frankenstein, and werewolf pictures, but didn't necessarily have a great story when he started doing the work of a producer to bring people back, and one didn't come together when the schedules lined up. That probably makes the whole thing a little more meta than intended, with everyone sort of aware that they're in a monster mashup even if they're not quite winking at the camera.

He returns us to Talbot Falls, where historian Cassandra (Laëtitia Hollard) has moved looking for some quiet as she begins a book on George Washington Carver, taking a job in the library and making friends with Agnes (Aitana Doyle). Having read about the werewolf incident that took place a couple years ago, she begins to suspect that her next-door neighbor who locks himself in the basement during the full moon is actually Charley (Alex Hurt), whom everyone presumes is dead. Reading up a little more suggests that his housemate Adam (Alex Breaux) is the Frankenstein's monster that was said to beset a neighboring town a couple years earlier (in Depraved). Wanting to write about something in the present rather than from a hundred years ago, she pitches an editorial to the local paper about how the trauma of those events is like monsters in their midst, though Charley's girlfriend Sharon (Addison Timlin) is looking to get into contact with him. Not only does that raise the hackles of a lot of people who don't like an outsider coming in and trying to analyze them, but things like that get online these days, which attracts the attention of a biotech investor (Joshua Leonard) who has been looking for Adam, but also Sam (Larry Fessenden), who became a vampire 30 years earlier and is intrigued at the idea of other monsters relatively nearby.

If Sam's presence sounds kind of odd, it is; when Fessenden mentioned that this might be his next project after Blackout played the festival three years ago, it sounded like he intended to have Meredith Snaider from Habit return as Anna, but he apparently could not track her down or interest her in participating. I'm not sure she would have been a better fit, although the tone might have been different, since the exposition and "let me expound upon some themes" moments carry a different weight coming from the very recognizable writer/director of the film playing an earthier character than Snaider's Anna. Even taking that into account, there are an awful lot of people status-dumping more than conversing or acting, after doing things that the film needs even if they don't arise naturally, jawing about where things stand in the aftermath of Blackout, with Cassandra also spending a lot of time worrying about the book she's writing in a way that doesn't always feel like it connects to the rest of the story (and boy howdy, do people comment on how she's telling uncomfortable truths while being named "Cassandra" a few times). It's a scenario in search of a plot. Fessenden is kind of onto something in terms of poking around the idea of trauma and recovery, likening the end of a horror movie to a mass shooting/casualty event that scars a place and attracts outsiders trying to use it for their often good-natured but insensitive ends, but mostly winds up restating it rather than developing it.

He's put together a nice cast, though, especially in terms of the newcomers - young leads Laëtitia Hollard and Aitana Doyle are really charming, and although it can sometimes feel a little frustrating, there's something very real and earnest about the way Hollard's Cassandra naively stumbles and repeatedly uses "I'm just connecting what's already out there" as a shield. A hangout movie with Hollard and Doyle as these characters would be quite enjoyable, and that really helps when wheels are mostly turning in the background. The returning folks do a fair job of sketching out who they are in a little time, possibly enough that the exposition and flashbacks could have been cut back a bit. Alex Breaux is a standout as Adam, playing kind of simple and brain-damaged without doing Karloff or struggling to get words out to hammer that home.

There's a fair amount to keep track of happening kind of randomly, even if there's not a whole lot of actual horror movie action and gore for most of the film, with what there is feeling a bit obligatory even if it's well-executed. Even the climax seems like something a movie has to do rather than entirely where threads were heading, although Fessenden earns the emotions his finale is aiming to stir when they finally hit.

Would a little more time ruminating on the script have made Trauma a more fitting climax to 30 years of Fessenden putting his spin on classic monsters, or was the idea always more enticing than what could be pulled together from the previous three movies?


"Yucky Guy"
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2026 in Cinema J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Underground, laser DCP)

What can I say, this is a sort of absurdity that doesn't really connect with me at all; I keep waiting for it go somewhere but it's really "'people sleeping through chaos in their grand but featureless mansion', 'dogs wearing diapers', and "tresspasser pees to mark territory' are funny" and not a whole lot else. I mean, sure, they are funny, but once the concept has presented itself, I just want a bit more than this movie does.

It's also 13 minutes long, and it kind of makes me think about how a lot of people don't necessarily need something to be funny to laugh, but it's sort of their default way of breaking tension, and a lot of this sort of comedy seems to confuse effect with cause.


Dance Freak

* * (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2026 in Cinema J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Underground, laser DCP)

A thing about a lot of "Underground" movies is that they're not just acquired tastes that may not match one's sense of humor or kink, but they are often actively unpleasant to watch under a lot of circumstances, such as sitting close to the front of the auditorium for Dance Freak. It's a grainy black-and-white film with frequent strobing made by viral-video specialists and probably meant to be viewed on a tablet or maybe a television, a contained rectangle rather than the entirety of what one can see. It's harsh to look at and the filmmakers don't really give an audience a lot of reasons to do that.

It introduces us to Obie (Robby Rackleff), a sort of sad sack whose girlfriend Dorty (Megan Koester) is running for office and starting to explicitly leave him behind rather than just by implication, and who is apparently mainly employed because everyone else at the office has forgotten how to access systems. He's trying to take up birdhouse building as a hobby, but it's not going that well. That's about the time when the Dance Freak starts showing up, somehow hypnotizing folks and deflating them while they are in their trance. A scientist at the lab where it was created, Dr. Dilly Gorgul (Sheila Mears) tells Obie it "looks just like you but is a separate entity" and then runs for the wasteland, mostly leaving Obie and Dorty to handle the situation.

Filmmakers Robby Rackleff & Alan Resnick give Obie the sort of surreal micro-budget film world where things are sort of empty and eccentric where we can see it though there are hints that it gets truly bizarre just out of sight, and that's good for a few good gags at worst and a fairly constant stream of chuckles if your mileage varies in that direction. The trick is often finding something that sounds not quite right in a particular way, such as names like "Obie" and "Dorty" and "Gorgul", and saying them with a straight face. It's easy to milk jokes like that too far; a street gang called "the Salad Boys" earns a chuckle when the name is tossed out but fizzles quickly when they try to play the gag much longer. A lot of the movie is deadpan where the silence after a joke without a punchline is held too long or they keep going, sure there's a bit that will convince someone that this is funny.

If the jokes in this sort of movie don't land, it can still work if there's something interesting to grab onto, but that's seldom the case here. Obie and Dorty are not particularly personable either individually or as a pair, and the idea of the Dance Freak doesn't quite coalesce, either as an awkward expression of Obie trying to feel joy or him draining/feeling drained by the world. It's like a whole movie based on the snidest reading of Peter Parker dancing like a dork in Spider-Man 3, and by the end, the storytelling is muddled - it's Obie's story, but he's out of action, and the chemistry between Obie and Dorty isn't enough to let her work as the lead later on.

There are a couple of bright spots - Sheila Mears actually gets to make Gorgul a character, giving a bit of a "knows what danger looks like" edge to her ivory-tower dorkiness - but I seldom found it funny enough to be worth looking at.


"Cardigan"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2026 in Théátre Hall (Fantasia Festival, laser DCP)

I don't want to belabor how much I enjoyed "Cardigan"; it's a five-minute short that doesn't quite have one joke but leans on its main gag enough that parsing it in a review can deflate it. But, as such things go, it's executed very well: Writer Hans Obma and Lois Meleri Jones hit the right notes as a couple that the audience can identify with when faced with something unfair but also just privileged enough that we feel like they may have something coming; Iwan John and Bethany Williams-Potter are an enjoyable odd couple as the police officers the run afoul of. The main joke of just how much this town identifies with its namesake clothing is goofily absurd and pivots to something that delivers a wry grin at the end.

It's a five-minute comedy sketch, but it's a good one.


Mum, I'm Alien Pregnant

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2026 in Théátre Hall (Fantasia Festival, laser DCP)

Where the short that preceded Mum, I'm Alien Pregnant is adroit with its gag, the feature uses a sledgehammer, but it's got a target that can use a good sledging and seemingly never forgets something that a lot of absurd comedies forget, including one I saw earlier in the day: Make everything as weird as you want, because people and situations are weird, but do it by pushing something very familiar to an extreme that one can still recognize.

So we meet Mary (Hannah Lynch), nearly 30 and still living with her mother Cynthia (Yvette Parsons), who simultaneously harangues her for being a layabout but also doesn't give her any space whatsoever. Mary's got an odd kink in that she really enjoys tentacle hentai, which brings us to the neighbors, whom we meet as Ann (Jackie van Beek) tries to get her son Boo (Arlo Green) to do something other than masturbate in his room, seeing as that causes the power to flicker. When Mary and Boo bump into each other in the laundry room, she discovers that Boo was conceived when his mother was abducted by aliens, and he has the glorious tentacled genitalia of her dreams. They only agree to masterbate, but, well, his jizz is powerful, spraying across the room and dissolving her pants - and, apparently, alien fetuses grow faster than Mary can convince people she wants no part of being a mother.

Writer Jordan Mark Windsor and his co-director Sean Wallace don't mess around, letting the audience see what Boo's got between his legs in the first ten or fifteen minutes rather than playing coy, and it's kind of a brave decision, because it's going to be a while before they can really escalate from that sort of prosthetic weirdness. They don't retreat from it - among all the other fluids, Mary's morning sickness is a colorful, gooey mess - but it's not quite the movie where they're going to try to top the last crazy thing you saw every ten minutes, although when the climax comes, it's great, just as weirdly practical and weirdly organic as one might hope after setting the bar high at the beginning.

Part of the point may be to get a big early laugh that hooks the audience - this movie is weird and gross enough that its theatrical run might be limited, so you've got to give the folks streaming it something to whet their appetites at the start - but I suspect that part of it is how frankness is the engine driving the movie, and spending the next hour and a half letting the audience see all the ways pregnancy can wreak havoc on a woman's turned up to 11 isn't really compatible with getting cute about just what put Mary in this position. Windsor & Wallace are careful never to be scolding; Mary wears her kink on her sweatshirt even if she doesn't want her mother, Boo, or anything else all up in her business, and folks being matter-of-fact about things is seldom played as foolish. There's not really a villain here - all these people are trying to do their best by Mary and Boo even as they're confused and trying to act normal in the face of it, despite the situation being pretty darn abnormal.

The cast sells that great, especially Hannah Lynch, whose Mary is annoyed and sarcastic and winds up snapping at a lot of people but seldom comes off as mean; she's probably funny if weird under better circumstances. She bounces off Yvette Parsons's Cynthia well, the latter always seeming to take up extra space with a working class accent that you can see as a constant embarrassment to Mary. Cynthia herself is a contrast to Ann, all reserve and fear that puts a quiver in her voice when she tries to protect authority. Arlo Green gives a really nifty performance, exaggeratedly reserved and tentative at the start, but in a way audiences will quickly buy into, but doing a nice job of coming out of his shell as having an actual friend and a sense of responsibility displace shame.

The secret sauce might be the small army of folks playing doctors, nurses, pharmacists and the like who all deliver the right blend of disbelief, surprise, curiosity, and ultimately professionalism in the face of this bizarre pregnancy. As much fun as the gnarly practical effects are, a lot of what makes the movie work minute to minute is the mix of how health care can be an impossible bureaucracy to navigate despite being filled with individuals who mostly want to make things better on the one hand and how this crisis clarifies who these four people are, especially to themselves.

And it's impressively gross.


Blaise

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2026 in Cinema du Musée (Fantasia Animation Plus, DCP)
Buy the original book en français at Amazon

Blaise is kind of a weird-looking movie, not quite the CGI equivalent of animating mouth movement onto photographs, but residing in a very particular spot in the uncanny valley where a still looks like it might be live action but looks more and more unreal and off-putting as you stare or watch it in motion, and that's the movie in a nutshell: Seemingly-relatable cringe comedy that gets very weird, very quickly, but still has the chops to get some big laughs.

Blaise Sauvage (voice of Timéo) is 16 and friendless at high school because he's more than a bit weird, but comes by it honestly - father Jacques (voice of Jacques Gamblin) is a ball of neurosis and mother Carole (voice of Léa Drucker) has a real knack for saying the wrong thing and being absolutely unable to explain her error and recover. They try to get him to reconnect with the daughter of Carole's friend Marisa, which leads to him getting dragged along to a party and protest where he meets Joséphine (voice of Nina Blanc-Francard), who crushes on him immediately but both make things needlessly complicated by pretending to be something they're not.

The film is co-written and co-directed by Dimitri Planchon, who created the original bandes dessinée, and it feels very much like a certain style of comics: It's made of a lot of little vignettes, as likely to end with a sort of unnerving ambiguity as a punchline, which helps the movie bounce around a bit, rather than get mired in the boringly serious moments that connect one funny bit to the next, very helpful for this sort of dry, French comedy where what's functional could dilute what's deadpan or transgressive without the viewer quite realizing why it's not as funny throughout as it could be.

That deadpan style puts a fair amount of responsibility on the voice cast, since the animation isn't going to help out with wild takes very often, so there's got to be a fair amount of nuance. Jacques Gamblin is maybe the standout, giving Jacques a sort of soft-spoken nervousness that adds to the slightly shaggy image on the screen, while Léa Drucker makes sure Carole seems (over) confident at home and then brings a hint of panic to her voice that doesn't quite contradict the professional mien at work. Timéo's performance as Blaise is kind of flatter, an introverted teenage drone, while Nina Blanc-Francard does a good poor little rich girl, sympathetic even as she's often kind of awful.

That all makes the film sound kind of small, offering a chuckle or two at most, but Planchon, co-writer Clémence Lebatteux, and co-director Jean-Paul Guigue both make sure that the film has outstanding timing and a satirical punch, often positioning the Sauvage's petty concerns against angry protesters in a way that makes the family look petty and thus more absurd even as a lot of the radicals are plenty ridiculous in their own way. There's not a misconception that they can't escalate into a disaster, with the path out of it both clear to see and impossible to take, and when all else fails, there's Chekhov's hand grenade threatening to take what is an irritation and make it literally explode.

It's a very, very funny movie, bouncing expertly between the squirms of recognition and belly-laughs of disbelief, and only enhanced by how it so often looks almost normal.

We Were Dangerous

I'm mildly surprised this isn't hanging on into next week, especially since the Somerville isn't getting any of the two big openers this weekend - they've got a live event, Ran, and Friendship, because the theater was quite full when I got there last night. Granted, it's not terribly difficult to make screen #2 in the Somerville Theatre look relatively full, but I figured this might indicate good word-of-mouth that gets it a little more life. It's apparently hanging around at West Newton for another week, but they've got six screens to play with rather than three.

Anyway, still at the Somerville Wednesday and Thursday. I liked it more than expected, and kind of hope my nieces are reading because the girls in it are about their age, this seems like their kind of thing, and though I doubt that it's playing anywhere near them in Southern Maine, maybe they'll look it up on JustWatch in a couple months.


We Were Dangerous

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 May 2025 in Somerville Theatre #2 (first-run, DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

It's been some time since I was the age of the kids in this movie and I was never a young girl, so I don't know if We Were Dangerous necessarily rings true, but it feels like it does. Or, maybe, it reflects one's memories from a few years later, that even when adolescence is far from carefree, kids can find a lot more fun and joy than you might expect from experiences that mingle with horror.

It opens inside a New Zealand "School for Incorrigible & Delinquent Girls" with a trio trying to plot a break-out (only one gets out and it may not quite be an "escape"). This gets the facility moved to an island that has previously been used as a fort, a leper colony, and a staging area for a trip to Antarctica. The two Maori girls who tried to help their friend escape are Nellie (Erana James), stubborn and defiant, and Daisy (Manaia Hall), impulsive and eager; they describe themselves as "cousins, but not in the white sense" to new arrival Louisa (Nathalie Morris), who unlike most of the girls is white and from a very nice home, but called a "sexual delinquent" for being caught making out with her female tutor. They become fast friends despite or because of the Matron (Rima Te Wiata) having it in for them, but being placed in the worst, leakiest cabin also gives them an eye on how this place can become worse.

For American viewers, executive producer Taika Waititi will probably be the most familiar name in the credits, and while the film doesn't have his particular fingerprints on it, you can put this movie beside his work and see the same sort of Maori sense of humor, a wry sense of absurdity that takes a cock-eyed view of the world. The front half of the movie, especially is loaded with great deadpan verbal and visual gags, with newcomer Maniana Hall a real find as someone who can make the fact that Daisy is uneducated and naive about three quarters of the joke while the rest is that Daisy is actually a funny kid the rest. It's a very funny movie, much more than I perhaps expected.

That makes the shift to things being serious work even better; director Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu (who has an "additional writing" credit after writer Maddie Dai) never has the movie screech to a halt to say that fun time is over, and now we're getting serious even as she does linger on something intended to make one feel sick to one's stomach. She's more likely to present it in a way that reminds the audience that it was always there, and girls like Nellie and Daisy already knew it was there, even if others were able to ignore it. Stewart-Te Whiu may raise the stakes for the audience and start driving things to a climax, but there's a steadiness to how she does it that, in the end, reminds you that Nellie and Daisy, at least, are the same girls who tried to help a friend at the very start.

And they're great girls. Erana James's Nellie may, as the Matron's narrator claims, think she already knows everything, but James plays her as not just observant and clever, but smart enough to not to bring out the sharpest edge of her sarcasm until it's really necessary, and not prematurely cynical even though life has treated her badly. Hall, as mentioned, is a newcomer (IMDB says she auditioned for the role as a joke), but it's easy to see why the filmmakers cast her; she's not just funny but capable of expressing Daisy's worry and shame, and expressing big emotions by speaking plainly. Nathalie Morris, of course, comes at things from a different angle, making Lou someone who could be snobbish but is just self-aware enough not to be, although her reactions when both Nellie and the Matron call her on her privilege are impressive as well.

On the other side, Rima Te Wiata gives a terrific performance as The Matron. We don't necessarily need for the film to have her narrate flashbacks to her younger years with a couple young actors, perhaps, because we can see who she is fairly clearly, although those scenes really cement that she's not a well-meaning outsider but a Maori who is complicit, having absorbed the disdain of her oppressors. Indeed, there's something heartbreaking about her sincerity when she says she's looking out for the girls; the matron is not entirely a good person who has been used as a tool by evil, but there's enough of that in her to make her a pitiable villain.

It's a great-looking film, especially once it gets to the island. Stewart-Te Whiu does a fine job of contrasting the mostly-unspoiled beauty of the location with its malign intent, often creating the feeling of visiting a preserved historical site and having it sink in that there's danger behind its quaintness. She regularly flips the costuming between school uniforms and jumpsuits that scan as not quite prison garb but close enough, and the matron's narration is carefully contrasted against action that undermines it. All this double duty keeps things tight; there's really not a wasted minute despite the film often seeming more ambling and observational than focused, right down to the final minutes which don't dawdle at all.

Fantasia 2024.07: "Ring Neck", Kryptic, FAQ, "Elves on the Edge", Carnage for Christmas, "What the Hell", Frankie Freako, "Réel", and The Soul Eater

Another day in De Sève for the afternoon, then across the street pretty quickly.

We start with the makers of Kryptic: Director Kourtney Roy, producers Amber Ripley & Josh Huculiak, and actor Jason Deline (kind of them to stand in the same order they're listed on the website, so I can just copy and paste). Nice folks all, even if I didn't love their movie.

I'm kind of amused at Roy answering a question about how she kept the time period vague by avoiding phones and mocking up computer screens that looked like their from the 1990s with "I hate seeing cell phones in movies". Like, maybe you're older than you look, but you don't appear to have spent that much time with phones on the wall rather than in the pocket. Sure, it's harder, but I kind of wonder how many folks a hundred years ago were setting movies in the 1890s because they hated seeing automobiles in movies.

Two movies and a trip across the street later, we meet Valerie Barnhart, who is wearing a dress featuring the main character of her animated short. Not much time to discuss things when you're introducing the short before someone else's movie, but that's pretty cool.

Frankie Freako was the main event of the night, and writer/director Steve Kostanski brought up cinematographer Pierce Derks (with Frankie) and Mike & Dave (with a robot) from the art department. This once again demonstrates my favorite thing about Q&As, which is demonstrating how often the people making off-the-wall stuff are often not guys you would peg as that if you saw them on the street at all; Kostanski made a downright bizarre movie but he's not really doing "hello fellow weirdos" here, but mostly talking about they practical matters of combining floppy and solid pieces, co-ordinating with multiple puppeteers, and the like.

I noticed Kostanski thanked in the credits of another, not-particularly-fantastical Canadian indie a few days later, and get the impression that he's mostly just a really solid guy. I suspect that you don't become a mainstay even in wacky cult film circles if you are not, on some level, a person who just gets work done without a lot of fuss or being abrasive enough to alienate collaborators while the egotistical "geniuses" burn bridges and burn out.

One last photo with Mitch Davis and "Réel" director Rodrigue Huart, whose short ran before The Soul Eater. Seemed glad to be here!


I was hoping to get this posted before the end of the festival, but I wound up drained enough that I am, instead, posting from the airport a few days later. I'lll at least be trying to get rest of these out fairly quickly; there's enough banked on Letterboxd that I hope I can knock out shorts and expand features by the end of August or sometime in September.


"Ring Neck"

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows, laser DCP)

An underrated thing that happens in horror stories is when someone who should know looks at the protagonist early on and is like "why would you even do that?" Indeed, one of the more oddly satisfying things about this short is that it is more or less bookended by this: The tattoo artist (Andrea Pavlovic) at the start saying "you know, I don't think we should use this much ash" and on the other saying "no, get to a hospital, this is weird and I don't want to have any part of it!" David (Antoine Olivier Pilon) doesn't listen, of course, and she caves, but it's a neat pivot to say the premise is kind of dumb but make you believe the characters would go through with it anyway.

That's kind of more interesting than what's going on with the rest of the movie, which at times feels like it's built out of the pieces writer/director/producer/set decorator Vasili Manikas had on hand once he and his team locked down the prosthetics work, because it's all kind of scattershot. David's got a girlfriend (Sarah Swire) because the movie needs someone upset about his retreating, and Swire does more than go through the motions, but it never feels like a relationship with a history or anything in common. His work in a recording studio feels off. The recently deceased pet that has him depressed is a pigeon, and not only is that one of the most expressionless creatures alive, but there's something weird about mourning the unconditional love you get from a pet you keep in a cage.

The transformation work is nicely done, and Manikas and his crew stage the movie in a way that creates a strong mood. You can enjoy that work for what it is, but the bigger thing it's part of doesn't quite hold.


Kryptic

* * (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows, laser DCP)

Usually, when I remind myself to review the film I saw, rather than the one I wanted to see, it's about putting aside impressions I'd formed even before entering the theater; but I suppose it applies to Kryptic too. In this case, I can't necessarily say I was baited and switched, but I did find that the vibe changed enough that what had me excited near the start was gone by the end, and that's a lousy feeling to get from a movie.

It opens with Kay Hall (Chloe Pirrie) joining a nature hike, nervous about meeting new people; at one point a guide mentions that this is the area where cryptozoologist Barbara Valentine went missing while trying to catch a glimpse of the local cryptid, the Sooka. Kay goes off the trail and encounters the creature, which leaves her shaken, goop coming out of her ears, and amnesiac. When she arrives home, nothing looks familiar, and trying to research the Sooka reveals something shocking: She is, at the very least, a dead ringer for Valentine, whose husband Morgan (Jeff Gladstone) has apparently been using her disappearance to raise his own profile. She's already shaken to the core when someone attempts to break into her home through the front widow. Not sure what else to do, she flees back to the trail and across Western Canada, trying to find others who have encountered the Sooka, often using Valentine's name.

I found Kryptic engrossing for its first leg, as Kay is searching for answers and expressing revulsion at her life, but eventually attempts to actually solve the mystery fall by the wayside to be replaced with random drifting and gross-out bits that don't excite or repel or intrigue. It just abandons its hook, wandering from place to place until it finally alights somewhere that might be kind of interesting, and is likely actually the natural place for the movie to land, except that the route to get there is so convoluted and full of likely-unintentional red herrings that it might not mean anything when one arrives.

A large part of it might be a specific sort of misinterpretation built on my own perspective, a "you'd get it if you were a woman" thing, but I also tend to think that writer Paul Bromley and director Kourtney Roy are often too cavalier with their usage of genre: The cryptid, the goop, and all the mysterious disappearances of the people Kay meets in her travels, are signaling something paranormal, a possession or doppelganger story, enough that I at least never considered the idea that Kay had been Barbara all along and had escaped an abusive home life. It perhaps makes the most sense thematically and with what she does, but not only is there so much else going on, little is done to indicate that Kay may be a recent creation - her house looks lived-in, nobody mentioned she moved there recently, she's got a career that requires professional accreditation, and she stayed in a place and went on a hike where people might be looking for Barbara Valentine. It's a lot of clues pointing in what is probably the wrong direction and it doesn't seem like Roy and Bromley ever considered where all the conflicting information might lead someone else.

(They're also apparently really into these gross, mucus-intensive sexual interludes and, okay, if that's your kink, go for it, but don't be surprised when folks find it unpleasant or want to know what the deal is because it is seemingly affecting the story.)

I did kind of like Chloe Pirrie's central performance; I'm not sure it holds together, but the actress certainly gives 100% of what's asked, from the nervous opening voice-over to a great line-reading when Kay finds out what she does for work to the ever-more-gonzo final act, where she plays off Jeff Gladstone just barely putting a good outward face on Morgan's sliminess. There's certainly a genuine but eccentric feel to everyone she meets across a number of environments.

The generous interpretation is that Kryptic is very much not for me, made with a different audience in mind and running from what I enjoy most. Even beyond that, though, it feels very much like the work of creators more skilled at vibes than narratives, too confident that they've done enough of one to compensate for the other's shortcomings.


FAQ

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

There are two or three moments in FAQ that can hit a person in the gut and the odd thing is that I don't know if they're exactly a big part of the main story; or at least they don't feel like they are in the moment, and maybe not until one has had the chance to think on the film a bit. They probably are, though, with filmmaker Kim Da-min mostly making her point so gently and with such whimsy that the logical conclusion is surprising.

It introduces the audience to Kim Dong-chun when she's five and already enrolled in English kindergarten by mother Hae-jin (Park Hyo-ju), although she freezes up in an English-speaking demonstration. By the time she's nine (and played by Park Na-eun), she's still introverted, but how can she not be - her after-school time is filled with activities her parents think will get her into a good college, the only common element the daughter of one of Hae-jin's friends who is too competitive to treat Hae-jin like a friend. She often slips into reveries with two supportive imaginary friends, although she soon happens on something stranger: A bottle of rice wine falls out of a cabinet and rolls to her feet, and she picks it up. Having built a morse code key in science class, she hears patterns in the bubbles, but they don't match Korean or English. The next class she's enrolled in gives her the necessary information to interpret it, though, and she soon finds that it is giving her instructions.

This is the sort of whimsical premise that might often get the Wes Anderson treatment, or be presented as a bright, colorful sort of live-action anime where all the bits of oddity in Dong-chun's life are presented in heightened fashion, but it's telling that Kim Da-min presents anything like that as an obvious, explicit fantasy that Dong-chun pointedly outgrows. Her world is small and relentlessly ordinary in some ways; Hae-jin's brother who has escaped from the rat race (Kim Hee-won) is disheveled and the boring sort of hippie, and the world doesn't shift to something brighter and more full of childlike wonder when Dong-chul goes on adventures to help her bubbly new friend. It's the same as it was, somewhere between indifferent and hostile to a young girl.

There is, ultimately, a pretty explicit message about striving going on - between the families pressing their 9-year-old girls to build a good resume for college, the uncle who lies about being a corporate big shot, the mother who worries about having fallen behind at work because she had a child, and Dong-chun having no control over her life, it's clear that everyone is working to get ahead, with even the ones who enjoy it only doing so when they succeed, which by definition can't make everyone happening. So what we've got is a girl is pointedly not lazy but someone who enjoys figuring things out, but isn't what the folks want her to be, and who grasps at something that lets her find another way to use what she's capable of.

Park Na-eun is kind of a delight in the part. It is, admittedly, the kind of role that one sometimes thinks might get over-praised, a lot of neutral-faced dismay or concentration that may be a case of putting the best shots where she's doing relatively little together in the editing stage, but she is given a chance to light up when it will have the most impact, and she's got a way of delivering perceptive lines or reacting to higher stakes that always impresses. She's also ably supported by the rest of the cast, particularly Park Hyo-ju as the mother, whose realization that she's one of those mothers is sadder for how low-key it is; she always finds the sort of tone where one can realize that Ha-jin is simultaneously part of the problem and a victim of the system.

Altogether, the film is a nice combination of deadpan, absurd, and mundane, and there's something not quite fearless about how sharp a poke the finale is, a reminder that while people often tend to couch these issue in feel-good terms that give a lot of credit to parents' good intentions, solving the problems might involve something as drastic as the fallout.


"Elves on the Edge"

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Fantasia Underground, laser DCP)

"Elves on the Edge" is the sort of short where you point out that maybe it's got one joke but tells it well enough, often enough, to get through ten minutes, but I don't know that it actually gets that much mileage out of "two rocker chicks trying to make it big after leaving home to make it big in the Big Apple, except the home they left is Santa's workshop", except that it feels like there's a lot more they could do with this: For the most part, Candy and Cookie are pretty much clichés with pointy years, and it might be a lot funnier and sharper if they felt more like Santa's elves and "Elf culture", as Will Ferrell once put it, was a part of who they are despite their wanting to reject it.

Instead, Candy has a thoroughly bonkers (but, admittedly, Christmas-elf-appropriate) hookup.

And let me just say - this is such an absolutely gonzo moment, drawn out just the right amount, to get a whole bunch of laughs, and writer/director/star Abby Lloyd runs with it for the rest of the rest of the short for a few more laughs. It's a success - it gets those laughs - but it feels like it was set up to do a bit more, especially in the lead-up to the one big gag.


Carnage for Christmas

* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

There probably haven't been quite enough "Encyclopedia Brown returns home as an adult" movies to call it a genre, but it's a fun idea to play with: Kid detective stories are fun gateways to the mystery and thriller genres even though their appeals often tend to be quite the opposite. This one goes queer slasher with it, a pretty fun choice.

Lola (Jeremy Moineau), who gained some notoriety in her South Australia hometown back when she was an assigned-male teenager for actually finding the bodies in the local haunted house, is a college student majoring in forensic sciences who co-hosts a true crime podcast, is returning home for the Christmas break for the first time in years, happy to reconnect with her sister Danielle (Dominique Booth) but naturally wary: Like a lot of small towns, Purdan has gained some nice coffee shops and even a gay bar, but it's still not a great place to be trans like Lola or even gay like Danielle, which is made abundantly clear when one of the bar's regulars is murdered in the same way as the victims decades ago and the cops immediately start looking at Lola as the weird outsider. Well, most of them; Constable Kent (Tumelo Nthupi), assigned to keep watch, is actually a fan of the podcast and does his best to look the other way while she starts poking around, because most of the cops sure aren't going to spend a lot of effort on someone whose targets seem confined to Purdan's queer community.

Co-writer/producer/director Alice Maio Mackay crowdfunded and made this, her fifth feature, at the age of 19, and it's probably not hard to draw a line between her and Lola, young trans women diving into the things that they love and getting some recognition for it (a previous film, T Blockers, got a fair amount of attention on the festival circuit) even though they're still getting their formal education, if Mackay is even bothering with film school. It's probably not a stretch to call Lola a Mary Sue; Jeremy Moineau plays the part with self-assurance and a fair amount of wit, but the way she's almost always right and admired except by the complet bigots comes off as smugness in a way that seems unintentional, like the filmmakers are overshooting "cool".

Of course, part and parcel of all that is that this is the work of enthusiastic amateurs, and it feels like it, from a lot taking place at night but not being lit particularly well to maybe not having the time with the actual professionals or other resources that let you get a take where everything is good. There are a lot of stretches where they're stitching together the best they can do, which is at least better than taking refuge in "it's camp!".

There's at least a fun sort of vibe to the movie that meshes nicely with its homemade origins more often than not as Lola has this sort of effortless cool investigating her mystery rather than going for intensity. It's like a relaxed smart-ass attitude, not pandering or against anyone who doesn't deserve it but with some wit in her back pocket. There's also something really Gen-Z, I suspect, in bumping up against a decent slasher movie concept but already being kind of over it. Whatever, murderers with kind of cool masks are no big deal any more, and even Scream-style slasher mysteries are played out, but you can hang stuff on it.

I am kind of interested to see where Mackay winds up going, though - she's got some chops and isn't exactly repeating herself.


"What the Hell"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows & Animation Plus, laser DCP)

Filmmaker Valerie Barnhart takes a kind of worn premise - the demons in Hell have everyday lives and concerns not so different from our own - and rolls with in, offering up a dissatisfied harpy saying that this netherworld isn't what it once was, with all the real torment happening on Earth, and her minotaur boyfriend being satisfied with the current state of things is part of why she can't take it there any more. No joke is particularly earth-shaking, but they are all well-executed, and she's built the familiar character types in a way that makes them fun to watch bounce off each other, and the way Hell is breaking down keeps things from feeling bogged down. Some of the character designs are nifty, especially Charlotte, who looks like a refugee from a fifty-year-old cartoon; the oddness of her proportions playing into Hell being populated by abominations while still making her a good protagonist.

Also, from the final scenes, I kind of like the idea that this is the flip side to some horror movie where a dark sorcerer has opened a portal to Hell, but instead of demons immediately spewing out, it's kind of a gradual migration.


Frankie Freako

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows, laser DCP)

I've tended to like the work of Steve Kostanski and his gang best when they were not exactly playing it straight - I don't know that they've ever really done that - but leaning a little more toward highlighting what made a certain type of weird 1980s movie awesome rather than silly. There's overlap, of course, but this one leans very silly indeed, and the joke's kind of strained for a while before the movie gets around to awesome.

Set in the 1980s, it introduces the audience to Conor (Conor Sweeney), a dorky office cog with an improbably hot wife (Kristy Wordsworth) and a boss (Adam Brooks) warning him that his square, comically milquetoast proposals are putting his job at risk - although, if he comes in during the weekend and shreds a few documents while the boss stays out of view of the surveillance cameras before the SEC investigators arrive, he might be in good shape. He amiably agrees, since Kristina will be out of town anyway, but decides to loosen up a bit by calling a 900 number hosted by imp Frankie Freako, but gets much more than he bargained for: Frankie and two other little goblins ride the phone line into his house, and their partying leads to a mess that has Conor in a panic, and Mr. Buechler drops by to see why his patsy hasn't shown.

It does eventually get around to awesome, of course - there's little more reliable in improving a movie than this crew opening a portal - and the back half of this is delightful lunacy. Even those who don't default to finding something more magical to practical effects rather than digital will likely enjoy how Freak World logically should feel like miniature work, and even when it's nuts, it's nuts in a less painfully arbitrary way. Puppets work better as broad one-note characters than the humans, and the way Conor Sweeney gamely deflects or redirects a lot of period-appropriate queer-phobic jokes is one of the film's more clever bits, and gives Sweeney the chance to do the sort of dry oddball humor that Adam Brooks and Kristy Wordsworth were doing at the start.

There is, I guess, a certain sort of cleverness to the first half; it plays like a live-action cartoon not just in terms of slapstick and bright color but that this is some sort of vague approximation of what kids watching those cartoons would be thinking when they hear "Michaelangelo is a party dude!", only it's kind of dumb when you're not eight. The main character being "square" in the same kind of way is the rest of the gag, and while there are some good bits, it's not quite enough to hang 45 minutes or so of movie on. Everyone is game for it, and it's not really a bad joke, but I felt like I knew and appreciated what they were doing more than I laughed. Adam Brooks's deadpan villainy and Kristy Worsworth's mass of weird contradictions are great fun, but maybe because they're deployed precisely rather than constantly the way Conor and the Freakos are, and thus don't have a chance to wear out their welcome.

Make no mistake, there's a lot to like here; the animatronic stuff is very strong, the sort of 1980s throwback that Kostanski and his crew do so well, and there are lots of people who do much worse with this sort of joke. The dumb-to-awesome ratio is tricky to get just right for everyone, is all, and this would have worked better if about ten percent of its dumb material were awesome instead.


"Réel"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

This thing is four minutes long and much of it is its two characters just beating the hell out of each other, but you can't be anything less than impressed with how well filmmaker Rodrigue Huart does his thing: Without any real dialogue, you immediately get that (1) somehow a smartphone has fallen a couple hundred years into the past through a wormhole, (2) the farm girls who find it both want it for themselves, and (3) are not going to be demure about getting it out of each other's hands. It's moving incredibly fast except for the brief moments it slows down for audience reaction to an impressively hasty hit, more or less getting the entire story out based on its audience knowing context. Actresses Emma Gautier and Dorothée Quiquempois just let 'er rip, and Huart (as cinematographer and editor as well as writer/director/producer) makes sure that things are paradoxically clear enough that you can recognize the chaotic action and are able to discern the story.

Nifty work, and while I'm curious to see what Huart would do with a feature, I'm impressed at just how well he's taken advantage of what sort of burst of energy a short can be here.


Le mangeur d'âmes (The Soul Eater)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

The borders between genres have been thin and getting more so for a while now, and The Soul Eater doesn't just straddle one of those lines, but the point where a few of them intersect. It can be a lot, pushing a viewer right up to the edge of grumbling that they didn't but a ticket to that sort of movie, but the filmmakers do fairly nice work of walking right up to the point where someone might roll their eyes and delivering a nasty little surprise instead.

It opens with two cops converging on a crime scene: Franck de Rolan (Paul Hamy), from the Department of Alarming Disappearances, is tracking a string of missing children; Commander Elizabeth Guardiano (Virginie Ledoyen) has been sent in because this small town's police force has no detectives, much less ones with experience investigating this sort of brutal murder. A classic "I work alone" type, Guardiano would rather de Rolan verify that the murdered couple's particular white van is not the one he's looking for, but it's de Rolan who finds the victims' son Evan Vasseur (Cameron Bain) in a hidden room. The case just gets weirder from that point, with bodies piling up, a mysterious figure on a motorcycle, and little figurines of "the soul eater", a local bogeyman said to live in the woods. Many of the local cops are more hindrance than help, the mayor would rather they just leave, and Dr. Carole Marbas (Sandrine Bonnaire), the child psychologist assigned to Evan who also wears a number of other hats around town, is perhaps being unusually resistant to de Rolan interviewing the boy.

Does it really matter that a movie where the killer(s) that a couple of cops are chasing may be a monster doesn't have a particularly memorable monster design? There's something to be said for the explanation of how every family in the area kind of has their own conception of it, but the soul eater winds up in this sort of no-man's land where the audience can't quite imagine anything lurking in the shadows but doesn't have that much to shake them, specifically. A lot is left vague even beyond the monster and "who's that on the motorcycle?", hinted at until ti's time to use them in the finale, and this movie could maybe use more of an anchor.

There's a lot going on, after all, maybe too much; the last act is impressive in terms of stitching things together but it's a lot, maybe more of an exercise in how you pull these threads together and have it make sense than making a statement or solving a mystery. The filmmakers do that well - there's nothing entirely new but there is a sense of one more thing being piled on top or spinning out of control until things are finally all out in the open, so it's a fun, messy ride that feels pretty satisfying afterward. Indeed, for a team mostly known for horror making a film that traffics in a lot of grim cases of child sexual abuse, Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury are good about giving the audience a finale that is exciting beyond seeing how nasty it can get and earlier moments tha get a viewer's motor running. It's impressively more than just grim.

There's also the enjoyable sensation of watching French actors that one normally sees in classy boutique-house dramas letting it rip in kind of fancy trash. It's neat to watch all of them as cops with different jurisdictions snap or smirk at each other and then play both cool and harried when stuff goes sideways. Virginie Ledoyen, it turns out is really fun to watch smirk and dismiss folks in what Guardiano considers lesser law enforcement agencies or look annoyed that people are worried after she empties her gun at someone; Sandrinne Bonnaire gets to have great fun chewing scenery as Marbas later on after being huffy that de Roan went behind her back. Paul Hamy, for his part, does well balancing the protagonist who is less abrasive while still being as intense as one expects a man hunting child predators to be, and Francis Renaud is always welcome when he shows up as the cop who does not have a chip on his shoulder.

The movie can swing between wearing an audience out and making them wish the movie would get on with it, but the willingness to be down for anything works in its favor more often than not.

Fantasia 2024.05: "Meat Puppet", The Paragon, "Bladder Shy", Scared Shitless, Tatsumi, "AstroNots", Meanwhile on Earth, "Be Right Back", and The Beast Within

Ah, thought I'd be able to run this right around since I'd gotten everything on LetterBoxd, but this is a lot of shorts.

Anyway - guests!

Being a Canadian thing, Scared Shitless! brought some people: From the left, writer/director Brendan Cohen, director Vivieno Caldinelli, producer Lewis Spring, and cast members Daniel Doheny, Steven Ogg, and Chelsea Clark, who all seemed to have a great time making it to the point that when someone asked about sequel plans and one of the producers said something's in the works, Ogg barked a question about who was in it.

No guests for Meanwhile on Earth, but Mitch Davis brought up director Andrew Seaton and DP Matthew Samperi from the accompanying short "AstroNots".

There were actually a lot of guests for The Beast Within - I was sitting directly behind a couple that were whooping at every opportunity and sneaking pictures on their phone - but it was actually a pretty small group up on stage; aside from the host, we've got writer/director Alexander J. Farrell, co-writer Greer Ellison, and producer Alex Chang. It's kind of interesting that, while the movie is in large part being sold to the public with Kit Harrington, most of the questions about the cast and characters centered around co-star Ashleigh Cummings, who is pretty darn terrific here.

(Quick jump to IMDB, and, oh, she was Dot on Miss Fisher? Wow!)

If you're reading this on Wednesday the 31st (Day 14), it's probably my shortest day: It looks like I won't get to De Sève in time for Hell Hole (but it's okay; I haven't exactly love the Adams family's previous stuff), Rats! looks like the sort of thing I don't usually go for, Electrophilia looks interesting but is listed as subtitled in French rather than English, and I saw The Roundup: Punishment a few months back (do these movies just not play Montreal? I think this is the second time this has happened with this series). So maybe just Timestalker!


"Meat Puppet"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

Are high-school and university graduations the same throughout the English-speaking world? It's one of those things where some bits of pop culture tell me that there are differences but others make it look universal, though I hear that's kind of influenced by American pop culture. Anyway, this looks pretty American despite being set in the UK, from what I see, but that's kind of not the point; the point is that Cuba (Máiréad Tyers) and Oz (David Johnsson) are a couple but Oz is kind of immature, tending to sit around his room messing with toys and collectibles unless she drags him away, like she does with a phone call on the day of graduation, only to be tempted again when a delivery person shows up. He thinks it's a statuette he's ordered, but it's a weird puppet, and can't resist taking a look. It's a bad idea; not only does his consciousness enter the little guy, but the thing fuses to his arm, and it looks like his body is dead or dying!

Writer/director Eros V isn't particularly shy about saying what "Meat Puppet" is about - half of Cuba's lines are about Oz needing to grow up and become self-reliant, and there is, in the last bit that is built to get the audience to give a grossed-out howl, a pretty obvious illustration of taking control of your own life even if you're too busy laughing to notice - but that's kind of fine; these are emotional kids probably prone to blurting stuff out and it's the kind of short where everything's so screwy that the sudden "hey, I'm going to bring up this mundane thing!" switch is part of the screwiness, even if there's a puppet curse that you'd think would be more urgent.

And the gags are pretty good. The usual deal with someone in a puppet body - it's weird that this is a trope, right? - is having them be as mobile as a puppet character is, and instead having Oz having to deal with his body's dead weight is quality slapstick. The puppeteers do a decent job of playing things so that he's expressive without looking like Muppet-y flailing is his natural state. And, yes, they build the jokes to an impressive crescendo with quality bits after the climax and through the credits.


The Paragon

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

I really dig the vibe of The Paragon, which pulls off the trick of making one believe that a potentially multiverse-shaking narrative could play out in a small New Zealand town with a slacker protagonist without being so tongue in cheek that the comedy takes over. It's weird and offbeat but not poisoned with self-awareness. That makes it a sort of oddball movie and one where you've got to live with the reaction to your recommendation being "uh…okay". It's fun but in a small way.

It introduces the audience to Dutch (Benedict Wall), a tennis player who was good enough to be ranked but not good enough to be famous, at least until a hit-and-run left his leg broken in four places and his bitterness drove wife Emily (Jessica Grace Smith) to an affair with a co-worker. Crashing with his petty-criminal brother Oates (Shadon Meredith), he starts canvassing the town for the very common model of car that hit him, impulsively taking a slip from a poster promising psychic training. The woman who put it up claims he has great psionic potential in part because his heart stopped for six minutes during the accident, but Lyra (Florence Noble) is also frustrated at his insistence on taking easy ways and shortcuts, especially since she needs a disciplined ally to help her find a powerful crystal before it falls into the hands of her evil brother Haxan (Jonny Brugh).

Folks have made much more serious movies with that general description, and The Paragon has stakes, but it's also a comedy that recognizes that everybody in it should be funny in some manner, whether it's Dutch's bluster or the deadpan weirdness of Lyra and Haxan, raised to be psychic warriors by their messed-up father. Even Emily, who could be written and played to be a generic sort of ungrateful shrew or as understandably overwhelmed is written so that Jessica Grace Smith can make her funny in a very specific way. No matter how serious the moment is, there's a joke available, but the characters are also fleshed out enough that there's nowhere to go but the gag. Benedict Wall is very funny as Dutch, but can play it straight and demonstrate just enough self-reflection that his scenes with Michelle Ang don't go as one might expect. Florence Noble's Lyra is socially stunted but not to the point of stupidly following a menu of tics.

The film gets a lot of value out of sort of screwing around, with a lot of time spent on training and resisting it and side quests, and not feeling the need to tire everything together. There's a temptation to make everything interlock too much, or toss in a romance the film doesn't need, or hammer home an obvious theme. These guys don't do that, just telling their little fantasy story with a few jokes and not worrying about making it bigger than it need be.

The filmmakers are also fairly smart about how they deploy modest resources. They don't add visual effects to psychic powers that can work just as well if invisible, and don't tease that there's something bigger and flashier on the way. It helps keep the focus on Dutch, but also keeps the audience able to believe that maybe this has been here all along and there's been no way we could notice it. That may not be the actual primary intent, but it works, a case of pieces that fit together not making one look for the spots where they don't.

All told, The Paragon is fairly modest, but that modesty works for it in ways that ambition might not have. You often here talk of people squeezing a lot out of resources, but this doesn't look like there's that much strain.


"Bladder Shy"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows, laser DCP)

"Bladder Shy" is one pretty obvious joke - a man who just dashed into a restroom has performance anxiety when someone else stands next to him and, no matter where he imagines himself being instead so that he can loosen up and just go, the other fellow shows up - but it's told well. There are variations full of gay panic or something otherwise uncharitable, but director Joel Goundry, writer/co-star Christopher Duthie, and co-star Mike Tan keep it from ever being mean-spirited or anything much more than folks being used to privacy when they pee.

I'm also kind of amused, after the fact, at how this five-minute short which feels like it all takes place in an ordinary restroom and could be done in an afternoon, probably actually took days or weeks because the small cast and crew was going around to various locations and shooting a few wordless seconds of people standing in or near water. Movie magic by Goundry and editor Dan Perrott right there, and I say that without jest.


Scared Shitless

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows, laser DCP)

Scared Shitless is what it looks and sounds like and it's good at being that thing, or at least certain parts of that thing: The filmmakers push things a lot less than they could and than they probably should in most cases, to the extent that I wonder if there are harder-edged cuts of this movie in the editing suite, with what a lot of horror-comedy fans might consider the good stuff set aside because the filmmakers found the upbeat vibes working best.

Not that the story is upbeat to read the bullet points: It opens with a mad scientist (Mark McKinney) fleeing a burning lab after a confrontation about his extracurricular activities goes wrong in the usual way, and then movies elsewhere in Hamilton, Ontario, to introduce Don (Steven Ogg) and Sonny Donohue (Daniel Doherty), a father-and-son odd couple; father Don is a gruff plumber and Sonny, already suffering from chronic stomach issues, has also become a shut-in due to traumatically-induced germophobia. Don figures the way to help Sonny get past that is to have him start coming along on jobs, starting with a regular client who he suspects gets her toilet clogged because she wants attention. Of course, the guy from the opening has an apartment in this building, the thing he brought home has found its way into the pipes, and the nice young lady at the front desk who was a classmate when Sonny could still attend college, Patricia (Chelsea Clark), would kind of like anything weird the Donohues find kept quiet because between her med school tuition and her father's health issues, they really need to sell this building.

The movie is very much more comedy than horror, but more affectionate than mocking, from the old couple doing some BDSM play to how, even when Don and Sonny are introduced getting on each other's nerves, there's tons of affection between them. The filmmakers seem to actually like most of their characters and presume that they're going to try their best - Patricia even sounds apologetic as she delivers the "this deal has got to go through" lines - rather than building up conflict that's going to feel silly soon. Where it's aware of horror tropes, it's aware in the way that actual people tend to be rather than as a winking way to flatter the audience.

It's cheerfully gross, maybe not Steve Kostanski's most creative work as an effects artist, but he and his crew execute the basic tentacle/slug thing well, with all the attendant goop, blood and guts, and severed limbs. I suspect a lot of folks will appreciate that there's plenty of blood and guts but little actual toilet stuff, because that's two different ways of being disgusted. Kind of related, perhaps, is that the film has one of the tamest "naked camgirl gets attacked by a monster in the shower" scene it could, like they're going to kill a lot of people but don't want to be leering creeps while they do it.

Most of the fun, then, comes from the main cast. Steven Ogg casually sells a punch of goofy plumber jokes and has good father-son energy with Daniel Donehy, who also has a fun vibe with Chelsea Clark; they're a trio that seems pretty fun to hang out with and are the right kind of smart to treat this as a problem to be solved without seeming unreasonably capable for three sort of random folks. The building full of potential victims are entertaining right up until they sell being eaten as horrible but also twistedly funny, and the opening scene with Mark McKinney as a schlubby mad scientist (he kind of gives off "dumb Captain Kangaroo" vibes) and Julian richings as the guy looking to steal his work is more or less exactly what one would expect from those particular pros. Nobody seems to be trying too hard, especially once the film is set up and just rolls forward.

Like I said, there's probably a gorier, more exploitative version of this movie that could show up as an unrated director's cut on disc if those were still things, but it would probably have the wrong vibe somewhere and collapse. This is good bloody fun all the way through.


Tatsumi

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

Tatsumi is the sort of crime movie where one is surprised that the veteran criminals don't, at some point, let out an exhausted sigh that the behavior of some loose cannon is just not professional, because, really, that maniac is the real liability. Unfortunately for its characters, maniac loose cannons get stories started and keep them going; you kind of need one to get a crime story this good.

That is not Tatsumi (Yuya Endo), who tries to stay out of the violent part of crime and just stick to keeping things running at the yakuza-controlled docks where the fishing boats come in, calling his boss Takeshi (Ryo Matumoto) "Skipper" and unsentimental in how he treats his meth-addicted brother (Kisetsu Fujiwara). He can't entirely escape it, though - he's still Takeshi's go-to guy for when he needs a body disposed of, and ex-girlfriend Kyoko (Nanami Kameda) is asking for a favor: Her high-school dropout sister Aoi (Kokoro Morita), a mechanic at the garage Kyoko manages for Takeshi, has sticky fingers and a bad attitude, and if Tatsumi could help cool things down, that would be great. Unfortunately, another gangster (Ryuhei Watabe) has even stickier fingers, and when Takeshi sends his maniac brother Ryuji (Tomoyuki Kuramoto) to handle it at the garage, Kyoko and Aoi are witnesses, and Aoi is none too impressed when Tatsumi's plan seems to be "just accept what's coming".

Gangster narratives use the word "family" a lot, and without necessarily tipping his hand that much, writer/director Hiroshi Shoji casts a critical eye on this: Sisters Kyoko and Aoi are polar opposites and get on each other's nerves but also clearly love each other more than anything else; it can also be easy to miss that Takeshi and Ryuji are actual brothers as opposed to just being in the same gang, or at least lose sight of that. Mostly, it's Tatsumi grappling not so much with his own sins but seeing a reflection of his own screwup brother in Aoi. Skipperrepeatedly speaks to how the yakuza is family, but eventually Tatsumi comes to realize that that's not a measure of loyalty, but something that has caused him to treat other relationships as similarly transactional, or at the very least conditional.

It's a good background and way to add some uncertainty to a nastily grinding story of characters who can't run but are almost certainly overmatched if they choose to fight back, let alone seek revenge. Despite not being constantly beset by new dangers, things move fast enough that Aoi can't change out of her bloody hoodie - the film's take on mob violence is that it relies on overwhelming force by people who know what they're doing, and someone like Aoi getting a blow in is pretty lucky - and there's just enough time to watch Tatsumi and Aoi show the wear of their situation. It helps show how, maybe, Tatsumi was worn down in a similar way.

Yuya Endo is impressive in how he gets that across, because Tatsumi doesn't particularly change aspect or the habits of a lifetime, instead just seeming to realign what he considers worth fighting for and maybe feeling a little better about who he is in the film's later moments compared to his feeling on the subject earlier, even if it comes with regret. His hard, overly practical manner clashes nicely with Kokoro Morita as Aoi, whose emotions are always right on the surface and whose immaturity is allowed to be frustrating rather than innocent. She plays off Nanami Kameda's Kyoko well, as does Endo - there's familiarity between these two but also little doubt about why it ultimately didn't work out, despite their both being smart, practical people. Of course, Tomoyuki Kuramoto steals nearly every scene he's in as Ryuji and isn't particularly subtle about it; he's a mad dog where one is never quite sure just how tightly Takeshi is holding his leash, speaking with a raised voice most of the time and with a tendency to push his head forward a bit, getting further into personal space to show there's nothing stopping him from getting further. It's the sort of vicious gangster performance that could wear itself out, but is present just long and often enough to keep the audience from getting the least bit sentimental about the enterprise.

It's the sort of energy that lets this feel like a road movie at times even though nobody ever gets very far on a map: It matters in which direction Tatsumi turns the wheel regardless of how far he's going.


"AstroNots"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

This is another short that has one really joke, but where "Bladder Shy" was looking to repeat, "AstroNots" is seeing how well it can be drawn out. It starts with the first manned mission to Mars about to launch, and as Mission Control runs down the checklists, pilot Abraham Adams (Aaron Glenane) confesses to Commander Thomas Collins (Adam Dunn) that he's spectacularly unqualified, somehow having BSed his way through various tests and gotten lucky on others. Collins knows he should abort the mission upon hearing this, but not only would that likely end the program, he's a descendant of Michael Collins, the man who stayed in the orbiter while Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, and the idea of also being so close but forgotten is something he can't bear.

Dunn and Glenane are also credited as writers, and one can imagine the writing process as one of sitting around and riffing, trying different ways to crack each other up and challenging each other to figure out ways in which the whole thing doesn't work and which snappy answers are funny enough to become dialog and lead to something else. Somewhere in there, they figure out just what will keep things going for long enough to get to a near-perfect deadpan punchline, just really tight comic scripting.

It's good work all around, getting the right level of panic and recognizing that this gag calls for a reaction shot and this one should linger. Comedy direction and editing seems like it must be thankless and invisible whether done right or wrong, but it's pretty much always right here.


Pendant ce temps sur Terre (Meanwhile on Earth)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

There's likely a better example of the phenomenon than Meanwhile on Earth, but it feels like a bit of an inversion to a certain formula, where you promise weird aliens and horror with the idea of sneaking some sort of loftier ideas to the audience. This one, arguably, can be sold as a meditative drama, maybe one set in the future but where those elements are a metaphor, only to deliver something weird and chilling on top of that.

Elsa Martens (Megan Northam) was always close to her astronaut brother Franck (voice of Sébastien Pouderoux), and just as she was excited for him being selected for a deep-space mission, he couldn't wait to see how she grew as an artist, fully expecting her to be having shows in Paris when he returned even though she was crashing with parents Annick (Catherine Salée) and Daniel (Sam Louwyck). But he didn't return; winding up lost in space, and now Elsa is still living at home, occasionally defacing the statue erected to memorialize her brother and working at the palliative care center Annick manages - and even there, best friend Audrey (Soifa Lesaffre) is moving away to take a job somewhere on the coast - while Daniel scans radio bands hoping for a message and Franck's son Vincent (Roman Williams) is a frequent visitor. It's Elsa that receives a signal, though, via a strange biological receiver, from entities that say they have rescued Franck, and need Elsa's help to prepare for their arrival.

This is a pretty nifty situation for a movie even before the science fictional elements start appearing, although they are welcome when they do; if it is not going to be fantastic, why have the brother vanish while in deep space as opposed to at sea or in the country, after all? Writer/director Jérémy Clapin gives the viewer a good sense of who Elsa is and the way that this sort of grief and loss can feel tremendously isolating, as can a hostage situation, and like nobody can possibly understand because who has faced such trials before? She's confronted daily with the tragedies and indignities of the end of one's life and cannot find acceptance, much less solace in the idea that her family has avoided all of this. If this is all there was, it would be a great role for Megan Northam, who can hint at the vivacious young woman who should be there but who looks worn and spent instead.

After that, it's got a bit of a horror-movie story, although the story is carefully built to keep it on a certain path (fittingly enough) that it's not exactly suspenseful much of the time, but turns a screw or two nicely. The way that Elsa starts out initially seems like the way Clapin has set things up is designed to absolve her, but it leads to is more horrifying, that Elsa's good intentions have set her on a course she cannot escape, as it is made very clear to her that not making a certain choice is itself a decision with consequences, but where she also can't escape the guilt.

Though the live-action debut of someone known for animation, it's far less gaudy than many such films. There are animated pieces - it's kind of telling that the animated renditions of Elsa's comics about her and Franck having adventures from their childhood cast her as an alien, suggesting she didn't fit in and her brother was nearly her only friend - and there are a couple sequences and bits of weird biological design in the middle that definitely spring from the sort of mind that starts from this sort of visual, but the filmmakers take care to highlight the mundane nature of many situations, giving us a thoroughly lived-in world where most have moved past the thing that has devastated this family, even though it is extraordinary.

It's nifty work that can be sold as boutique-house science fiction even though, for all that it plays as something about human dilemmas and difficult moral choices, he also does not hesitate to use a chainsaw to point out how far Elsa might go if push came to shove. Just being smart doesn't make it any less a nifty genre thriller.


"Ahora vuelvo" ("Be Right Back")

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

I don't know that I've ever really considered how bizarrely incongruous raising a modern child in one of these old European apartments must be - most of the time when they show up in this sort of movie, the kid is dour because a parent has died or they've had to move in with a weird grandparent, but here we get Maria (Anastasia Russo), bouncing off the walls, watching cartoons at ear-splitting volume, shoveling microwave popcorn in her mouth. It's kind of no wonder that her mother (Belén Cuesta) is looking frazzled, and maybe doesn't feel that bad about stepping out to run a couple of errands.

She doesn't come back right away, of course, so it's not until the sun has set and Maria's stomach starts rumbling even though she's just finished the last kernel of popcorn that she realizes that this is actually a pretty scary place, and the person knocking at the door claiming to be her mother but having really weak excuses for not having a key might be faking. It almost seems to be about the shifting tone at times, how things that seem harmless can suddenly become spooky with the right shift, and a brash, kind of bratty kid can lose her nerve. It tips its hand fairly quickly, but also has some fun exploiting the idea that the sort of child who could be the resourceful heroine of this kind of story might also be a real frustrating handful for her parents.


The Beast Within

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

There's ambition to The Beast Within, and talent, but it's not exactly evenly distributed: The performances I love are all build around one that leaves me cold, and the ending isn't quite enough for me to circle back and consider how it all fits together. The pieces are seemingly all there for a fine psychological werewolf story, but they don't click together in solid fashion.

It takes place on a gated plot that doesn't seem to be very productive beyond a few backyard chickens and hogs despite the large, ancient stone farmhouse; with 10-year-old Willow (Caoilinn Springall) confined to it due to a respiratory disease that has her lugging an oxygen tank around. Or maybe it's just enough to be worked by father Noah (Kit Harington), mother Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings), and grandfather Waylon (James Cosmo), who despite the size of the house lives in a mobile home parked on the grounds. It's the sort of isolation where things faster, and maybe there's a reason why they live that way rather than in town - after all, every once in a while, Imogen takes Noah to another corner of the property for the night, along with a bit of their dwindling livestock, to be chained up until something passes.

So, do folks like Kit Harington on the show with all the dragon nonsense? I ask this because I can't recall ever seeing him in a film where he displays much in the way of star power or charisma, and it really kind of kills this. There's this terrific small cast around him, but much of the film almost seems to be hiding him rather than give the audience a chance to be charmed enough by his character to be shocked when his monstrous side comes out. He's admittedly got a particular challenge that some of the other members of the cast don't have, needing to play certain things as ambiguous enough to be reconsidered later, but the end effect is that this movie doesn't work if Noah's not interesting and he barely makes an impression. Bland, in some cases, is worse than bad.

I like much of what the filmmakers are doing otherwise; the rest of the cast in particular is strong, playing the metaphor pretty straight and building this really earnest core. Carolinn Springall gives the impression of someone who is used to her physical limits as Willow, which even more experienced actors often stumble at managing, while Ashleigh Cummings shines as the tough but often overloaded Imogen and James Cosmo gives off the very specific vibe of someone who never liked his daughter's husband but is there for support even when he doesn't say as much. They cover a set of family relationships that is likely very familiar to many even before the monstrous elements start to surface.

Once one gets a hang of the sort of timeless setting, it's a really nice thing to settle into, although I admit, I thought we were looking at multiple time periods at the start. The werewolf effects are mostly kept out of sight for much of the movie but do feel impressively tactile even as they're right on the border of where some in the audience would laugh at the man in a suit. It's fine for them to be kind of crazy and hard to believe, as it's a werewolf in a movie mostly told from a child's point of view, and works best when it's part of the shadows. The action-oriented finale is pretty well-staged, a good balance of things lurking just out of sight, sudden violence, and why you should not use antlers in all of your decorating.

There's not a lot there, though, with the film and audience biding a lot of time until that finale. I do feel, at least on a first watch, that the ending revelations are fortunate to have the emotional impact that they do one doesn't really care to examine just how hard the movie worked at pointing in another direction at times but just let it be. Folks will make excuses if they care about the characters enough, although it's likely better if they don't have to, and The Beast Within has an unfortunate tendency to straddle that line.

Short time in the Brattle's virtual screening room: Son of the White Mare and Dead

Both of these movies will be leaving The Brattle and its virtual screening room after Thursday (8 October 2020), so if you want to see them while kicking some money their way, do it now. They will be available elsewhere soon enough - Dead is already on Prime despite just coming out in New Zealand a few weeks ago and White Mare will almost certainly get a nice Blu-ray - but keep some money local, right?

Anyway, fun movies in very different ways, and it was neat to see Michael Hurst in something again, if briefly, with what I assume is something closer to his actual accent than the "somewhere over the Pacific" one he did on Hercules and Xena back in the day, and was even more tickled to discover while poking around on IMDB afterwards that his wife on-screen is played by his real-life wife of 30+ years, Jennifer Ward-Lealand. She also appeared on those Sam Raimi-produced shows, and I almost want to dig in and see if it was cute pairings with Iolaus or just using every actor in New Zealand who could do a neutral (to Americans) accent.

Fehérlófia (Son of the White Mare)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 5 October 2020 in Jay's Living Room (restoration reissue, Vimeo via Roku)

Son of the White Mare is folklore, which means that it's wild and often nonsensical, even if there's also something underneath that seems to resonate. It's also animation, where you have absolute freedom to go anywhere your mythology-fueled imagination can take you so long as you're willing to do the disciplined, painstaking work necessary. It's a cult classic because the one half of that seldom seems to interfere with the other, making something memorably, impressively surreal.

It opens with a gravid white mare fleeing something that looks like a fire, although the setting is trippy and metaphorical enough that it could be something else before she seemingly races through a portal to another world (or holes up in the hollow of a tree). She gives birth, and the foal transforms into a boy. A forest spirit tells him to have his mother nurse him for seven years (and then seven years more), before leaving to go on a quest to the underworld. "Treeshaker" soon discovers he has two brothers, Stonecrumbler and Irontemperer, and they soon find a hut, a gnome, and three castles with dragons and princesses.

The story doesn't particularly make sense - the mare fills Stonecrumbler in on how they wound up in that tree, but if this leads him to be seeking justice or revenge or liberation, that's not really where the brothers' quest takes them. Truth be told, Stonecutter drains his mother dry and barely looks back without it exactly being her sacrificing herself to avenge him, so the motivation is kind of wobbly throughout. On top of that, Treeshaker is kind of the most boring sort of mythological hero, too outrageously strong to ever face any sort of challenge, so confident and assured in most cases that his brothers' shortcomings highlight how he's got relatively little personality. Director Marcell Jankovics and co-writer László György commit to the rule of three to an almost absurd extent, making for a potentially very repetitive movie.

It never quite becomes that, though; the repeated elements may not vary that much, but they tend not to be drawn out; Jankovics, the editors, and the music department let it feel like ramping up and building momentum, letting Treeshaker's feats grow more superhuman but not having him pull a new trick out for every fight, and making him possibly feel out of control near the end, when he's spent the whole movie ramping up and may not be able to slow down for a misunderstanding. The simplicity of it heightens the feel of a world still forming, and the way this simple repetition will often give way to extended mind-bending visuals makes it more of a time of unsettled legend.

It's the sort of capable underpinning that enables one to brush a lot away by saying to just look at the pictures, because the film is visually amazing, probably looking as good as it has since its original 1981 release thanks to a back-to-the-negative 4K restoration. It is full of full-screen metamorphoses, geometric compositions in which a viewer can lose themselves at home (this must really be something on a big screen), and character animation that never particularly strives for realism but also avoids being childish or self-consciously envelope-pushing. It's not necessarily appropriate for children, though they'll probably only catch the seductive topless princess and dragon with the stone testes rather than the vaginal and phallic imagery throughout. The character design is especially clever, from how there's a lot of kinship between the brothers and sisters despite them being clearly identifiable, while the dragons are wonderfully anachronistic and symbolic of more pervasive violence and dehumanization. They're almost too creative to slay.

Of course, dig too deep into the symbolism and you get to benevolent god-kings ruling through some vague divine right, which isn't great, but it's the sort of movie whose abstraction is so extreme that viewers almost can't help but be hyper-aware of it even as the imagery is washing over them as just gorgeous. Here's hoping that when the sort of small theater that would show an animated movie from 1981 Hungary is re-opened, they'll have room for some late shows of this, because there's not much like it that's done nearly so well.

Also at eFilmCritic

Dead

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 5 October 2020 in Jay's Living Room (first/limited-run, Vimeo via Roku)

Not a lot of movies simultaneously get right into things and immediately establish a fun, laid-back feel the way that Dead does, especially among the sort of supernatural comedies that most desperately want to pull that off. That confidence lets it dive into its goofy premise quickly enough to have time to explore and expand as well as fit in a bunch of gags despite running just 90 minutes. The group doesn't always make it look easy, but they give the audience a pretty entertaining film on the main.

Dave "Marbles" Malwich (Thomas Sainsbury) is an Auckland stoner who has, of late, discovered that by blending his weed with his late father's neurological meds, he can make something that, when injected, allows him to communicate with ghosts. Jason Tagg (Hayden J. Weal) is a young and enthusiastic uniformed cop who has been trying to find a serial killer for the past two years, but got too close and now is pretty lucky that he remembered Marbles saying something about his weird formulation the last time he detained the guy for possession. Marbles isn't interested at first - it sounds dangerous and he mostly just tries to help people move on before their spirits decay into ghouls- but his mother (Jennifer Ward-Lealand) is planning to sell the family farm unless Marbles can buy it in a couple of days, and Tagg has life insurance that could cover it, if they find his missing corpse and get his foster sister Yana (Tomai Ihala) to sign off. Which might not be as hard as one thinks; she's an ex-lawyer with her own money and has been helping Tagg track the killer, as best she can with a GPS unit on her ankle after her fourth DWI.

Viewers have a pretty good idea of who Marbles and Tagg are from the first time they show up, and a large part of what makes them fun is that both are energetic and well-meaning in ways that make it absolutely believable when they get on each other's nerves without actually becoming nasty toward one another. Co-stars Thomas Sainsbury and Hayden J. Weal also write with Weal directing, and they've got a good handle all around on what they can bring to a certain kind of story, and despite the cheery seeming-obliviousness that Sainsbury gives Marbles to complement how Weal delivers the sort of dumber-than-he-realizes intensity that makes his playing almost the entire movie sans trousers work, they both handle the fact that these characters are in large part defined by their losses well, giving the pair a little weight without losing who they are. Tomai Ihala plays Yana as a bit more pointed as a contrast, and both she and Weal do a nice job of selling the sibling dynamic even when they can't directly interact for much of the film.

There are a lot of amusing bits, both from the quick looks at Marbles helping various people with their ghost problems and as they try to figure out where to start solving Tagg's murder, to make for a fine episodic comedy, including one of the more cheerful "straight guy in a gay bar" sequences. The filmmakers never take the weird part for granted, though, finding a natural way to put a time limit on the case and to switch things up later on. Even with all that going on, the film is still comedy first; there are mystery and horror elements to it, but the filmmakers seldom lose sight of what this particular film is built on in order to get lost going down a particular genre's path.

Things do eventually get kind of tight, because this is the sort of small independent film that can't really afford to waste characters on just one thing or have too many locations. As a result, there's sometimes a bit of a push and pull toward the end where the logic of two similar things being related bumps up against it making for an awfully small world, especially when Marbles's ex-girlfriend Henna (Jess Sayer) shows up after being mentioned in dialogue before but never quite fits once all is said and done, despite being kind of necessary to what's going on.

It's a fun little movie which may have a little trouble getting traction outside of New Zealand - it's all local talent and its North American release seems to be virtual bookings with individual theaters - but folks who dig this sort of thing could do worse than check it out. Weal, Sainsbury, and company have their eye on the supernatural-mystery-comedy ball and seldom stumble.

Also at eFilmCritic