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?”
Along with the nine World Premieres announced in early May with their First Wave titles, the Fantasia International Film Festival added eight World Premieres with their Second Wave of titles announced in early June. A Third Wave is coming up in early July when Fantasia’s full lineup will be announced. Until then, here are five World Premieres from Fantasia’s Second Wave to whet your appetite.
Los Vampires (2026), United States; Director: Craig Mitchell—In 1930 Hollywood, a Spanish actor (Henry Ian Cusick) is cast in the night shoot of a soon-to-be-legendary vampire film, forced to imitate the English-speaking star (Thomas Kretschmann) who performs the same role by day. The two actors regularly meet at the transitory hours of their shoots, and a rivalry stirs between them. All the while, a string of murders are occurring on and around the soundstage. With names respectfully altered, Craig Mitchell’s Los Vampires (2026) is a fantastical fictionalized account of the making of George Melford’s Spanish Dracula (1931), the arguably superior version of the Universal Horror classic which had been shot overnight on the same sets Tod Browning’s landmark pictured used during the day. Cusick and Kretschmann captivate as uncanny surrogates for Carlos Villarías and Bela Lugosi, while Daniela Couso, Tony-winner Jefferson Mays, Oscar Nuñez, and Jorge Diaz round out an immaculate cast. Los Vampires is a meticulously designed, occult-tinged tribute to the dignity of performance ... and a darkly imaginative, bittersweet love letter to old Hollywood—and the forgotten struggles that made it what it was.
I Love Paris (2026), France / United States; Director: Nicky Murphy—In an altogether different mockumentary vein, I Love Paris is an explosive and vibrant vampire film that’s equal parts funny, dynamic, and haunting. Avoiding the traditional pitfalls of mockumentary filmmaking, I Love Paris feels real but never forgets to keep its audience entertained. The film stars an explosive and hypnotic Aminata Thiboult as Paris, an aspiring musician who gets vampirized mid-shoot, giving all new meaning to the underground nightlife. Not just a vampire movie, this is a music film where the beats actually hit. I Love Paris captures an improvisational style that blends comedy, music, and horror to draw in the audience. With obvious comparisons to What We Do In the Shadows director Nicky Murphy brings in a dash of Tony Scott’s The Hunger—creating a vampire story that’s funny, pulses with youth and ambition, and blends down-under humor with effortless French cool.
I Love Paris 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.
God Skin (2026), Thailand; Director: Paween Purijitpanya—Desperate for money, Bangkok delivery boy Marwin discovers a clandestine arena where the wealthy wager on martial-arts matches with a high-tech twist, in the spectacular Thai action-fantasy God Skin. Panna Stunt Team (veterans of the Ong-Bak films) handle the combat choreography, so top-notch action is assured as Marwin faces off against a succession of outrageous rivals. Leading man Sutthirak Subvijitra, of the My Boo and 4 Kings series, proves equally deft at drama, comedy, romance, and high-flying, hard-hitting stunts, but director Paween Purijitpanya takes things further, as this live-action arcade game loaded with rapid-fire laughs and eye-popping visual effects takes a sharp turn into dark, dystopian techno-thriller territory. This is potent proof that Thailand’s action cinema remains among the world’s best, offering ferocious fights and fresh new ideas.
Cherry and Virgin (2026), Japan; Director: Masanao Kawajiri—Ami and Ryo have a lot in common. They’re both around 30 years old, both draw, both prone to brutal self-criticism—and neither has ever had sex. The duo is awkward, uncertain, confused. In their own weird way, the pair have great chemistry ... but will it lead them to the bedroom—and beyond? Following his short animated mockumentary A Japanese Boy Who Draws (Fantasia 2019), Masanao Kawajiri returns with Cherry and Virgin, an understated romantic dramedy that showcases his unique specialty. Kawajiri tells stories about people who draw and presents them as they would draw themselves. The filmmaker’s skill at mimicking a multitude of styles is remarkable, and he puts it to use brilliantly in the service of surprising and insightful studies of ordinary lives. A patient and precise storyteller with a visual language as expressive as his dialogue, Kawajiri’s sardonic wit and harsh candor offset and even elevate the strong sense of compassion that permeates Cherry and Virgin.
Cherry and Virgin’s World Premiere is slotted into Fantasia’s Animation Plus sidebar, which highlights boundary-pushing animated feature films and projects, ranging from anime to experimental works, that may not always receive mainstream distribution. The section showcases international premieres, romance, dark comedy, and fantasy.
Corpus (2026), United States; Director: Corrin Evans—The body becomes a different kind of temple in Corpus; a bold and visceral horror vision, and the transfixing feature debut from filmmaker Corrin Evans, whose work explores death, eroticism, and the supernatural. Co-written and produced by Lily Cowles, who also stars, Corpus is a body horror yearn-and-burn. Erotic and surreal, the film lands brilliantly as a meditation on identity, desire, and the lethal cocktail of longing, vulnerability, and control.
It's the summer of 1998 in New York City; Sayo (Jeff Wahlberg), a soulful nightlife photographer and small-time drug dealer, is invited to a party upstate by his long-time friend and unrequited love, a movie star on the rise: Vince Marlowe (Brodie Townsend). Together with their rowdy friend Ross (Michael Vlamis), they drive to a remote, bucolic manor in hopes of some summer debauchery. But when they arrive, they discover that the promise of a party is actually three mysterious women—Billie (Lily Cowles), Wren (Nuha Jes Izman), and Cata (Ching Valdes-Aran)—whose disturbing agenda draws the boys into a dark web of seduction and terror. Corpus is competing for the Cheval Noir.
“Evil wants out” is the official tagline for Daniel Stamm’s Lockbox (2026), but it could also be “no good deed goes unpunished” which Ellen (Carla Gugino) realizes when she offers to take in her cousin Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci) who has been severely traumatized not only by a tragic childhood but his tour of duty in the Middle East. Trauma permeates Lockbox throughout, revealed as the seedbed for evil.
Inspired by the cult podcast Knifepoint Horror and based on an original story by writer, creator, and narrator Soren Narnia, Lockbox explores the theme of how evil attaches itself and pursues those weakened by trauma so that it can inhabit their body and psyche. Recognizing that this demonic force is pursuing her cousin Winthrop, Ellen applies herself to rescuing him.
Carla Gugino has long been one of my favorite actresses with an impressive resume of appearances in major genre projects. Most recently, I’ve enjoyed her performances in The Friend (2024), the television mini-series The Fall of the House of Usher (2023), Midnight Mass (2021), The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and Wayward Pines (2015-2016), among many other credits, ranging back to the late ‘80s. Her characters are often sympathetic caught in extraordinary circumstances and—as is necessary in genre films with preposterous narratives—thoroughly believable, lending credence through the sincerity of her acting. As Ellen, a woman who retreats to a rural town, seeking peace after her mother’s death, Gugino skillfully carries Lockbox as a woman bewildered by the supernatural danger encroaching around her but determined to overcome her own fears to help her threatened cousin.
As familiar as I am with Gugino’s body of work, Lockbox is my belated introduction to Lou Taylor Pucci (who has multiple credits over the past two decades). Pucci delivers a riveting and anguished performance as Winthrop, a man victimized and made vulnerable by childhood abuse and the horrors of war. As demonic forces attempt to overtake him, you join Gugino’s desperation in trying to save him.
Katherine Isabelle, along with Gugino, has been a genre queen for decades, most notably as Ginger in the feminist werewolf tale Ginger Snaps (2000), and most recently in a minor role in the box office hit Backrooms (2026). She inhabits her role as Vahna Minter with dreadlocked and unfiltered ferocity, imposing herself on the quiet domesticity of Ellen and Winthrop as the neighbor who guides evil to their doorstep. She’s the guest they can’t get rid of and in her own idiosyncratic insistence an individualized home invasion.
The concept of the “lockbox” would be a spoiler should I try to describe it and, quite frankly, I would have trouble trying to describe it anyways, so I leave that for the viewer to experience when the film opens later this week. Suffice it to say that it’s the means by which Ellen endeavors to capture the demonic force pursuing and occupying Winthrop. That occupation, incidentally, takes a silly turn towards transvestism, which felt a little bit like being hit over the head, as if the transference of evil from one individual to another could not be understood otherwise. Other than for those perverse fishnet stockings, Lockbox is an engaging thrill and welcome variation on demonic possession.
In this troubled world of political upheaval and environmental decline is there anything as ameliorative as a World Premiere at one of the most exciting and prestigious genre film festivals in the world? The Fantasia International Film Festival will celebrate its upcoming 30th edition with an electrifying program of screenings, workshops, and launch events running from July 16 through August 2, 2026, returning to the Concordia Hall and J.A. de Sève cinemas, with additional screenings and events at Montreal’s Cinéma du Musée.
The festival’s full lineup will be announced in early July but in the meantime, here are five World Premieres from Fantasia’s First Wave of announcements to help you forget your troubles, if only for a frightened climate-changed spell.
Hot Spot (2026), Poland; Director: Agnieszka Smoczynska—In a near future society ruled by sentient A.I., a private eye investigates a murder case only to discover a rebel group capable of undermining the digital overlord. As the detective's identity slowly unravels, his world enters a state of hypnotic meltdown. A singular, provocative and aesthetically stunning new work from celebrated Polish visionary Agnieszka Smoczyńska (The Lure, Fantasia 2016), starring Andrzej Konopka, Noomi Rapace, and Reika Kirishima.
A reminder that Smoczyńska’s The Lure is available for streaming on the Criterion Channel.
Hot Spot is participating in the Cheval Noir Competition, Fantasia’s flagship section, which highlights the best feature-length genre films. Winners are awarded with the festival's mascot statuette, a mighty black Pegasus. The winged black horse draws thematic inspiration from the mythological roots of dark fantasy, reflecting Fantasia’s identity as a premier North American destination for niche, indie, and genre cinema. Recent Best Film awards went to Mother of Flies (2025) and The Count of Monte Cristo (2024).
Ancestral Beasts (2026), Canada; Director: Tim Riedel—Red River Métis director Tim Riedel’s Ancestral Beasts first appeared as a proof-of-concept five-minute film at the 2025 Frontieres Platform project at Cannes and is backed by executive producer Edmon Rotea of Skinamarink fame. Riedel’s film casts a demonic lens on intergeneration trauma. Family is complicated, even in the best of times, but when you have skeletons in the closet and grief as an unwanted houseguest, it becomes something that consumes you—and that’s what Elyse (Morgan Holmstrom) finds out the hard way. Dealing with her mother’s death, a snarky sister, and a distant aunt, Elyse leaves the city for her aunt’s rural home to work on her mental health. But she’s not alone and will soon find that intergenerational trauma comes in many forms ... and here, it’s demonic. Riedel draws on his talent for storytelling, personal experience, and genre to weave a tale of Indigenous mothers, sisters, and mental suffering. Look out for Canadian legend Gail Maurice as Elyse’s Aunt Adele in this fresh new take on the haunted house film.
Ancestral Beasts 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.
The Last Temptation of Becky (2026), United States; Director: Jenn Wexler—Fantasia’s family of returning filmmakers is large, and proudly includes director/producer powerhouse, Jenn Wexler. Her breakout debut, The Ranger, came to Fantasia in 2018 and was followed by the World Premiere of her supernatural Christmas crime heist, The Sacrifice Game, in 2023. For Fantasia’s 30th anniversary, the fest couldn’t be happier to have her back with the next chapter of the popular BECKY franchise, The Last Temptation of Becky!
Becky Hooper (Lulu Wilson) has annihilated Neo-Nazis and all manner of victimizers, but this time, she’s going straight to the source! Now a CIA agent, managed by genre favorite Kate Siegel, she’s taking down a nefarious modern-day Nazi played with camp brilliance by the one and only Neil Patrick Harris! Wexler shines here, highlighting the underdog heroine and going for broke with tons of gore and crazy kills. Meanwhile, Wilson reprises her beloved character with gusto, unleashing Becky’s signature rage on an army of insane baddies!
No Rest For the Wicked (2026), Denmark; Director: Kasper Kalle—A young fisherman’s first love with a stranded whaler unfolds in secrecy under the pressures of family, faith, and community in this haunting and subversive Queer vampire film with chilling folk horror flavors. Singular in scope and depth, Kasper Kalle’s No Rest For the Wicked is a vivid new landmark in Danish genre cinema that brings imaginatively radical and nightmarish new elements into the vampire lore.
Adapted from Karl Heinrich Ulrichs’s iconic 1884 novella Manor, the film is set against the harsh, unforgiving landscape of the 19th-century Faroe Islands. Its stark, yet dreamy, uncanny atmosphere recalls the work of Carl Theodor Dreyer or even Robert Eggers, while its full-blooded heart is just as much an ode to the painful longings of Gothic romance as it is to the genre’s cruelties and horrors. Anchored by a remarkable lead performance from screen newcomer Egor Venned, it co-stars Pilou Asbæk alongside strong performances from Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, and Sofia Nolsøe. No Rest For the Wicked is eligible for the Cheval Noir prize.
Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson (2026); Director: Nick Taylor. Known for his intense work ethic, perfectionism, and obsession with breaking new ground, Steve Johnson has created iconic creatures and effects for some of the most beloved genre films in cinema history, working with everyone from John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, and Sam Raimi to James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, and Guillermo del Toro. His drive and ambition also led to heartbreaking acts of self-sabotage, divorce, and a serious drug addiction.
Over seven years in the making and stacked with incredible, never-before-seen archival footage, Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson is a revealing portrait of an immense talent who could also be his own worst enemy. Director Nick Taylor lets the artist—an enormously engaging raconteur—do much of the showing and telling (though the likes of Linnea Quigley, John Landis, Tom Holland, and Oscar-winner Bill Corso also contribute). Rubberhead is at once a captivating reflection on the game-changing practical FX glory days when everything was unexplored ground primed for radical invention and a fascinating, moving story of an FX master whose greatest monster may have been himself.
Rubberhead is slotted into Fantasia’s Documentaries from the Edge section introduced ten years ago to showcase innovative, provocative non-fiction cinema. The sidebar focuses on edge-of-your-seat subjects, genre-adjacent stories, cult retrospectives, and subversive real-world topics.
As a sample of what to expect from Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson, here’s a promotional video for the second volume of Johnson’s AM Ink autobiography Rubberhead: Volume Two, notable for glimpses into all of the projects that—as he frames it—“got away.”
No, I had no idea that poet Mary Oliver was a lesbian.
Yet one of the many strong values of Frameline is how over the years it has allowed us to recognize that our sense of feeling alone as LGBTQ+ people is mistaken and that we are company to a lineage of remarkable individuals who have paved the way for our individuation and who continue to shape personal freedom and dignity towards an ever expanding horizon. As Gabrielle Calvocoressi states in the film: “When we talk about queer family, one of the things about family is that you just have someone to emulate.”
Was the fact that Mary Oliver was a lesbian essential to her craft? Was it incidental? Or a combination of both? Sasha Waters’ exquisite documentary Mary Oliver: Saved By the Beauty of the World (2026) explores the connective tissue between orientation and practice and trains a respectful and emulative eye on one of the most remarkable women of letters in American literature.
With thorough grace, Saved By the Beauty Of the World traces Oliver’s development from her early apprenticeship to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s youngest sister straight out of high school to her astounding popularity in the later years of her life, packing auditoriums, and beloved by audiences throughout the country who recognized in her words the center of their emotional being.
From its earliest scenes where Stephen Colbert is too overwhelmed to read one of her poems, witness after witness account for the tremendous power Oliver’s words have had upon them.
Because poetry resides in the rhythm and sound of words, as much as in the flow of text, Waters solicits readings from Colbert, Helena Bonham Carter, Steve Buscemi, Lucy Dacus, Nick Flynn, Donnika Kelly, Jason Reynolds, Jesse Welles and Oprah Winfrey to prove the tenet that sound creates form; poetry shapes emotion. I first heard Oliver given voice by bard Robert Bly many years ago who read Oliver’s “Wild Geese” while strumming his bouzouki. It was a revelatory experience where her words flowed into my body like water into a sponge. And I took her words to heart. I allowed myself to love what was natural for me to love. Was she speaking to a LGBTQ+ experience? Or more broadly to a human experience in which the LGBTQ+ experience could rest and root, find its face, find its shape? “Just to be a poet in America,” Mark Doty muses in the film, “is already queer enough.”
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Responding to “Wild Geese”, Stephen Colbert explains that the beauty of the world is an accusation that you are denying your own beauty by being good. Perhaps this has been the flame of rebellion that has characterized my own gayness?
Punctuated by resonant interstitials of nature (foxes, roses, coyotes, autumnal landscapes, deer standing stoic in sleet, geese in flight, Monarch butterflies, white owls and black sheep, blooming wood, hawks, blue wisteria, birds feeding their nested young, bees pollinating, seagulls flocking above waves, conifer forests, bubbling brooks, beach grass, snow drifts, black branches limned with white snow, pinecones, clams, tortoises, beavers building dams, bears devouring salmon mid-stream, falling stars streaking across the wheel of constellations, inhabited spiderwebs, kittens tumbling out of a basket, sunrise, moonrise, sunset, a bright full moon scudded with dark clouds, squirrels, long-legged water storks, fish at the surface of ponds, quaking golden aspen, columbines, ripe lemons, beetles, pussywillows, hatchlings, rain, murmurations at dusk, dogs, lilypads: all emphasizing Oliver’s belief that our enjoyment of the world is not only personal but inherently political.
Sasha Waters’ masterful assemblage of stock footage likewise inflects the cultural scenes that influenced Oliver as a young woman and frequently provides levity to offset the depths of Oliver’s poems. I find it an incandescent touch when—during scenes where the death of Oliver’s partner Molly “M” Cook is mentioned—Waters inserts footage in reverse: cars driving backwards, marching bands marching backwards, a woman on a bicycle cycling backwards on a tightwire, as if to insinuate the attempted reclamations of memory.
Oliver’s lifelong commitment to Molly “M” Cook provides the inspirational frame by which Oliver was granted allowance to discover her own voice. Molly taught Oliver that “attention without feeling is only a report” and that, more appropriately, by giving a lot of attention to the world, you learn to love the world. This became the attentive force of Oliver’s nature poetry.
Of the rich ensemble of talking heads providing ballast to the film so that it simply does not drift away into the ether, I was most surprised and bemused by the presence of John Waters who became Oliver’s friend in Provincetown, Massachusetts. With calculated wit and charming irreverence, Waters riddles the portrait of Oliver with saucy observations that serve to humanize the poet and save her from the thin air of the pedestal.
Many have written about the co-mingling of film and poetry, but I honor Sasha Waters’ Mary Oliver: Saved By the Beauty of the World as one of the most informative and illuminative melding of those two art forms that this reviewer has experienced in some time. Not to be missed if you care anything about the world.
It is a common queer experience to leave home at a young age to lead an authentic life elsewhere, and at some juncture—for one reason or another—return home to face one’s origins. It often feels problematic, ill-fitting, even artificial, to return “home” and Kai Stänicke’s art house parable Trial of Hein (2026) establishes that feeling of artificiality in the film’s opening sequences where—after 14 years away on the mainland—Hein returns home to a fishing village on a godforsaken island in the North Sea. Stänicke envisions that village as a backlot of structural façades and asks his audience to accept this theatrical convention, which is … well … unconventional, but not totally without merit. (I was reminded of a similar convention in Lars Von Trier’s Dogville (2003).) Hein won Seth Turner Best Production Design at the 2026 Neisse Film Festival and the film has likewise earned accolades at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Teddy Jury Award and is—as detailed by Peter Stein—"a near definitive recipient of Frameline’s Out in the Silence Award, which is given to an outstanding film project that highlights brave acts of LGBTQ+ visibility in places where such acts are not common.”
So the question invariably arises: why has Hein (Paul Boche) returned to the island? It’s a question the islanders themselves ask of him, unsure as they are if it is really him at all; they suspect he is an impostor. This necessitates the titular trial wherein Hein has to prove he is who he says he is; but, doing so will reveal not only why he has returned to the island but why he left it in the first place and if—as Thomas Wolfe so famously phrased—you can ever really go home again. Because it seems sure that Hein wishes he could return home. Life on the mainland has been disappointing. People move too fast, talk too much, and aren’t kind to each other. He doesn’t feel that he belongs and, thus, “home” becomes the place where he belongs. Yet, if Wolfe is right and you can never really go home again, does that mean you can never really belong anywhere?
Performances from the ensemble are all sound and grounded in psychological depth, with fully-developed and nuanced characterizations. Florian Mag’s cinematography has Dardennesque flourishes; his camera following intimately behind Hein as he refamiliarizes himself with his past, negotiating memories through half-open doors and curtained windows. Or suspended overhead detached from the elongated shadows of the court proceedings below.
A striking feature of this narrative is how Hein’s memories of his childhood are insular and disconnected from the memories of others in the village, which speaks to how private the experience of a gay child is in a culture where he is never seen nor allowed to voice his being and is instead forced to be someone he’s not, someone that fits in and belongs for fear of being rejected. Later in life that childhood strategy no longer works for an adult and the pretense at belonging is recognized for the artifice it is.
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