A handful of Cinapse staffers were on the ground in Austin, TX this year for Fantastic Fest 2024! Between us we likely took in over 100 unique films. I myself took in 27 screenings. In other words, we had the best week of our years, as we often do at Fantastic Fest. To wrap up the fest, our team decided to share our own unique “Top 5” lists, in whatever form inspired us. Check out some of our top experiences, screenings, titles, etc!
1: Mac And Me: Look, I booked a ticket to see Mac And Me at Fantastic Fest just to see Mac And Me at Fantastic Fest. I didn’t know it was ultimately going to be a tribute screening for Scott Wampler hosted by Eric Vespe in which Elijah Wood sat and watched the movie for the first time and shared reactions afterwards. Honestly Mac And Me is a revelation to watch with a game crowd. We were dying laughing, jaws agape at the based product placement, and grateful when Alamo Drafthouse employees all brought us McDonald’s cheeseburgers timed to the McDonald’s-based dance number in the film. This was simply the purest and most distilled Fantastic Fest experience I had this year and will live forever in my memory.
The amount of Elijah giggles that you can hear in the background are legendary.
2: The Remarkable Life of Ibelin: This one is my top pick for the best film of the fest, but I place it here in this list because I’ll always remember having ordered a cheeseburger and ending up crying so hard for so long while watching this beautiful, sad, touching film, that I could literally taste my tears in my cheeseburger. Disgusting late stage capitalism or Hallmark moment? You decide.
3: The Mission: AGFA pulled a beautiful 35mm print of this Johnnie To Hong Kong classic from their archives and gave us a chance to see this highly influential (and somewhat hard to track down in high quality) film. Riddled with glorious stylistic flourish and that sweet Hong Kong brotherhood any fan of the era appreciates, this felt rare and special amidst all the flashy new movies. And while I thought I had seen The Mission? I think I was wrong, so I’m fairly certain this was my first exposure to this Hong Kong great.
4: Don’t Mess With Grandma: Look, this movie did not blow my mind, though it is cute and a solid display of Michael Jai White’s range. But to be honest, the experience of this one was great because White himself was in attendance and while I don’t geek out and star gaze often at these fests, I did have to make a point to get a pic with Mr. White and thank him for his work. I know not every genre film fan will see him as the towering talent and gift to cinema that I do so I was happy to get a chance to connect with him ever so briefly and fanboy out.
5: Better Man: Fantastic Fest had 5 secret screenings this year and let me tell you, there was not a single solitary soul who guessed that this musical biopic about Robbie Williams (who I’ve literally never heard of, honest to God) and featuring him as a CGI dancing monkey through the entirety of its runtime, was a secret screening. As always happens with something like that, some people walked out or expressed frustration that the pick wasn’t something more conventional like Nosferatu. But I watched a movie I would otherwise have had no interest in, about a talent I’ve never even heard of, and enjoyed an energetic, visually rich musical biopic unlike any I’d seen before and that’s part of the spirit of festivals like these: I put myself into the hands of the programmers and was given a surprising experience unlike anything I would have chosen for myself, and I was pleasantly surprised!
I saw 25 films at Fantastic Fest and find it impossible to do a ranked list since all the films I’ve seen are so different from one another. Some were big budgeted bio-pics (The Apprentice), while some were films made over three years by a group of friends (AJ Goes to the Dog Park). The true test for me personally are films I would want to own after the fact and revisit or share with friends.
Cloud – This film only two acts – fuck around and find out. I never thought a film about an ebay reseller could be so engrossing, but here it is. The film made by a J-Horror icon Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Pulse) has the director applying those tools to a crime thriller to great effect. How the film shifts genres seamlessly amps up an already tense narrative of one man who decides to push his luck selling counterfeit goods to make a quick buck.
She Loved Blossoms More – Imagine The Chronicles of Narnia envisioned as a neo Giallo, but through the lens of Reanimator and you have this film. Stylized to perfection and filled with some spectacular practical effects, the atmospheric tale is a haunting look at loss and regret. Populated by a cast of striking and young actors who do an impressive job at filling the necessary genre archetypes. The narrative here works hand in hand with the visuals to deliver a surreal journey that as a Giallo fan was a rare treat.
Gazer – Gazer is a daring neo noir that flirts with so many sub-genres, as its story slowly unravels on screen. Ryan J Sloan effectively leverages a well-honed and measured narrative, along with every tool in his belt as a director to craft a world captured on celluloid that feels as real as it does dangerous.
Dead Talents Society – This is the film I wish Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was. It’s a razor sharp meta take on Asian ghosts and the afterlife that’s as funny as it is charming. John Hsu, who crafted the tense and horrifying supernatural video game adaptation Detention, is back showing just how well he knows the sub-genre, by turning the sub-genre inside out.
Little Bites – One of my biggest surprises of Fantastic Fest was Little Bites, the latest film by Spider One, lead singer of Powerman 5000 and sibling to Rob Zombie. The film produced by Cher (Yes that one!), stars Krsy Fox and explores domestic abuse through the guise of a vampire film. It’s a bleak and rather heartbreaking portrait of abuse that uses genre as an effective vehicle for delivery.
5. The Wild Robot: Some of the most beautiful, fun, and touching animation you’ll see this year. A story that tugs on the heartstrings, a cast that charms, and a soaring score. Just magical.
4. Get Away: The latest from Nick Frost and Steffen Haars delivers folk horror with a gleeful twist. A superb quartet revels in a film that never loses sight of delivering a laugh as well as a dismemberment.
3. Bring Them Down. A tragic thud of a thriller, set between feuding farmsteads in a remote Gaelic community. Taut, tense, and bleak (baaa-leak?) fare, but richly told, with a tremendous lead performance from Christopher Abbott.
2. Better Man: A Robbie Williams biopic with a simian-slant that delivers a gut-punch, tear-jerker, and toe-tapper, all rolled into one.
1. Anora: Beautiful, chaotic, and utterly spellbinding.
Honorable Mentions. Animale. The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee. A Different Man.
While the idea of a film festival usually accompanies notions of curated prestige and grandeur, what keeps me coming back to Fantastic Fest year after year is how the festival’s programming team seek out genre films that seek to sear themselves into the memories of their audiences. To shake up the things we love and push us into new, uncomfortable, and imaginative places. By my last count, I managed to fit in 32 films at Fantastic Fest–and while each of them had that spark of something “new,” these were the films whose cumulative impact will be hard for me to shake.
Anora – Sean Baker’s long-awaited return to the screen since 2021’s raucous, raunchy Red Rocket may be his most chaotic and engrossing slice-of-life film yet. Mikey Madison is an unstoppable force as a New York dancer who undergoes her own 2020s Cinderella story–until reality barrels back in, forcing her and the audience down an unpredictable, heartwrenching, and hilarious rollercoaster ride from Coney Island to Vegas and back.
The Wild Robot – As someone indebted to being raised between two families, I was a quick mark for Chris Sanders’ dazzling ode to surrogate motherhood. The film’s lush, painterly style juxtaposes sleek, efficient yet soulless technology with the wilds of nature–finding something divine in the growing symbiotic nature between the two. It’s refreshing to see Dreamworks continue their recent hot streak after the fun, touching romps of The Bad Guys and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, but this is easily the most awe-inspiring and memorable of the bunch.
Cloud – A new Kiyoshi Kurosawa film is always bound to make whatever list I put together, and the revitalization the director has had in 2024 between this, Chime and the still-unseen Serpent’s Path is proof that Kurosawa’s chilling imagination remains boundless. Kurosawa’s always had a sly sense of humor about his work, and it’s exciting to see him lean into that gallows humor as well as a surprising amount of action in this morally ambiguous tale of virtual corruption leading to real-world violence. It’s one thing to be in love with an auteur’s work all your life–it’s another thing entirely to witness them enter a reinvention right before your eyes.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin – Speaking of real/virtual analogs, Benjamin Ree’s captivating film may now hold the crown of my deepest emotional reaction to a documentary. At first a tragic snapshot of a seemingly wasted life, Ree turns back time and enters a world unseen by those taking care of Mads Steen, a young man enduring Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. By utilizing years’ worth of gaming logs and actual World of Warcraft game skins, Ree resurrects Mads’ avatar Ibelin, revealing how the teen’s compassion, empathy, and even flaws influenced the lives of countless players across continents. It’s a visceral emotional whiplash from tragedy to life-affirming humanity, urging all of us to seek out new connections no matter our circumstances.
MadS – I’d be remiss if I didn’t include David Moreau’s single-take stunner on this list. The act of turning into a Zombie is often brushed aside in a single scene of twitchy mayhem before orienting our gaze back onto the survivors. What’s so memorable about MadS is how Moreau and his talented band of performers stretch out the chaos and agony of that transformation, placing us so deeply in the last conscious moments of three teenagers’ lives that each new involuntary twitch becomes an emotional beat, especially as the single take moves like its central virus onto a new victim. It’s physicality as plot, laid gruesomely bare over the most heightened moments of a Zombie film.
HM: Bookworm, Bring Them Down, Better Man, Saturday Night, Dead Talents Society
The Ego Death of Queen Cecelia might have been made on a shoestring budget, but with compelling performances and a plot aching with tension, it delivers quite a payoff.
