Fantasia International Film Festival 2023 - Vampires are a good metaphor for loneliness. They spend all of eternity traveling around, feeding on blood, never aging, while anyone mortal they know passes away. Transylvanie is a French short and a tale of a bullied kid who thinks she's a vampire. Some of the film's themes resemble [...]

Fantasia International Film Festival 2023 - With all of the stories about AI's rapid advances, it's not difficult to imagine the premise of Restore Point coming to pass, specifically a way to cheat death by uploading your consciousness and personality every 48 hours. Yet, like most sci-fi thrillers, the world of director Robert Hloz's feature [...]

Fantasia International Film Festival 2023 - Somehow, the Adams Family managed to outdo their 2021 breakout hit Hellbender in terms of experimentation, weirdness, and visual nightmares. Where the Devil Roams is a bewitching feast, a 90-minute circus act where the devil comes to collect his due. It goes even further than the family's last film [...]

Fantasia International Film Festival 2023 - We all remember those early days of COVID. Even going to the grocery store felt dangerous, especially if someone nearby sneezed. While Vincent Must Die isn't a film about COVID, it resonates so much because of its portrayal of loneliness and isolation. Since we all lived through lockdowns, we [...]

Fantasia International Film Festival 2023 - Kudos to any movie bold enough to take one of the most famous phrases in modern American poetry and use it as a title. Yes, I'm referring to Robert Frost's poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." It's a fitting poem in the context of writer/director Teresa Sutherland's [...]

Fantasia International Film Festival 2023 - White Noise barely relents in its 16 minutes. The short follows protagonist Ava (Bahia Watson), who is disturbed by sound. When she tries to address the problem through an experiment, it goes horribly wrong. This short  succeeds in illustrating Ava's deep discomfort and putting the audience squarely in her perspective, [...]