Julian and Dan share their lists of chillers and thrillers they can’t wait to catch up with at the 30th Fantasia International Film Fest!
Our beloved Fantasia, North America’s largest genre film festival, celebrates three decades of thrills, chills, and more with its 30th festival running Thursday, July 16th, through Sunday, August 2nd in Montreal. Once more, Dan Tabor and I will be covering the sprawl of spoils on offer this year, and we’re excited to share a small selection of what we’re most excited to see.
Julian Singleton’s Most Anticipated
It’s my third year covering Fantasia for Cinapse, and I desperately wish I could be boots on the ground alongside Dan for all the Québécois craziness in Montreal. There’s such an insane wealth of films to catch up on, further cementing Fantasia’s status as an international crown jewel for genre fiends. There’s festival favorites like SXSW’s The Fox from Danger 5 and Italian Spiderman‘s Dario Russo, and Train to Busan director Yeon Sang-ho’s latest zombie epic Colony. Beautiful flights of fancy like Cherry and Virgin, whose innocent romantic leads come to life in clashing animation styles, or preteen globetrotting adventure Romin. Tense thrillers like Korea’s The Eyes and Japan’s Beasts Clutching at Straws. Wild genre blends like French Vampire mockumentary I Love Paris and even possibly Myanmar’s first-ever horror film, The Last Footage. No matter where you turn, there’s something exciting to catch your eye at Fantasia this year–and here’s the films I can’t wait to catch up with the most!
Los Vampires – USA
Directed by Craig Mitchell
As titles for Fantasia trickled in, Craig Mitchell’s Los Vampires is the title that immediately beckoned to me. The Universal monster films are horror ur-texts for me, but I didn’t learn about the production history of George Melford’s Spanish Dracula until well into my teens. A biopic about that whole English production by day, Spanish production by night on the same sets would already be fascinating; to use it as the foundation for a Shadow of the Vampire-style Horror mystery has me spiritually booking a ticket to Montreal as we speak. The fact that two great character actors, Lost’s Henry Ian Cusick and King Kong and The Pianist’s Thomas Kretschmann, are our rival Draculas is just blood-soaked icing on the genre cake. Can’t wait to sink my teeth into this one.
Village of Eight Gravestones / The Mouths – JAPAN
Directed by Takashi Shimizu
Fantasia’s honoring Japanese horror giant Takashi Shimizu with a lifetime achievement award this year, alongside festival-opening director Nicolas Winding Refn. Shimizu hasn’t slowed down since wrapping his Sana duology in 2024—he’s already got four completed features in the pipeline by 2026’s halfway point, two of which are landing at this year’s fest.
First up is Village of Eight Gravestones, which adapts one a vast library of mystery novels featuring deceptive Kosuke Kindaichi–Japan’s answer to Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. While Kindaichi’s star may have just begun rising in the West thanks to recent translations, Kindaichi has broken beyond author Seishi Yokomizo’s initial 77 stories into a wide berth of TV, video game, anime, and film adaptations–including six films by Kon Ichikawa.
Village of Eight Gravestones seems like a project wholly designed to pull me into its orbit, its trailer blending patient, Christie-style mysteries with the creeping dread of The Wicker Man or Don’t Look Now. As much as the Kindaichi tales seem quite grounded, there’s still plenty in the film’s teaser going bump in the night; given Shimizu’s recent willingness to expand beyond out-and-out horror, it’s intriguing to see him push himself deep into mystery territory while still rooted in the genre he cut his teeth on.
The Mouths, by comparison, is rich with the creepy-ass toshi densetsu urban legend terrors that Shimizu is known for best. It’s rooted in the iconography of classic 2000s Japanese horror filtered through the slick digital scares Shimizu has been fond of with Scary Villages, Sana, and Immersion. The twist here is his source material: a short story by fellow modern horror stalwart Sesuji, whose About a Place in the Kinki Region made for a terrifying Koji Shiraishi film adaptation last year. Sesuji is an author whose work pays open reverence to the films of Shiraishi and Shimizu, while subverting their stories and imagery in fresh, exciting ways for modern audiences. As a diehard fan of Kinki and nearly all of Shimizu’s work, I’m excited to see how Shimizu spins the tropes he codified with Ju-on and more into a newly terrifying experience.
Jim Queen – FRANCE
Directed by Nicolas Athane & Marco Nguyen
Alongside Fantastic Fest here in the US, one reason why I remain a Fantasia devotee year after year is their unrestrained spotlighting of Queer voices across the entire sexuality and genre spectrum. Jim Queen looks like an all out animated action-adventure riot, using too-true tropes mined from the most toxic, kinky, and shady depths of gay social strata to create a hilarious satire of a Bear influencer’s journey to cure himself and others of a spreading STI turning everyone straight. The best satire doesn’t punch down its entire runtime, but holds up a bitingly and lovingly funny mirror to all communities it can reflect–and Jim Queen looks like it does so in body, sex, and kink-positive spades.
The Glorious Dead – USA
Directed by Toby Poser & John Adams
Fresh from topping last year’s Fantasia with Mother of Flies, The Adams Family returns to Montreal with not just another homegrown horror movie–but what appears to be a horror Western! An all-in-one-day endurance test set in a rural US town facing atrocities of Biblical proportions, The Glorious Dead has all the makings of a thrillingly pulpy paranoid thriller with some undead shenanigans up its sleeve. I can’t wait to see just how the Adams’ latest cuts to the bone with the dark wit and sharp grit festival programmers take care to highlight.
The Samurai and the Prisoner – JAPAN
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s banner 2024 is the stuff cinephile dreams are made of, pulling off the thought-provoking hat trick of Cloud, Chime, and a French remake of his own Serpent’s Path. Now, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s thoroughly modern chillers give way to lush period intrigue with The Samurai and the Prisoner, an adaptation of Honobu Yonezawa’s novel. I’m immediately sold at the elevator pitch of “Agatha Christie locked-room mystery during a Ran siege,” as a feudal lord must ally himself with a strategist imprisoned in his castle walls to solve four bizarre murders that have taken place under his watch and during the relentless onslaught of warlord Oda Nobunaga’s army. This looks like epic filmmaking like Kurosawa’s never attempted before, yet driven by the patient slow burn that has made him a modern icon.
Trauma or, Monsters All – USA
Directed by Larry Fessenden
Larry Fessenden is one of American horror’s unsung Indie pioneers. For as long as I’ve been alive, he’s blazed a get-it-done-dammit attitude that’s fostered the careers of everyone from Kelly Reichardt to Ti West, earning champions like Martin Scorsese and Guillermo Del Toro along the way. Since the early 90s, Fessenden’s “monster cycle” has peered into the ramshackle hideaways of America to marry real-life horrors with our monsters of myth–with Habit (vampirism and addiction), Depraved (Frankenstein in the medical tech bro age), and Blackout (lycanthropy and small-town rage). This year, Fessenden caught us all by surprise by crafting the ultimate monster-verse movie: bringing these three films together into one indie horror Battle Royale. It’s the culmination of Fessenden’s unrestrained, under-the-radar exploration of all-American terrors–and I can’t wait to see what wicked and incendiary scares he has in store for us.
Dan Tabor’s Most Anticipated
The Last Temptation of Becky – USA, UK
Directed by Jenn Wexler
I’m a huge fan of the Becky series, and given our current geopolitical climate, there’s nothing I’d rather watch than terrible things happening to Nazis. One of the franchise’s greatest strengths is its knack for letting beloved comedians turn full heel, often with spectacular results. This time, Becky squares off against none other than Neil Patrick Harris, and I honestly can’t wait to see him unleash his dark side. As if that weren’t enough, this latest chapter is directed by Jenn Wexler, whose The Ranger proved she has a sharp eye for stylish, brutal genre filmmaking.
Black Zombie – CANADA, HAITI
Directed by Maya Annik Bedward
When most people hear the word “zombie,” their minds immediately jump to George Romero’s flesh-eating undead. This documentary, however, looks to dig much deeper, taking an academic dive into the subgenre’s origins by tracing the creature back to its Caribbean roots and exploring how the zombie has evolved across cultures and generations. For horror fans and film scholars alike, it promises a fascinating examination of one of the genre’s most enduring monsters.
Buddy – USA
Directed by Caspar Kelly
Now this one is not available virtually, but I had to shout it out. I loved Casper Kelly’s segment in V/H/S Halloween “Fun Size” so much, along with this premise I had to put it on my list. Buddy follows a girl and her friends who must escape a kid’s television show. With a blurb and a still(above) like that, count me in.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma – USA
Directed by Jane Schoenbrun
After using genre to deliver some of the most nuanced and emotionally resonant explorations of gender and identity in recent memory, the idea of Jane Schoenbrun channeling those themes through the blood-soaked framework of a summer camp slasher is irresistible. It’s an inspired collision of thoughtful filmmaking and grindhouse thrills, and I couldn’t be more excited to see what they do with it.
Her Private Hell – USA, DENMARK
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
After a decade spent exploring the long-form canvas of television, Nicholas Winding Refn returns to the big screen with another neon-drenched nightmare—one that sounds like his twisted take on The Fog. Easily my most anticipated screening of the festival, the years away have only further cemented Refn’s filmography as one of the boldest and most audacious in modern cinema, making his return feel less like a comeback than an event.
The Origin of Ultraman – JAPAN
Directed by Hiroshi Nakamura & Kazutaka Yoshida
I love that Ultraman is finally getting the recognition he deserves in the U.S., thanks in no small part to Shin Ultraman and the franchise’s recent 60th anniversary celebration. This documentary looks like the perfect gateway for newcomers, offering both a crash course in the character’s rich history and a deeper appreciation for the cultural phenomenon that has captivated audiences for generations.
Rubberhead: The Life and Monsters of Steve Johnson – USA
Directed by Nick Taylor
I have a soft spot for niche documentaries that shine a light on unsung creative geniuses, and this one looks like a perfect fit. Beyond celebrating the golden age of practical effects, it promises to explore the remarkable career of the artist behind some of cinema’s most iconic creations—from the ghosts of Ghostbusters to the unforgettable underwater aliens from one of my favorite films The Abyss. It’s exactly the kind of behind-the-scenes tribute that reminds us how much movie magic is built by the people whose names rarely make the marquee.
