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?”
.jpeg)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)