At Fantasia there is no shortage of dystopian visions of the future, often the near-future, tracking the dark consequences of socio-political forces currently at play—autocracies that repress individual freedoms, technologies that slander humanity—and among these imaginative and cautionary narratives, it’s heartening to see included what might be considered the most frightening genre of all: the cinema vérité documentary.
Fear and hope co-mingle in The Seoul Guardians (2026)[official website], the collective project of Jong-Woo Kim, Shin-Wan Kim, and Chul-Young Cho that documents six tense hours in and out of the National Assembly in Seoul, after the sudden declaration of martial law by the South Korean President on December 3, 2024. With a logline of “Everyone speaks of democracy, but is it truly an attainable dream?”, The Seoul Guardians chronicles the dream being put to the test; a dream that could conceivably be put to the test right here in the United States in the very near future with the midterms mere months away.
Cross-cutting footage of the December 2024 events with archival footage of the Gwangju Democratic Uprising 45 years earlier—one of the deepest traumas in South Korea’s history—a question is raised regarding the famous aphorism coined by philosopher George Santayana in his 1905 book The Life of Reason: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Emphasizing that ignoring past mistakes will inevitably lead to their being made again, one can’t help but ask: can the past save the present and, by extension, can the present save the future?
It’s a question that Americans have to ask as we witness the intense national polarization, deep fights over racial and social equality, and the widespread use of political fear and demonization that once characterized both the Reconstruction Era and the McCarthy Era of American politics. The contemporary parallels are chilling. It’s to be expected, I guess, that human nature will again and again arrive to these existential crises, these all-too-familiar moral conflicts, but the hope is that knowing our history will help us identify and negotiate swifter outcomes; that we will resolve our conflicts through the evidence of history. Then again, filmmakers Kim, Kim and Cho question the democratic viability of the word “we.”
From its opening sequences, the two “tribes” of thought—those wishing to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol and those who are anti-impeachment—are shown in strident opposition to each other, with valid critiques flying both ways. Resisting the assault on the National Assembly by soldiers ordered by the President to "drag the legislators out of the building" so they can’t vote on ending martial law seems like a no-brainer in terms of defending democracy, and the subsequent impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol and his replacement by President Lee Jae Myung was hailed by global media as a victory for democracy. But South Korea’s political polarization has only deepened, and hatred between the opposing camps continues to grow. The filmmakers raise an attendant question: In a world where political polarization and animosity toward the other side have become routine—"where society remains suspended between relief and anxiety”—can the past truly save the present? And what kind of present must be remembered by the future?
Fortunately, other than the social anxiety and property damage of the December 2024 conflict, the death toll of the Gwangju Uprising (estimated by some as high as the thousands) was avoided, partly because of the relatively passive efforts of the military to follow their orders, arguably because they knew how the military was judged for the violence visited upon civilians in the Gwangju Uprising, they didn’t wish the same for themselves. If only ICE could share that shame and concern.
Having already garnered several awards on its robust festival run, Fantasia offers The Seoul Guardians as a Quebec premiere, allowing Montreal audiences to be immersed in the power of political agitation.
Fantasia never fails to offer up exciting action flicks knowing this is what their audiences crave. The World Premiere of Bob Colaers’s Attack On Paradise (2026) more than whets the appetite. Lead actor and co-writer Saïd Boumazoughe teams up as recently-released convict Suleyman with rookie cop Yasmine (Clara Cleymans) to maneuver bullet ballets and kinetically choreographed one-on-one combats floor by floor as they aim to take down drug lord Prince Hamza (Achmed Akkabi) who, of course, is sheltered high up in the penthouse.
Taking care of an elderly parent is hard enough but Suleyman doesn’t realize just how hard until he returns home to visit his mother after being locked away for several years. His committed mother-love makes vulnerable and humanizes his invincible rough guy reputation, such that you’re rooting for him to hug mama even though a multi-story apartment building full of criminal types keep getting in his way. What can he do but bring them down?
It’s a sentimental plot nested in a kick-ass narrative, successfully rendered, and just plain fun to watch. Fully identifying with Suleyman’s undeniably likeable character meant by film’s end I could barely walk! Ouch! The bruises!! The muscle aches!!
Real-life action flicks face off with animated ones in the North American premiere of Avid Liongoren’s ZsaZsa Zaturnnah [vs the Amazonistas of Planet X] (2026). Offsetting Attack On Paradise’s testosterone-fueled mayhem with cosmic estrogen power, ZsaZsa Zaturnnah charges forward with a fearless LGBTQ+ powerhouse punch. Adapted from Filipino graphic designer and illustrator Carlo Vergara’s Zsazsa “komiks”, and having been previously adapted as a stage musical and a live-action film in 2006, Vergara’s high-camp parodies of iconic Filipina superheroine Darna have earned prestigious awards and enormous popularity among the queer community of the Philippines.
I’ll crib the synopsis from Rupert Bottenberg’s Fantasia program capsule because I couldn’t possibly do it any better: “Ada is a shy, gay hairdresser living in a small village, running a salon with the help of his boisterous assistant Didi. A history of heartbreak and harsh judgement has left Ada resigned to a life without love—despite a powerful crush on Dodong, the handsome storekeeper across the street. Everything changes for Ada when a pink meteorite punches a hole in his roof one night. At Didi’s insistence, Ada consumes the space rock and utters the mystical word inscribed on it—Zaturnnah! Didi’s ludicrous conviction that Ada will be transformed into a superhero proves to be correct. Ada now has incredible strength, speed, resilience—and a spectacular, Olympian woman’s body! These new powers prove immediately necessary, as the village is beset by giant mutant animals, wretched zombies from the local graveyard, and anything else that can be thrown at her by the militantly misandrist extraterrestrial invader Queen Feminah Suarestellar Baroux and the Amazonistas from Planet X. Can Zsazsa win against these fearsome foes? And, can Ada win Dodong’s heart?”
How’s that for a plot device? As outlandishly colorful and vibrant as ZsaZsa Zaturnnah is on its surface, I detect subtle undercurrents. Despite Ada being a stereotyped effeminate outcast hairdresser infatuated with the hunky bodybuilder across the street, he has no real interest in being a woman. He’s gay but he wants to be a guy. That swallowing a pink meteorite turns him into an Amazonian woman generates its own clutch of issues. Will he be loved for being the woman he’s actually not and never accepted as the gay man he is? A tinge of the political dynamite of transgender women in sports hovers over a provocative narrative that eschews heavy-handedness to deliver a sentimental tale where—despite who others think he is—Ada is ultimately loved for being exactly who he wants to be.
So while Saga is trying to cope with her newborn, Elyse (Morgan Holstrom)—the protagonist of Tim Riedel’s debut feature Ancestral Beasts (2026)—is trying to cope with ancestors long gone living underneath the floorboards of the family home. “The curses we inherit are not our fault,” the film’s poster attests, “what they become is our responsibility.” Which, of course, is easier said than done when it comes to family where so much past damage is coursing through the bloodlines and where, as Fantasia points out, grief arrives as an unwanted houseguest.
As Carolyn Mauricette writes in her Fantasia program capsule, Ancestral Beasts is “a haunted-house narrative mixed with character-driven commentary on how intergenerational trauma can reach beyond the grave and hold our hearts in its cold hands.”
Configuring that trauma as a centipede-like creature (think The Tingler) is truly novel, intriguing, and creepy; but, by film’s end I was worn out with all the family dysfunction—sisters unloading on each other—and the heavy-handed treatment of mental illness in indigenous communities (not to say that isn’t extremely important). The World Premiere of Ancestral Beasts is a noteworthy if uneven first endeavor and I look forward to watching Riedel and his indigenous cast and crew develop their chops in future films.
Who actually are the “wicked” in Kasper Kalle’s sophomore feature No Rest For the Wicked (2026), boasting its World Premiere at this year’s edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival? That’s an ascription that the LGBTQ+ community have been wrestling with for … well … quite a long time, stretching back at least to 1885 when Karl Heinrich Ulrichs—now considered a pioneering LGBTQ+ activist—published his supernatural short story “Manor.”
Between 1864 and 1869, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs wrote a series of pamphlets advocating decriminalization of sex acts between men, in which he was candid about his own homosexuality. As noted by Liam Stack in his posthumous obituary of Ulrichs for The New York Times: “By the time the lawyer and writer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs took the podium at a meeting of the Association of German Jurists in 1867, rumors about his same-sex love affairs—and the subsequent threat of arrest and prosecution—had already cost him his legal career and forced him to flee his homeland. Standing in Munich before more than 500 lawyers, officials and academics—many of whom jeered as he spoke—Ulrichs argued for the repeal of sodomy laws that criminalized sex between men in several of the German-speaking kingdoms and duchies that existed in the years before the creation of a unified German state. …His speech was also deeply unwelcome at the 1867 meeting, where the audience erupted in shouts of ‘Stop!’ and ‘Crucify!’ that ultimately forced Ulrichs off the stage.”
His remarks helped inspire the rise of the world’s first gay rights movement, 30 years later in Berlin and preceded by more than 100 years the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969 (which are widely seen as the start of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement).
Historian Robert Beachy has said of Ulrichs, "I think it is reasonable to describe [Ulrichs] as the first gay person to publicly out himself.” But it came at a significant personal cost. Not only did he lose his career but was banished from his homeland. He published one final pamphlet in 1879 and then crossed the Alps by foot and settled in Italy, where his public advocacy for homosexuality ceased. He spent his remaining years editing a small Latin-language literary journal.
In 1885, ten years before his death at the age of 69, Ulrichs published “Manor”. Set in the remote Faroe Islands, it tells the story of Har, who is saved from drowning by a young sailor named Manor. After Manor dies at sea, he returns as a vampire revenant to visit Har each night in a tragic, romantic tale of devotion. Ulrichs notably utilized the vampire trope as an early allegorical metaphor to explore homosexuality and societal rejection in Western literature.
Danish filmmaker Kasper Kalle competently adapts Ulrichs’s short story into an expanded full-length feature film, renaming Har as Baldur and Manor as Helge, but maintaining the story’s central dark romance, draping it in gothic trappings, and using the natural beauty of the Faroe islands to emphasize the isolation Baldur feels growing up as a fatherless fisherman. Egor Venned portrays Baldur as a taciturn yet sensually magnetic young man, who draws the attention of the slightly-older whaler Helge, flirtatiously enacted by Pilou Asbæk (known by most for his portrayal of the swashbuckling Euron Greyjoy in HBO’s Game of Thrones). Their affair builds slowly, shrouded—as Kat Ellinger describes in her program capsule for Fantasia—in “necessary secrecy, Baldur’s duty to family and community, and the oppressive atmosphere of devout Christianity that governs daily life” on the island, along with Helge’s unquestionable love for adventures at sea where Baldur longs to join him. When that opportunity arises he is held back by his mother Alsa (Sofia Nolsøe Mikkelsen) who guilt trips him into staying home to take care of her. Helge sails off and is drowned at sea, washing up on the shore of the island.
And that’s where the wickedness begins.
Appearing first in dense fog, then at his bedside, where Helge’s lips—as described in Ulrichs’s story—begins “looking for the gently swelling hill above the heart, which moves through the throbbing”; i.e., sucking blood from Baldur’s nipple. As Baldur begins to weaken from losing blood each night, his mother Alsa realizes what’s happening and convinces the local priest to stake the heart of Helge in his grave. Baldur, realizing he is about to die, pleads with his mother to have her bury him next to Helge, which of course she refuses to do when he does finally succumb.
Now here’s why I ask where the wickedness actually lies. Though it’s insinuated that the wickedness lies in Helge’s inability to relinquish his love for Baldur, isn’t it actually in the lack of compassion exhibited by the villagers and his own mother in not honoring his request? By not doing so, they unleash a watery revenge upon themselves, disturbing their communal rest. No rest for the wicked, indeed.
No Rest For the Wicked is a lovely, atmospheric, folkloric expression of vampiric lore, compellingly enacted, and as stated earlier, an immensely important reclamation of LGBTQ+ history. It startles me that in decades of uncovering queer history, I have never heard of Ulrichs and his story “Manor.” It’s a heartening experience to see it on cinematic display. Kudos to Kalle for this brave reclamation and strong contender for Fantasia’s Cheval Noir prize. It has my vote.
In a remarkable reversal of perspective, Chuyen Bui Thac’s Tunnels: Sun In the Dark (2025) honors and celebrates the Vietnamese resistance guerillas who fought the American occupation of Vietnam, a “forever war” that lasted from 1955 to 1975. In the early 1990s filmmaker Mickey Grant documented the topic in The Cu Chi Tunnels (1991), but Thac’s film is a well-produced fictionalized historical epic. Lauded on its festival run with awards for Best Cinematography and Best Music Score at the 2025 Vietnam Film Festival and the Mulberry Award for Best Screenplay at the 2026 Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy, Tunnels: Sun In the Dark emerged as a major box office hit when released theatrically in Vietnam.
The tunnels of Củ Chi are an immense network of connecting tunnels located in the Củ Chi District of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam, and are part of a much larger network of tunnels that underlie much of the country. During the war, the Củ Chi tunnels were one of the critical intel hubs for the H63 strategic intelligence network, a highly successful North Vietnamese strategic espionage group operating in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It was most famous for deeply infiltrating the American and South Vietnamese military and political commands to provide critical intelligence.
Used by Viet Cong soldiers as hiding spots during combat, the Củ Chi tunnels likewise served as communication and supply routes, hospitals, food and weapon caches and living quarters for numerous North Vietnamese fighters. The tunnel systems were of great importance to the Viet Cong in their resistance to American and ARVN forces and helped to counter the growing American military presence.
The tunnels played a colossal part in securing the final win on April 30, 1975, sealing the end of Vietnam’s brutal 21-year fight for freedom. Tunnels: Sun In the Dark, however, is set a little under a decade earlier on January 8, 1966 during the U.S. military campaign named Operation Crimp when B-52 bombers dropped 30-ton loads of high explosive onto the region of Củ Chi, effectively turning the once lush jungle into a pockmarked moonscape. When Americans started the raid more than 3000 officers were stuck at Phu My Hung and An Phu, having to hide in the tunnels. Despite their carpet bombing (the Americans dropped all types of bombs—timed bombs, airburst bombs, and ground-impact bombs) and their “destroy all, burn all, kill all” policy, the operation did not bring about the desired success, though it revealed for the first time the immense military significance of the tunnels. The failure of Operation Crimp resulted in the expanded operation dubbed Operation Cedar Falls.
Without making the American forces strictly evil, Tunnels: Sun In the Dark admirably presents the inhumanity of war and its impact on both sides of the war. As Rupert Bottenberg assesses in his program capsule for Fantasia, “Cinematic ruminations on the Vietnam War have long come mainly from the United States, and while films like Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and Platoon hardly glorified the massive military misadventure in southeast Asia, they offered only the American perspective.” Tunnels: Sun In the Dark “tells the other side of the tale with a powerful war film that’s intelligent, empathic, convincing, and intense.”
Chuyen Bui Thac who directed, wrote, and executive produced Tunnels: Sun In the Dark built his script on documented practices of the Củ Chi tunnels. Each hamlet had its own tunnel entrance. If an outsider wandered in, they would blindfold him, and lead him outside, releasing him far from the entrance. Such is the case with Tu Dap (Quang Tuan) who serves the tunnel community by dismantling and studying recovered bombs in order to teach himself mine-building. Though forced to live outside of the tunnels, Tu Dap nonetheless becomes romantically involved with Ba Huong (Thu Anh Ho), as impossible as that might seem in a world explosively ravaged 24/7. The ensemble is large and the breadth and depth of interactions noteworthy, such that this viewer felt for them and their plight. Many of them were so young with no chance of leading a normal life.
There’s a palpable haunt to Tunnels: Sun In the Dark. By acknowledging and elevating the resilience and perseverance of the guerillas under the onslaught of American military power, using the tunnel system to develop ingenious ways to fight back, their determination to hold out effected the sad truth that the United States did not “win” the Vietnam War. One would hope we would have learned the lesson that bombing a country to destruction does not mean you win a war. And yet, in another chilling example of the unbridled use of military might by the United States of Amnesia, the Trump regime has led us into another misguided war of choice in Iran, which to date has no clear way out. I feel not only for the Americans at home who do not want this war and are anxious over it, but Tunnels: Sun In the Dark provides a sense of the hell we are visiting on the Iranian people and the tenacity with which they will harrow it. I can predict that we’re not going to win that war either, if it hasn’t already been lost.
Christianity, particularly in its Roman Catholic expression, is well-known to be rife with potential horror, ranging from Rosemary’s Baby to The Exorcist and The Conjuring franchises. There’s something about the trappings of the Catholic faith that often feel like … well … a trap; a terribly ritualized and consecrated trap! Possession and the subsequent need for exorcism is a familiar trope, but the perils of indoctrination are equally frightening, especially when configured as evident child abuse.
And so it begins with the World Premiere of Mark H. Rapaport’s sophomore feature Godhead (2026)—what Justine Smith characterizes in her Fantasia program capsule as an “electrically weird coming-of-age film.” It’s also extremely original and lustrously shot in black and white by cinematographer William Babcock, allegedly in homage to Alfred Hitchcock and vintage “Twilight Zone” television episodes, though its gossamer infrared ghostliness approximates spirituality more than anything Hitch ever endeavored.
A child is left in a basket on the steps of a small country church. The hem of a priest’s robe is seen discovering the infant. Years later the priest “Father” (Al Warren, delivering his lines with a colloquial salt-of-the-earth twang) guides his ward “Boy” (Luke Speakman) through prayer, teaching him about the seven days of creation, and eventually about the eighth day when God abandons mankind for being so selfish and sinful. Father warns Boy about the dangers outside the church, explaining that this is why he keeps Boy locked up inside and why Father must wear a gas mask to forage for supplies. The minute Father steps outside, however, he rips off his gasmask exposing his dark and perverse deceit. Again, indoctrination as child abuse.
Enter two characters in white jumpsuits—“Firstborn” (Sarah Coffey) and “Secondborn” (Kimball Farley)—professing to both be candidates for the assignment of Holy Spirit and needing Father to decide which one of them belongs in the Godhead of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It’s a task that would make any priest question his faith, especially when a threatening Smith and Wesson becomes involved, and deeply disturbing secrets begin to surface the more Father resists what he believes to be delusions but which the twins insist are divinely proclaimed and real.
The film is lovely to watch, a visual feast, and the performances are strange and hypnotic, buttressing a script that seems grounded in traditional religiosity only to spin off into something questionably unholy. Or is it? Is it really? Only the film’s scriptural ambiguity knows for sure. Audiences will have to pray to fully understand what the film’s ending means; but the questioning and the doubt and the unsurety feel ultimately satisfying.
With the Third Wave of announcements of films screening at the 30th edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival, Fantasia adds thirteen World Premieres to their line-up bringing the grand total to a whopping 30 World Premieres!! This is, of course, just a slice of the 125 features and 200+ shorts being offered, along with their numerous 2026 competitions, and selections of jurors—as well as this year’s plethora of special events, career awards, and artist talks!
Junction Row (2026), Canada; Director: Ashlea Wessel—Wessel has directed festival-favorite shorts like 2018’s Tick and 2020’s Weirdo and rounded them out with segments in the 2024 horror anthology Creepy Bits. Now, audiences can see the World Premiere of her feature debut, Junction Row. Canadian horror icon Katharine Isabelle is Juno, a recovering addict who leaves a fringe housing compound for a better life, leaving her beloved Ruby behind. When she learns that Ruby has gone missing, Juno returns, only to find Junction Row has become a hotbed of criminal activity, but she encounters much more than menacing drug dealers on her mission to find Ruby. Isabelle continues to be a crowd-pleaser as an action star and supporting roles by Glen Gould and Kyle don’t disappoint. With distinct Lovecraftian dread, this creature feature, penned by Adam Cesare, Matt Serafini, and Wessel, conjures a story where the fear of the unknown isn’t confined to what lies above, but what waits beneath.
Junction Row is featured in Fantasia’s Septentrion Shadows Section, a dedicated programming strand that showcases cutting-edge, character-driven genre cinema—including horror, sci-fi, and dark fantasy—with a primary focus on Canadian and Northern regional perspectives.
Insectasy (2026), Canada; Director: Angus Silver—Bathed in the glow of Dario Argento’s Phenomena and Lucky McKee’s May, Angus Silver’s Insectasy is for all the lonely perverts who’ve always wanted to be annihilated by the weight of their desire. A homage to 1970s erotic thrillers with a touch of creepy-crawly, Insectasy carries an offbeat, dark sense of humor and a violet-cast color scheme. Piercing the sterility of contemporary life with the disruptive transgression of eroticism, Silver’s film features dreamy fantasy sequences that interrupt and disrupt, drawing us expertly into its characters’ sensual and unusual interiority.
Likewise firmly associated with Fantasia’s Septentrion Shadows Section, Insectasy is programmed into Fantasia’s dedicated Underground sidebar, which showcases bold, super-independent, outsider, and DIY cinema and features ultra-low-budget and unconventional films made outside the traditional studio system. Fantasia’s Underground sidebar highlights extreme genres, fetishism, transgressive acts, and bizarre artistic expressions from around the world that possess a pure vision and are entirely unafraid to take risks.
Romin (2026), Quebec; Directors: Anthony Dionne and Jassen Charron—Not only Canadian but distinctly Quebeçois (and, thus, programmed into Fantasia’s Les Fantastiques week-ends du cinéma québécois sidebar) Romin stumbles upon a mysterious object in a Quebec forest. Together with his sister Maya, his sketchy pal Jeff, and his new classmate Booker, Romin heads to a village in the north, following in the footsteps of a missing archaeologist to find out more about the artifact. It turns out that, having touched it, Romin is struck by a curse that will kill him unless he returns it to the cave from whence it came, in the Bahamas. Directed by actors Anthony Dionne and Jassen Charron, Romin is an Indiana Jones-style adventure featuring plenty of suspense and action, including some truly astonishing stunts. Amid the various twists and turns, more serious themes, such as grief, are explored with great tact and care.
Godhead (2026), USA / United Kingdom; Director: Mark H. Rapaport—In 2023, Fantasia fell in love with Hippo, Mark H. Rapaport’s electrically weird coming-of-age debut feature. With his sophomore effort, Godhead, Rapaport plunges us back into his wickedly strange imagination, re-teaming with his Hippo star Kimball Farley. This equally baffling and engrossing film examines the intertwining blood structures where fanaticism and obligation meet. The film follows eccentric twins (Farley and Sarah Coffey) who proclaim themselves prophets, blurring reality and delusion as they draw a priest into their supposedly divine mission. A darkly comic work that examines the limits of dogmatic belief, the film’s formal identity reflects themes of unreal truth and fanaticism in an increasingly fragmented world. Claustrophobic and uncertain, Godhead pulls us into the headspace of religious indoctrination. It’s an offbeat film for our offbeat audience, and a movie for the freaks trying to find their place in this unforgiving world. Programmed into Fantasia’s Underground section.
When You Open the Door (2026), Japan; Director: Eriko Katagiri—Also programmed into Fantasia’s Underground section is When You Open the Door, which is a werewolf movie like you’ve never seen. Miki, a 27-year-old working in an architectural firm, wakes up in her small apartment, pulled out of her sleepy memory. Her world is quiet and strange, but will soon be interrupted by a transformative experience spurred by a half-remembered wolf bite. As Miki searches for answers, she soon finds herself drawn into the woods, and to the center of a ritual at a shrine cared for by elderly maidens.
Director Eriko Katagiri was the recipient of the Japan Horror Award, and her film tackles feminine isolation and alienation in a unique and powerful way. Viewers who allow themselves to be carried into Miki’s mind will find themselves pulled into one of the most unique werewolf stories ever put to the big screen. Cinematographer Akiko Ashizawa, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s frequent collaborator, lends the film a unique visual identity, creating images built in ephemera, silhouettes, shadows and nature. When You Open the Door isn’t just a great film, it’s the announcement of a bright new talent.
The International Premiere of Larry Fessenden's final chapter of his “monsterverse” quadrilogy Trauma Or, Monsters All (2026) brings together the vampire Sam (Fessenden) from Habit (1995), Frankenstein of the Hudson, Adam (Alex Breaux) from Depraved (2019), and the wolf man of Talbot Falls, Charley (Alex Hurt) from Blackout (2023). The quadrilogy works as a standalone or series finale and—as stated in Fantasia’s program capsule—explores “themes of dysfunction, social strife, and the filmmaker’s unmistakable flair for human drama.”
Dispatching from New Orleans’ Overlook Film Festival, Richard Newby of The Hollywood Reporter characterizes Trauma Or, Monsters All as “a monster mash nearly 30 years in the making.” Newby adds that Fessenden’s film “challenges the very notion of a monster as it relates to modern America. Race, sexuality, history, and the environment all play a crucial role in what stories are told and how they’re told. The film suggests we’ve become distracted by false enemies while the real monsters reside right in front of us, and in the highest seats of power in the country. … Trauma has shaped who we are as people and as a country, but in order to move forward, and truly change things, we’re going to have to let some of that go to heal and unite as a force that’s smarter and better equipped than the true monsters.”
PVD Horror interviewed Fessenden before the world premiere screening of Trauma Or, Monsters All at Overlook.
J. Hurtado synopsizes the plot for Screen Anarchy, which is in gist about a writer investigating her town's dark past for a newspaper article and how it stirs up fears about lurking monsters. Hurtado contextualizes: “Fessenden’s horror stories have always taken an askew glance at the genre, reading into the subtext of the classics to hew closer to the spirit of the stories and the way they’ve always commented on the human condition. Trauma, Or Monsters All is no different, only this time it’s not only the things that go bump in the night that get put under the microscope, it’s also those who would hunt them down.
“The collective trauma in Talbot Falls erupts after Cassandra’s article riles up the town and, as the title says, makes monsters of everyone. While the town around her disintegrates into a swirling mass of paranoia and persecution, our old friends Adam (Alex Breaux’s creature from Depraved), Charley (Alex Hurt’s werewolf from Blackout), and Sam (Fessenden’s forlorn vamp from Habit), are monsters left seeking the most human thing of all, connection.”
At Father Son Holy Gore C.H. Newell echoes that sentiment: “Not every horror filmmaker or writer understands the complexity of monstrosity, even if they make monster movies, but Fessenden—similar to someone like Guillermo del Toro—understands monsters; not only what makes them scary, but also what makes them deeply human.”
Although Fessenden asserts that the quadrilogy works as a standalone or series finale, I’ve watched the first three films to more fully appreciate the winks and nods that I’m anticipating in Trauma, Or Monsters All; presaged in the final scene of Blackout when Charley passes Adam on the street with an intrigued over-the-shoulder glance.
Walter Chaw writes at Filmfreak Central: “Comprising a loose trilogy of riffs on Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man, respectively, Fessenden’s Habit, Depraved, and Blackout understand the Universal Monsters pantheon as metaphors renewed for the generation that resurrects them and as modern archetypes that seem always to speak more eloquently in shorthand than in complete sentences. The vampire movie as a parable for addiction? Sure–but in Fessenden’s hands, the addiction is to destructive behaviors in toxic interpersonal relationships that erode self-esteem and social guardrails.”
Larry Fessenden appears to be a patient filmmaker loyal to his ideas. In 1980-1981 when he was a 17–18-year-old student, Fessenden made an initial short-film / video version of Habit. In 1994, 13 years later, he revisited Habit, which had a theatrical release 3 years later in 1997 when he was 34. 1997 was a good year for Fessenden. He won the 1997 Independent Spirit "Someone to Watch" Award and Habit garnered favorable reviews during its festival run before opening theatrically.
He wrote, directed and starred in Habit as Sam, a young man seeking relief at the bottom of a bottle as a way of dealing with the recent death of his father and the loss of a girlfriend due to his alcoholism. He meets androgynous beauty Anna (Meredith Snaider) at a Halloween party and adds reckless unprotected sex (during the AIDS pandemic) to his poor choices, which literally come back to bite him. His poor choices reveal—as they often do—his low self-esteem. The "habit" indicated in the film's title references a self-loathing that compels Sam towards self-destruction. It's as if he can't help himself. AIDS is never directly mentioned but infection through blood is. The monstrous consequence of otherwise hot sex makes Habit a cautionary tale appropriate to the time of its release. Sexual addiction is underscored as the cause of infected consequences and is laminated onto a vampiric trope. It’s never ascertained if Anna is a true vampire though she does suck blood from wounds she inflicts, never appears in daylight, and never seems to eat anything except anyone who keeps her from Sam. Is Sam a victim or a fool for not being able to face reality, control himself and constrain Anna? Sam’s deterioration is a sad thing to witness and proof that loss and loneliness can drive a man insane. It will be interesting to see how Sam will be resurrected to appear in Trauma, Or Monsters All since—unless I’m missing something—I thought he plummeted to his death at the end of Habit. Perhaps Anna was a vampire after all and her bite a get-out-of-death-free card? Habit is available for streaming on Shudder.
Twenty-two years later Fessenden continued his homage to Universal with Depraved (2019), his take on the Frankenstein tale. The failure of fatherhood haunts Depraved, beginning with a quarrel between Alex (Owen Campbell) and girlfriend Lucy (Chloë Levine) where she tries to compliment him by saying he would make a good father and he responds by feeling pressured that she wants to have kids too soon after his moving in with her. Shortly thereafter Alex is murdered and his brain lifted and placed into a cadaver stitched together by Henry (David Call), a disillusioned field surgeon suffering from PTSD. Henry, in effect, is both creator and father of Adam (Alex Breaux), named after a soldier on the battlefield who died in Henry’s arms and not God’s firstborn.
Tomes have been written about the relationship of fatherhood to Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818), most notably Walker Larson’s “Frankenstein and the Responsibility of Fathers” (2024), Harshita Yepuri’s “Blame My Insanity on My Father, the Importance of a Paternal Bond in Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein” (2021), and Laura P. Claridge’s “Parent-Child Tensions in Frankenstein: The Search for Communion” (1985), to name a few.
In gist, fatherhood in Depraved acts as a central moral framework, primarily explored through Henry’s catastrophic failure as a paternal figure. By not accounting for Adam’s need for a normal life, which he openly admits late in the film, Henry has neglected his parental duty, failing to provide nurture, and thereby initiating monstrous suffering and tragedy. Adam’s violent turn is explicitly driven by his desperate, unfulfilled longing for parental acceptance and guidance. Fessenden astutely perceives the depravity of the guidance offered Adam, first by his creator / father Henry, and then by Henry’s financial donor Polidori (Joshua Leonard) who takes Adam out on a disastrous night on the town, exposing him to the darkest and most perverse cravings of human nature. As Shelley, Addison Timlin delivers a heartfelt portrait as the victim of Adam’s awakened desires. Depraved is likewise available for streaming on Shudder.
Finally, in 2023 Fessenden crafted Blackout with Alex Hurt as Charley Barrett and Addison Timlin returning as his ex-girlfriend Sharon Hammond. Monstrous suffering is once again applicable to the fate of Charley who comes to in fields and forests during the three days of the full moon covered in blood. He knows he is a werewolf and that he is killing innocent people and it is driving him mad with guilt. Further, he has deep concerns that he will go after Sharon, who he loves.
Blackout is strengthened by the theme of racial animosity as Sharon’s father Jack Hammond (Marshall Bell) strives to blame the murders in Talbot Falls on the local Mexican American community. Comparable to Depraved, greed is a trigger for the monstrous to retaliate. Blackout is available for streaming at Prime.
As each “monster” in Fessenden’s “monsterverse” are genuinely sympathetic characters who suffer for their monstrosity, I’m eager to see the three interact in their narrative reunion in Trauma Or, Monsters All, whose title implicates that we each must recognize the monstrous within ourselves, whether addiction, or the rage of abandonment, or ravenous instincts beyond control, or mob mentality.
I’m reminded of one of my favorite conversations at Fantasia during their 2011 edition when I sat down with Montreal’s Mario DeGiglio-Bellemare to talk about genre films. He gave this nugget, which has been gold for me for years: “The word ‘monster’ comes from the Latin word monstrare, meaning ‘to show’, and is cognate with the English word demonstrate, meaning ‘to show clearly.’ So monsters are not just evil creatures; they show, reveal and point to something. But what are they pointing to?”
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