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Fantastic Fest 2024: I, THE EXECUTIONER Perfects the VETERAN Formula
South Korean writer/director/actor Ryoo Seung-wan is quickly establishing himself as one of the top tier filmmakers working in his homeland today, and I, The Executioner somewhat perfects a formula that he began with Veteran in 2015. In terms of tone, this now franchise of Veteran and I, The Executioner somewhat bookend the incredible South Korean cop/action/comedy franchise starring Ma Dong-seok known as the Roundup series. I don’t believe they’re related in terms of filmmakers or stars or a “shared universe” or anything like that. But they certainly share a vibe that is incredibly crowd pleasing and satisfying, and worth noting if anyone is seeking a “vibe check” before they check out I, The Executioner for themselves. You’ll be getting a cop thriller with plenty of laughs, as well as sophisticated fisticuffs.
It’s shocking that Veteran is almost 10 years old, and this is only the first sequel to that highly successful and influential Korean crime film. I personally didn’t see Veteran until just a few months ago, but after watching most of the Roundup series over the last couple of years, it hit me that Veteran sort of walked so that those films could run. In Veteran, seasoned detective Seo Do Cheol (Korean star Hwang Jung-min) is determined to get his man no matter the cost, and the cost will be dear. The system weighs heavily against him as he tries to take down a criminal who is rich and well connected. It’ll take his entire dedicated team of fellow officers, who are portrayed as goofball losers with hearts of gold, incorruptible outcasts, to close the case. They’ll bend rules, endure angry calls from their spouses, and get their man no matter what. It’s a solid enough formula that wouldn’t have fully gelled without a truly hateable villain that the audience wants to get got as much as the lead characters do. But that dogged, rag tag, comical team of South Korean detectives has become somewhat of a genre unto itself with 4 Roundup films playing in that same sandbox.
But what about, I, The Executioner? I mentioned all those previous films to say that I, The Executioner feels like somewhat of a warm cinematic blanket for fans of South Korean crime/action films as it almost perfects the formula that so many similar films have laid out. Cheol is as stubborn and dogged as ever, complaining about the low wages and high sacrifice of being a detective and monkeying around with his brothers in arms. This time around, a Robin Hood style serial killer seems to be emerging (although his bosses won’t believe him). Known as “Haechi”, our killer is terminally online, and only kills people who seemingly committed heinous crimes and got away with them. So Haechi kills killers, often recreating the deaths of their victims in his own killings. He’s a vigilante serial killer, to some extent, so the public kind of loves him and I, The Executioner very much highlights the complications of social media and true crime YouTubers whipping up public opinion into a frenzy. It’s a great, chaotic set up to throw our lead detectives into. Cheol is tasked with protecting a guy he largely views as a scumbag, and who got out of being punished for a crime Cheol believes he committed. Cheol and his team have to walk a fine line of being cops who bend the rules, but who will do what’s right when the time comes. And Cheol will stop Haechi if it kills him.
Seung-wan writes and directs here, and what’s most impressive about I, The Executioner is the remarkable tonal balance it achieves, even more successfully than Veteran did. The world around Cheol is a chaotic one, with his son struggling with bullying at school, a serial killer on the loose, bosses who won’t back him up, and the internet in a speculative whirlwind that places his team in a media firestorm. The tension is ratcheted up to 11 not just for our characters but in the style of the film as well. But within that stew I, The Executioner brings tons of laughs, and also presents a credibly threatening villain with real heavy duty stakes. Then top all that off with some high energy chases and action set pieces, and you’ve got something special, if familiar, going. All the stops are pulled out to ensure you are entertained in a way that only South Korean cinema can really deliver.
I would recommend I, The Executioner to anyone who enjoys a good police procedural. It’s accessible whether you’ve seen Veteran or not. If you love thrills and laughs, this will have a lot to offer. Fans of Veteran or The Roundup films will know what they’re in for here, but the ride will prove worth it even for the familiar. I, The Executioner is one of the most straight up entertaining and furiously paced films I caught at Fantastic Fest 2024 and I’d welcome a third installment of Seung-wan and Jung-min’s madness.
And I’m Out.
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Fantastic Fest 2024: AJ GOES TO THE DOG PARK is Pure Cinematic Serotonin
Toby Jones, who most probably know from his work on Regular Show and OK KO debuted his first feature length live action film, AJ Goes to the Dog Park at Fantastic Fest yesterday, and the best way to describe it’s the cinematic equivalent to the chilly side of your pillow after a long day. The film has the vibe of a group of friends who got together to make a wholesome family movie and that’s because it was. The film stars Toby’s childhood friend AJ Thompson, who would star in his short films he made growing up as the titular AJ. The three year passion project resulted in a film that was so delightful, I can’t wait to recommend it to friends and families looking for something off the beaten path.
AJ loves his simple life in Fargo, North Dakota and his routines. He loves his buttered toast, falling asleep to youtube videos with his two chihuahuas after a long day and taking his puppies to the local dog park to play. Almost as soon we meet AJ, there’s a recall on his butter, his TV’s youtube app is no longer compatible and when AJ thinks it can’t get any worse, the dog park now has desks and computers and has now been turned into a blog park! Looking to restore order to his world and give his puppies back their park, AJ decides he’ll run for mayor. But in Fargo, North Dakota, he can’t just win the election, he has to complete a series of Herculean tasks that involves: fighting, fishing, scrapping, scraping and sapping in that order to become the mayor and restore order.
Sitting down, I really didn’t know what to expect except dogs – given the title. There were indeed dogs and they were adorable. What transpired is this PG hybrid of peak live-action adult swim and I Think You Should Leave, that’s hilarious as it is wholesome. The humor is a rapid fire mix of cool dad jokes, absurdist sight gags and slapstick, conjuring essentially a live action cartoon onscreen and it completely broke me more than a few times with its rapid fire barbs. That humor is paired with a rather prickly heart and message of not losing focus of the important things in life, as AJ becomes so focused on his tasks he forgets why he was doing them in the first place.
AJ healed my soul a little bit and left me with a warm and fuzzy feeling leaving the theater. AJ Goes to the Dog Park is pure cinematic serotonin and will leave you with a spring in your step and song in your heart, and not enough films can claim that, and dogs.
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Fantastic Fest 2024: Talking Tiny Monsters with FRANKIE FREAKO’s Director Steven Kostanski
Photo via kill_kostanski instagram Frankie Freako, the latest by Astron-6 alum Steven Kostanski (The Void, Psycho Goreman, Father’s Day) recently screened at Fantastic Fest and given my love of the Tiny Monster subgenre, I couldn’t have dug it more. The film seamlessly transposes the familiar plot of those films, where someone’s life is upended by troublemaking critters, here called the Freakos, but instead of a kid, it’s an adult, hitting folks like me who grew up with these films square in the nostalgia. If you’re a fan of this vastly underrated subgenre, you’re in luck, because this film gets everything right, while introducing us to a new crew of critters with a bad attitude.
Seriously, it’s so much fun!
I caught up to Steven after catching the film and we chatted not only about where Frankie Freako came from, but Boglins – which offers up its own mini-twist, our love of tiny monster films in particular Ghoulies Go to College, and for you hard core Astron-6 fans like myself – an update, as it is on the infamous, still unreleased doc, No Sleep No Surrender.
First Off Steven, congrats on the film. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for giving late 80s early 90s monster kids some representation! First off I have to ask. Boglins appear to definitely be an inspiration here, did you ever call the Boglin 1-900 number?
Steven Kostanski: For the Boglins 900 number, no.
I mean boglins were in the periphery and like full disclosure years ago I was poking around to see what the right situation was with Boglins.
Oh really!?
Steven Kostanski: Yeah. I mean it seems like the rights for that are kind of tied up in knots. So, I just decided to make my own original thing. There’s a lot of things that contributed to this movie’s existence, but Boglins was an early point of like, I want to make a little monster movie. I remember when I was early in development on this, I ordered one off eBay and was like dismantling it and playing with the inner mechanisms and stuff just to be like can I make something like this in terms of like the simplicity of its mechanics for the Freako puppets.
So yeah, Boglins were definitely an influence on this project.
I dug that instead of going to gremlins you went to the more direct to video fare for inspiration, what’s your first experience with the Tiny Monster genre and why did you decide to pay homage to it with your own film?
Steven Kostanski: Well, it’s a super underrepresented genre right now and it’s annoyed me to no end for years, because I’ve been pushing little monster movies on people for a long time. Other filmmakers are like, ‘nobody wants to see that, that’s not like the hot creature right now, people want witches or people want zombies or whatever’ and I want little trouble making critters like – seems obvious.
My history with it goes back pretty far. I mean, as a kid, I remember loving gremlins and then growing up and like in my teens, when I started discovering the Full Moon movies, like, I became obsessed with Puppet Master. I feel like those are kind of the top tier for me. That franchise does the thing that I like to do in my movies, you kind of present your characters as villains for the first part and then they become the heroes at the end of the movie – it’s my like Terminator 2 logic. Puppet Master does that progressively over like the first 5 movies, they go from being killers to working with our protagonists to fight a worse villain.
So that’s what I wanted Frankie Freako to encompass especially and the diversity of the looks of the puppet master, puppets really impresses me. I am all about iconography, and as a kid it was all about what are the exciting designs that catch my eye. You look at the variety of the puppets in Puppet Master and they’re just so iconic in their own way, and they’re all totally different. So I want to emulate that with Frankie as well, where each character feels like they’re coming from their own universe.
Like there’s a general consistency, but each one clearly has their own life, does their own thing and has their own special set of skills. So yeah, I really pulled from Puppet master a lot, but then also like, and this is only fairly recently, but Ghoulies Go to College. I’ve become obsessed with because it’s just such a bizarre choice for a third movie in a franchise, like ‘let’s go to college’, other franchises are going to space and we’re going to do college.
A couple of Christmases ago, we were watching just streaming every little monster movie there is and watching them back-to-back. So it’s like they all kind of gelled together in my brain, and I barfed out Frankie Freako.
Yeah, I just watched Ghoulies Go to College recently too, they dulled the Satanic undertones and were summoned by a comic book; and they also add the toilet to the lore officially at that point, that was a bit part of the marketing campaign.
Steven Kostanski: Yeah, a lot of bold choices in that movie. I love that it has the Dean that becomes an end boss monster at the end and you can see a bit of a reference to that in Frankie Freako. But I just love that movie is a college sex comedy derailed by puppets that puts way more effort into its lore and its world building than any movie called Ghoulies Go to College ever should.
(Laughs) Yeah!
Steven Kostanski: I think that sums up my tastes pretty well and kind of what I’m doing with Frankie Freako, which is like I wanted to feel like a De Palma thriller in the 1st 15 minutes, that gets derailed by little creatures. It’s very much in line with my sensibilities of like a bunch of college frat guys chasing around babes is all fun and games, but like, I really just want to watch these monsters get into shit.
I really dug how you just sort of transpose the plot of these films from a kid to an adult without skipping a beat. How did you come up with that approach to your script? And it was surprisingly wholesome as well.
Well, that was like a bit of an intentional troll on my end, as I was making it like people kept talking about like it was going to be a horror movie and like it’s gonna be so violent and gory.
Yeah.
Steven Kostanski: I don’t know. I feel that’s like the easy way out nowadays. To me, the ultimate challenge is to make a kids movie that adults can watch. So I really approached this movie with the attitude of like, I want parents to not really have an excuse not to show this to kids. Like, aside from some bursts of violence and insinuation of potential sexual assault of our protagonist. I feel like it doesn’t go harder than something like Ghostbusters or Gremlins, and it was a very deliberate choice because I just feel like it’s the tone of this type of movie. It keeps it feeling childish, without feeling juvenile, if that makes sense.
I didn’t want to make a thing where it’s just gross out gags and just people cussing constantly like that. That bores me, and I feel like there’s so much stuff out there that leans into that. I like that it delights some people and annoys others, that I don’t really lean into those tropes as much.
So you’re an FX guy, but you also do a lot of directing. What’s your process like, do you design the monsters first and then do the script or do the script and then do the monsters. What’s your process?
Steven Kostanski: I mean, I have no set workflow. I don’t enjoy writing particularly, so usually when I’m writing scripts, I’m procrastinating and making monsters at the same time. So I’m kind of like designing and writing simultaneously. Sofor this movie I actually built like a proto Frankie, an early version of him that didn’t end up getting used as Frankie, but he pops up as an assorted Freako later on in the movie. So when I got tired of writing, I would go sculpt a bit and do a bit of shop work and that stuff helps me wrap my brain around what I’m writing as well, because I can really get a sense of like just scale and like how this thing exists in a space.
I’m a very tactile filmmaker, I don’t love words on a page. I like seeing things, I like holding and operating and manipulating things. I feel my brain doesn’t fully turn on until I’m like in the set with the actors, with the creatures. So I try to inject that into the development process as much as possible, where I’m trying to also build things, while I’m writing so I can have the things sitting there staring at me while I’m putting words on the page.
There’s an innocence, but there’s also a darkness to Frankie Freako. Was it hard balancing that tone and did you ever feel the film went too far in any direction? The film had an interesting ebb and flow, like when Conor is beating up Boink, you’re not sure where it’s going to go.
Steven Kostanski: I mean, that’s something that I’ve adopted from my fellow Asteron 6 members, especially having Connor and Adam around on set and just talking over the project with Matt who voices Frankie. It’s very much in line with their sensibilities, the idea of like, kind of jumping the line, going back and forth. Lulling people into a sense of security and then doing something really hard and intense and real, and then pulling back immediately.
It’s the concept that I’ve become fascinated with recently. I’ve been listening to a lot of The Simpsons commentary tracks and Matt Groening talks about elastic reality. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this concept. It’s like Homer can go to space and crazy shit can happen, but he always ends up back at home in suburbia, with his family and kind of everything always gets pulled back to a place.
So in this movie, I was trying to do that where it’s like the grounded reality is just kind of like this fun light tone. But occasionally we’ll fly away somewhere else. But then just naturally get pulled back. We always end up back in the same place, like it doesn’t go hard, and then we’re like living with it being hard for the rest of the movie, if that makes any sense.
Definitely, it was a fun ride. So finally being a big Astron-6 fand I have to ask, will we ever see No Sleep, No Surrender?
Steven Kostanski: I feel like every few months in our Astron-6 group chat, somebody will bring that up. Like what are we doing with this? I think the issue is we don’t have a master file of it. I think there was like a rough export at one point and we just have it floating around on a hard drive somewhere.
So it’s not like a thing that we can fully mix and master and have ready to put out there. I think it’s like the actual project file I think, is lost to time.
Oh wow.
Steven Kostanski: It’s like a real non answer and I apologize, I wish I could tell you what we’re doing with that. But, it’s once a year at least we’re like, should we just put this thing out on YouTube? I know there’s talk of that for a bit for this kind of unfinished version that we have. That’s the only thing that’s left, but yeah, I don’t know. Like, keep an eye out. Maybe it’ll just end up on YouTube at some point because I would like people to see it. It’s pretty fun.
Yeah, I feel like I need to just put it out there in the ether as a fan and hopefully one day we’ll get to see it.
Well, this is a good reminder. I’ll throw it at the guys later today and be like, hey, I was getting asked about no sleep, no surrender. We should throw it up again. Maybe it’ll be another dead end conversation, but maybe this time we’ll actually do it. We’ll see.
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Fantastic Fest 2024: BETTER MAN Uses a Simian Slant to Craft a Strange and Soaring Biopic
A Robbie Williams biopic that delivers a gut-punch, a tearjerker, and a toe-tapper all rolled into one
A wild creative leap can make or break a film. In the case of Better Man, it’s thankfully the former–a decision by director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) to depict the lead in this biopic in precisely the way he has always seen himself: as a performing monkey. The man in question is Robbie Williams; at 16, he became a key player in the boy band Take That and their pop music domination in the ’90s. A separation and ensuing solo career saw his singer-songwriter work garner him a series of hit #1 UK singles, six albums entering the top 100 all-time sales charts in the UK, and a Guinness World Record in 2006 for selling 1.6 million tickets in a day for his Close Encounters Tour. He even ventured into a Vegas residency and crooned his way through a duet with Nicole Kidman. Alongside the fame and success, though, were darker moments fueled by his confrontational personality, disruptive demeanor, and substance abuse–all well chronicled by the British tabloids. Better Man is a warts-and-all depiction of Williams’ life and career against the backdrop of nearly two decades of British pop culture.
The script from Gracey, co-writing with first-time screenwriters Oliver Cole and Simon Gleeson, gives you that foundational through-line that you’d expect from a music biopic; thankfully, the end product is more reminiscent of Rocketman or Walk the Line rather than Bohemian Rhapsody and Back to Black. Gracey takes us through the beats of Williams’ career, relationships, family strife, and ever-deepening descent into addiction. Key moments are brought to life with a dovetail into musical set pieces, where key compositions from William’s catalog are married to grand visual sequences. Rock DJ lights up a Regent Street showstopper, Come Undone underscores a nightmarish sequence that wouldn’t feel out of place in Trainspotting, and Let Me Entertain You fuels a frenetic psychological battle royale as Robbie finally faces up to his own self-judgment and doubt. To be clear, this isn’t a purely whimsical endeavor; sex, drugs, and violence are all presented in unvarnished fashion.
Unlike the woeful Bohemian Rhapsody, Better Man does not alter or sanitize the misdeeds of its lead, or his expressions of sexuality. You’re not just reminded how good some of these tunes were as we become privy to how Williams pulled them out and worked them over to become hits, a process facilitated by his longtime collaborator Guy Chambers (Tom Budge). While these tracks fuel some of the more visually and audibly memorable sequences, it’s the quieter moments of the film that are among its most indelible. The time Robbie spends with his nan (a wonderful Alison Steadman), and fellow pop star and first love Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno) are standouts. It’s Better Man’s father/son dynamic that sets much of Robbie’s life in motion, with the abandonment and future approval of his father Peter (a spot-on turn from Steve Pemberton) serving as key informers to the damage and the drive that accompanies Williams through his life.
Voiced by Williams, this monkey man is realized by the marvelous mo-cap performance of Jonno Davis. The creation is a marvel to behold, not just from a technical viewpoint. Never acknowledged by other characters, never played for laughs or leveraged into the narrative, he is just simply a visual of William’s perception of himself. From a CGI perspective, it’s not quite at the level of the recent …of the Apes movies, but it’s pretty damn close. The film reworks old concerts, performances, and photoshoots to show this monkey-man at the center of the limelight, as Williams very much was. Robbie is imbued with personality and emotive force, whether glimpsed as a young chimp eating a bag of crisps on the TV with his gran, or a pitiful older form, slumped on a toilet with a needle in his arm. At his cheekiest or his most loathsome, it’s impossible to not feel a tug at the heartstrings gazing into his eyes.
There’s an element of the film that might be off-putting to some stateside, namely Williams himself. Many stateside have little knowledge of the man, and some may find his cheeky demeanor to be somewhat grating. He’s undeniably the marmite of the Brit-pop world. As an Expat, I was certainly more informed as to the background of the subject and the smattering of UK references in the film, from who the All Saints are, Knebworth, Top of the Pops, Parky, and even the endearing use of The Two Ronnies as a ongoing tether between Robbie and his Nan. Despite this, I urge people to take a chance on such a wild, creative swing that pays off in spades. Switching out the lead for a CGI monkey-man in a way adds a clever layer of accessibility to the project; even if you’re not familiar with the man, the film remains a remarkable take on the all-consuming nature of ego and inner demons. As commented on within the film, “How can you be miserable when you have it all?” That’s the human psyche for you. Fame is no shield from insecurities, and Better Man reminds us of that by blending the fantastical with a solid thud of reality. We see one of the biggest musical stages in the world, with over 125,000 people, and the most human thing there is this CGI monkey.
Better Man leverages its simian-styled gimmick to craft a biopic that just soars. It charts the highs and many lows of a life not just under the spotlight, but one wrestling with inner doubt. Michael Gracey’s film is a gut-punch, a tearjerker, and a toe-tapper all rolled into one.
Better Man had its US Premiere at Fantastic Fest 2024. A limited release is planned by Warner Brothers for December 25th, 2024, followed by a wide expansion on January 17, 2025.
Pre-CGI still from the film
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Fantastic Fest 2024: DEAD TALENTS SOCIETY is Spooky, Silly, and So Damn Fun
Detention’s John Hsu returns to peak horror comedy powers in a satire about undead influencer culture
Whether living or dead, everyone deserves their 15 minutes of fame. In John Hsu’s Dead Talents Society, it turns out the Afterlife is just as driven by influencer culture and fame as the world we depart; to remain on part of the astral plane, ghosts must pursue their haunting license and scare up as many followers of their unique urban legend to stay “alive” in people’s memories. But in a world where they have to compete with the latest horror movies in addition to each other, it’s not enough to be a conventional long-haired ghost with a grudge–you need a gimmick, something that’ll set social media ablaze with your original story.
Once the award-winning, back-bending ghost of hotel room 414, Catherine’s (Sandrine Pinna) shining star has been eclipsed by her protege Jessica (Eleven Yao), whose utilization of cursed videos has gone viral across the internet. Despite the efforts of ex-idol turned ghost manager Makoto (Bolin Chen) and their curmudgeonly assistant Kouji (Soso Tseng), Catherine remains washed up, trapped to a single location to pull off her lackluster scares. Enter The Rookie (Gingle Wang), a nebbish teenage girl who died without a story to craft around her lonely, insignificant death. With the clock ticking until The Rookie’s termination, Makoto seizes the opportunity to have Catherine take The Rookie under her wing and mold her into a terrifying new ghost worthy of international infamy.
Bursting at the seams with a tongue-in-cheek reverence for the now-ubiquitous tropes of Asian horror films, John Hsu’s Dead Talents Society is a zany, irreverent spin on influencer culture that’s equal parts The Ring, What We Do in the Shadows, and Strictly Ballroom–creating an instantly memorable midnighter that celebrates the blood, sweat, and fears that go into crafting our favorite scary set pieces.
As its title suggests, much of Dead Talents Society’s charm comes from the strength of its diverse ensemble, all of which not only play to different comedic strengths, but each have their chance to steal the coveted spotlight. Despite the film amplifying her bookish insecurity, Gingle Wang’s Rookie stands as a refreshing counterpoint to everyone’s more polished and artificial personalities–and her sincerity works well to disarm everyone and allow their more vulnerable inner selves to peek through. As the film’s central warring Ghostresses, Sandrine Pinna’s Catherine and Eleven Yao’s Jessica are delightfully catty, and it’s hilarious seeing how their fight to exert a poisoned influence over the Rookie reaches absurd, theatrical heights. Soso Tseng’s Kouji is so delightfully done with everyone’s antics in each scene, bitter about how as a middle-aged man he can’t reach the success of more long-haired wraiths in their field–but his commitment to making their setpieces land with precision is so much fun. A standout, though, is Bolin Chen’s undead talent agent Makoto–whose drive to help the Rookie and Catherine succeed is partially fueled by foiled 90s idol dreams during his past life. It’s a wonderfully self-deprecating part, playing into the inherent silliness of idol culture–a similar industry to horror cinema that perpetually seeks evolution and success at all costs, and where past trends that seemed revolutionary can turn dated and comedic with rapidly approaching hindsight.
But while each of these characters are played for gut-busting laughs, Hsu and co-writer Kun-Lin Tsai aim their punches at the absurd society these characters live in, not the characters themselves. As Catherine bemoans late in the film, these ghosts find that they’re forced to work harder in death than in life–in an industry whose superficiality takes on afterlife-or-death stakes. It shines a bitingly critical light on the constant debasement of influencer culture, and how that system harvests individuality and clicks by any means necessary–turning its participants into literal monsters in the process. While there are so many laughs at the expense of this culture, Hsu remains equally focused on giving its participants a potential escape: permitting for people to find work that makes them happy, and a support system that isn’t comprised of one’s follower count. In short, encouraging viewers to live their best (after)life.
Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of Dead Talents Society was its depth of reverence for the immense international impact of Asian horror cinema while recognizing how the genre’s over-proliferation in the last few decades makes it perfectly ripe for satire. There are long-haired, white-dressed girls aplenty, cursed videos, and specters that bump in the night. At the same time, we see how these ghosts are nothing without their stunt team to throw objects; how awkward it can be to sit on a victim’s neck a la the Thai film Shutter; how jump scares utilize multiple body doubles to save energy. In this vein, Dead Talents Society plays into the legacy of films like Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon or Beetlejuice, exposing how silly these stories are while celebrating the imagination and hard work these ghosts must endure to provide us with momentary frights. Notable urban legends across folklores make cameo appearances as well, providing insanely creative sight gags and set pieces.
The best Fantastic Fest films are the ones that, like these specters, leap out of nowhere to disturb and delight. With Dead Talents Society, John Hsu crafts a fiendishly clever crowd-pleaser for horror and comedy fans across the globe–one that gives influencer culture the spooky skewering it more than deserves.
Dead Talents Society had its US Premiere at Fantastic Fest 2024, where it won the Festival Audience Award. Sony Pictures International currently holds worldwide distribution rights.
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Fantastic Fest 2024: Harmony Korine’s BABY INVASION Leaves No Survivors
Baby Invasion, the latest by one of America’s most controversial auteurs working today Harmony Korine, recently screened at the midnight slot at Fantastic Fest, after premiering at Venice. It’s the director’s follow up to Aggro Dr1ft, a film shot completely in infrared that was screened exclusively in strip clubs and ignited this new era in the director’s career, that has him demolishing the boundaries between visual art, experimental cinema and commerce fueled by his collective/brand EDGLRD. I honestly couldn’t imagine a better crowd to experience this with, and after an intro by Harmony himself, who showed up in a bright yellow baby mask, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
@cinapse.co Harmony Korine’s unforgettable intro to a midnight screening of Baby Invasion #babyinvasion #HarmonyKorine #fantasticfest #fantasticfest2024 #fyp #tiktok #foryoupage #filmtok ♬ original sound – cinapse.co The film begins with an intro about an unfinished home invasion game called “Baby Invasion”, that was leaked and pirated on the dark web, where it became a pop-culture phenomenon with millions of players daily. The Harmony hook here is, the in-game players, who execute said terrible home invasions are clad in EDGLRD branded tech wear, with gnarly horns, but with happy cooing baby faces. The film then launches into what is essentially a live stream, as events transpire both in the real world, and in game. The line begins to blur a bit when the streamers from the game also stream IRL home invasions. While that whole real life violence imitating art premise is nothing new, it’s never been presented like this.
If you’ve ever watched a twitch stream, you’re going to acclimate pretty quickly to how the film is presented bombarding you with information. The left side of the screen has a chat constantly running, reacting, trolling and egging on what’s happening on screen. This while we are also inundated with pop-ups, ads and game info windows throughout. There’s a dark alchemy of all the things on screen all working together to tell this story that’s so densely layered, it could be more than a few sitting until you unlocked it all. Pacing-wise the film is relentless, there’s a mythos and lore injected into the streams that offers a few respites from the invasion. I will say the remarkable thing about how unsettling Invasion is, we never actually see any deaths happen on screen which is a very deliberate choice by Korine.
If you didn’t enjoy Aggro Dr1ft, Baby Invasion definitely isn’t for you. It’s Harmony continuing to experiment with his latest pallet of 90s cgi, neon and live action with flourishes of nightmarish AI. It’s a film that’s challenging even its target audience to keep up, if they can. It’s unrelenting, unforgiving while it stands on the bleeding edge of cinema, along with works like The People’s Joker. That’s definitely why it’s so divisive, it’s very much made for those with their brains wired a certain way. Harmony has always targeted his films to the same demographic he started with Kids, and with this storytelling for the chronically online, it feels like he hasn’t lost a beat and it’s just as dangerous as his earlier work. It’s ambitious and another step in an evolution, but to what I don’t think anyone but Korine knows for sure.
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Fantastic Fest 2024: THE REMARKABLE LIFE OF IBELIN: A Powerful Doc Reveals a Meaningful Life
Mats Steen meant something to many people.
The documentary sharing his remarkable life with a global audience (it comes to Netflix soon) will even further deepen the impact of his brief, bright time on this mortal coil. A potent documentary for our age, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin will likely be my favorite documentary of 2024. Mats was diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy as a young child and increasingly lived his life online as his body progressively degenerated. Mats’ loving family’s great fear and sadness was that their son would not have the chance to love and be loved, to make a difference in the lives of the people around him. And when they announced his passing at the age of 25, they had no idea how impactful Mats had been – in a world that was just a little bit beyond their understanding and comprehension.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is a phenomenal, expertly crafted documentary from Norwegian director Benjamin Ree (The Painter and the Thief, Magnus). Immaculately structured, the doc first introduces us to Mats’ story through the eyes of grieving and loving parents. Upon the discovery of Mats’ online life and the outpouring of love for the man many knew as Ibelin through his participation in an online World of Warcraft community known as Starlight, the film rewinds to tell Mats’ story through some of his own writings, online musings, and even transcripts from the servers of the games he played. Our understanding and appreciation of Mats’ circumstances and life deepen and we once again change perspective as we begin to meet some of Ibelin’s friends and compatriots from Starlight, learning about the great impact, from romance to rage to reconciliation, he had on the lives of his community, his friends, his found family. Told through traditional “talking head” interviews and custom animations done in the style of the video game, even this component is inventive and intentional.
Not only does the editing and structure of the film make it eminently watchable, it also serves to more deeply humanize Mats as his life story plays out, and grounds his story in the modern miracles of technology that made his connections possible. Everything from online relationships to accessible gaming is touched on and serves to give tools to Mats he could use to build a richness of life experience and also serves as a wake up call to the world the difference alternate expressions in online spaces and accessibility technology can make in peoples’ lives. Mats’ story may not be yours or mine, but as often happens when a family allows a gifted filmmaker honest access to a remarkable life, the highly specific nature of Mats’ illness and struggles morphs into a universal understanding of the human need to be loved and to love. The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is one of 2024’s most powerful documentaries because it celebrates a beautiful life and simultaneously challenges us all to fight for deeper connections and elevate accessibility to enrich not just the lives of the differently abled, but all of us.
One need not understand what World Of Warcraft is (I don’t), nor have a close family member with significant physical disability (I don’t) in order to be challenged, touched, and convicted by The Remarkable Life of Ibelin. Mats struggled in his life to connect with his family, and wrestled with revealing his physical limitations to his loves and friends on the internet, where he went to be free of his limitations. But he eventually chose to trust, to share, to be vulnerable. He blogged, and at some point revealed the terminal nature of his illness with his online friends. His vulnerability was met with compassion and understanding and it seems the team behind this documentary has also honored his vulnerability with a potent film that will reach many far past his brief 25 years with us and well beyond the digital borders of Azeroth.
And I’m Out.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin hits US Netflix October 25th, 2024
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Fantastic Fest 2024: CLOUD Exposes the Artifice of Ambition
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest dissection of human rot pushes the Japanese auteur into provocative, action-driven new places
While auteurs like Bong Joon-Ho and Takashi Miike have gained international attention with their bold, crowd-pleasing genre experiments, legendary Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has quietly made a profound impact over decades with films that defy easy categorization through their unique blend of genres. From the voyeuristic suspense of Creepy and the disorienting travelogue drama of To the Ends of the Earth to the wartime romantic espionage of Wife of a Spy and his cold-blooded, abstract return to horror in the 45-minute Chime, Kurosawa has forged his universally unsettling sense of dread into a key foundation that he can build any film upon, pulling material from all sorts of films to create something completely new.
His latest, Cloud, dives into the niche yet lucrative world of online resellers. Under the alias Ratel (also a pun on “retail”), Ryosuke (Masaki Suda) trolls Tokyo for troubled businesses, snaps up overstock or failing product, and resells them online with flashy marketing for insanely high markups. Kurosawa quickly shows how Ryosuke’s dispassionate, aggressively forward-thinking approach makes him preternaturally perfect to succeed in this industry–no matter how much scorched earth he leaves behind him along the way. However, those burned by Ryosuke’s actions have begun assembling in the dark corners of the Internet, and plan to bring their violent wishes out of virtual chatrooms and into reality itself.
In 2001, Kurosawa’s Pulse channeled the J-Horror boom into an apprehensive eye towards the early days of the Internet, wary that this connective platform may fester deepening isolation between humans. Cloud seems to suggest that Kurosawa was half-right: instead, the Internet has become a violently effective tool of late-stage capitalism, whose relentless pursuit of profit has led to the commodification of people and relationships as much as products themselves. When Ryosuke’s success allows him to quit his dry-cleaning day job, Ryosuke’s boss Takimoto (a wonderfully bemused yet menacing Yoshiyoshi Arakawa) suggests his employee isn’t thinking straight; to him, no right-minded person would pursue “some random desire to be happier than others.” Ryosuke’s mentor Muraoka (Masataka Kubota) is equally shocked at his underling’s rapid ascent, coupled with Ryosuke’s proposal to girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa)–believing Ryosuke wasn’t capable of pursuing “conventional happiness.” But in nearly every respect, all of Ryosuke’s actions are self-serving and transactional. Ryosuke’s relationship with Akiko feels ornamental, another prize to win to affirm his status. He says whatever he needs to to get struggling business owners to accept his meager cash offerings. The seeming benevolence of hiring a local boy, Sano (Daiken Okudaira) is only meant to free up Ryosuke to hoard even more cheap and useless products. There’s no rhyme or reason to whatever Ryosuke snaps up–“real or fake doesn’t matter,” he intones–he’s following pure instinct, addicted to the possibility of opportunity. The gambling nature of Ryosuke’s games are distilled to a chessboard-like marketing grid as products turn red one-by-one to mark them as sold, while Ryosuke watches with subtle yet pavlovian glee. While those who led Ryosuke to this path see him following his “passions,” this constant hustle and complete disregard for humanity is both rewarding to Ryosuke as it is rewarded by society. It’s a sense of base, impulsive happiness at the cost of everything else that makes people “human.”
It’s a bleak subject matter from the start, well in keeping with Kurosawa’s latest output like Before We Vanish or Creepy, examining societal collapse alongside a collapse of individual social behavior. But much like those films, Kurosawa infuses the terrorizing tedium of Ryosuke’s life with as much grim humor as he does gut-churning existential malaise. So much of Cloud’s laughs come from the natural absurdity of how capitalist greed becomes wholly alien to compassionate social interaction–as Masaki Suda’s Ryosuke fumbles through conversations fishing for whatever angle can get him what he wants. Even in Kurosawa’s still frames, Suda is always vibrating, searching for the next step forward in ways that are both mindless and incredibly purposeful–embodying the animalistic instinct of the honey badger that Ryosuke draws his online namesake from, or a dead-eyed shark searching the waters for blood. Arakawa’s Takimoto is a hilarious mouthpiece as well for tone-deaf corporate slogans about perseverance and working hard to one’s detriment, even as Takimoto’s own desires take on a murderous streak. It’s a fascinating continuation of Kurosawa’s studies of human contradictions, reveling in how eager we seem to place ourselves in fragile, artificial prisons of our own making. For those in the West, it’s hard not to compare Cloud to Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler, which equally questioned Jake Gyllenhaal’s sociopathic crime-scene documentarian as much as the obsessive success-driven society that gave birth to a monster like him. We laugh at the absurdity of both Gyllenhaal and Suda’s relentless ambition–and recoil as their actions help deliver exactly what they want, no matter the larger cost.
More so than Kurosawa’s past genre films, though, is how eager he is to shift between disparate tones and genres over the course of Cloud’s two hours. As Ryosuke expands his potential, moving to a palatial lakeside house in a small, suspicious village, he quickly realizes how much deeper he seems to be digging his own grave. Random attacks become a regular occurrence, and his paranoia skyrockets. Throughout this section, Kurosawa brings the horror movie tension of Pulse and Seance to a story about deeply corrupt individuals, eventually building to a breaking point reminiscent of his early crime thrillers like Cure or Eyes of the Spider. The third act even sees the director move away from quiet, brooding nuance into the violent realm of The Strangers or a Sam Peckinpah shootout, delivering one of the most surprisingly action-driven set pieces of Kurosawa’s career. While such explosions of violence have been brief yet impactful–see Cure or the imagined self-immolation of Seance–it’s fascinating to see how Kurosawa chooses to tackle an extended shootout like the one that closes out Cloud. It’s not quite John Wick–yet Kurosawa frames Ryosuke’s cat-and-mouse escape from his aggressors as a methodical feeding frenzy, a brutal outlet for beasts who to this point have confined their showdowns to a wholly virtual arena.
Fittingly, Cloud also comes to an apocalyptically-tinged finale–one that suggests that our commodification of people will continue to blindly metastasize without any end but The End. It’s an ending well familiar to Kurosawa fans–yet it’s one deliciously presented as reflecting that things stay the same the more we imagine we’ve changed things.
This bitter self-reflection, coupled with such bold experimentation with action, tone, and genre, makes Cloud’s brooding, brutal tale of resellers wreaking havoc on humanity one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s best films to date, capping off a banner year for the Godfather of modern Japanese existential dread.
Cloud had its U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest 2024, and was recently announced as the Japanese Entry for the Best International Film Oscar at the Academy Awards. It is currently seeking U.S. Distribution.
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Fantastic Fest 2024: STRANGE HARVEST, an Underdeveloped Take on True Crime
Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire is a fictional spin on the now commonplace true crime doc, which premiered at Fantastic Fest last night. The film is directed by Stuart Ortiz , one half of the The Vicious Brothers (the first and second GRAVE ENCOUNTERS and EXTRATERRESTRIAL) and looks to document a serial killer who operated in California for nearly two decades. While the film has an interesting premise, it’s going to be a frustrating watch for most fans of the genre. The film stumbles through an underdeveloped mystery, with flourishes of distracting AI generated images and a lack of attention to detail, which can make or break the suspension of disbelief with period pieces.
The film chronicles the Mr. Shiny Murders, a case that started in 1993 and then after three murders, the killer took a 15 year hiatus, coming back in the aughts, resurfacing in 2010 with the ritualistic murder of a family. This had the family drained of their blood and a mysterious giant symbol painted on the ceiling. It’s an intriguing setup, that while flirting with the supernatural just doesn’t feel completely realized, when it comes to just how far some of these rabbit holes can go or do go in these docs. I mean it’s fictional so the sky is the limit. The film presents itself as a doc on the murders utilizing found footage and photos; it feels like sometimes they understood the assignment, while other times, they didn’t even try.
I had the problem with this film most subgenre veterans are going to have, by this point you’ve seen enough real true crime docs that were probably better edited and more unbelievable than this. That’s the thing with these kinds of stories, it’s not in the gimmick, but how the story is told and how the director deals out those bread crumbs that makes some of these docs so good. They usually start off a vague first act laying the foundation of the characters and stories, but as they focus in on act two, there’s usually a twist that recontextualizes that first act making the viewer unsure what’s going to happen in the third and final big reveal act.
Strange Harvest feels more like your standard narrative setup and sadly it’s not enough when courting this particular subgenre. The story is probably there, it just shows its cards too soon and some of the performances really suffer from feeling like parodies of archetypes, rather than the real deal. Oftentimes it’s more like the dramatic reenactment of the crime, than the actual footage, which really had me really scrutinizing the doc more and more. The problem with making something like Strange Harvest is it has to bring something completely new, or a reinvention to the subgenre, but sadly that’s not what this is.
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Fantastic Fest 2024: Found Footage Meets Family Folklore in WHAT HAPPENED TO DOROTHY BELL?
Danny Villanueva Jr. hooks you from the start with a plunge into the past, courtesy of an old VHS tape. A yellow tinged, glitchy image that starts with a rather sweet depiction of a daddy/daughter relationship, and then veers into a truly unsettling game of hide and seek between this child and something that seems to be assuming the form of her grandmother. Years later and Ozzie Gray (Asya Meadows) is dealing not only with a fragmented memory of the past, but actively seeking to uncover the trauma connected to it, and piece together the memories of a childhood that is increasingly tinged with mystery. Her Grandmother, the titular Dorothy Bell, was a seminal figure in her upbringing. Her disappearance several years earlier has never been solved, and might be key to many of the answers they seek. An aspiring videographer, Ozzie sets out with their camera to document her investigation and healing by chronicling her own therapy sessions. In interviews with townspeople, local news clippings, and online blogs, they gain a growing awareness of a local folklore that has build up around Dorothy implicating her as a witch, exposure to such practices as a child might explain the memory loss and trauma that plagues Ozzie into adulthood.
Ozzie is a wounded soul, with Meadows performing with not only a scar on their face, but a clear conveyance of internalized pain. The film authentically leans into a process of resolving trauma, largely through a investigative effort to dig into the past. Ozzie moves back into the family home, hoping relics of the past trigger recollection. They visit Dorothy’s old place of work, the town library, and interview her old coworkers. A study of home videos for clues shows their Grandma’s progression of cognitive decline, and also a growing void between Ozzie and their father. The pair that we see so close in that old footage at the start of the film are now are so clearly estranged. Events in Ozzie’s past have driven a wedge between them. A subtly worked in element of gender identity could in itself be a clue toward answering this, and some of the issues Ozzie reckons with.
Meadows delivers nuanced work as they reckon with their internalized issues, notably in Zoom sessions with a therapist, Dr. Robin Connelly (Lisa Wilcox). Scenes that are later harnessed to deliver some cracking (no pun intended) horror. The real strength in this regard are these old home videos. Grainy glimpses into something of a netherworld, all of it is so incisively staged and potently executed. By comparison, the footage in modern day feels somewhat sanitized, lacking both the ominous look and feel of the dated footage. It’s not as simple as grain or color grading, its just rather hokey and less considered fare. This is most apparent in the final act where the film fails to deliver the cathartic denouement of it’s themes, instead veering into something more generic. The trauma is set aside for a rather generic battle with evil. t’s a shame as the idea of entwinning a family secret entwinned with local folklore is a great way to approach both the past and the present, using the medium of found footage. Despite this, there are impressive elements within What Happened to Dorothy Bell?, certainly enough to suggest Villanueva has a hell of an eye, and some legit horror chops .
