366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
Montréal 2025
More than once I was quickly impressed by a film’s animation only to discover that I was only watching the production company credits.
7/30: Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo
Crank down the musical score by half, and this would land in a far better place. Tsai Chia Ying attempts something risky here as he aims to fuse deep character emotion with ghostly horror. Chia Ming awakens every morning from an overhead drip. Every morning: this love-struck fellow is stuck in a loop wherein he witnesses the object of his affections die somehow while on a hiking trip taken to search for the remains of a mutual friend lost to the haunted mountains. Major No-No Points are awarded to the original trio, who decide to cut through a rather creepy barrier in the surrounding woods, accidentally disrupting an esoteric ceremony. Very nearly ending badly, the movie upgrades from regrettable to merely “meh” with its final, actual, conclusion.
$Positions
Mike meets his daily struggles with unwavering optimism and friendliness, which is no small feat in face of director Brandon Daley’s ceaseless abuse. Crypto (oh how I loathe you) sinks its talons in our hapless hero, clouding his judgment with every dip and spike. We follow a series of increasingly nasty twists of fate (and concurrent ill-decisions) as Mike’s already crummy life hits rock bottom—making true an early, optimistically-stated declaration that no, he’s “nowhere near the bottom yet!” With polyamory, drug addiction, medical debt, and somewhat more urine consumption than I might have preferred, $Positions is simultaneously icky, wacky, and heartfelt. Special shout-out to leading man Michael Kunick. I passed him after the screening commending his performance as one of the best depictions of Job to hit the screen.
Désolé, Pardon, Je m’excuse
Like many of her generation, office-worker Ella loves Internet videos. Unlike many of her generation (at least, I hope), she loves Internet videos released by a violent sadist who’s been torturing a kidnap victim for some three months. She has a dream of trying this for herself, and hilarity ensues.
Seriously. Estevan Morin has crafted a fast-paced comedy of manners with Désolé..., that is silly, cute, and charming. Eighty-four minutes of snappy dialogue, philosophy, and a heart-warming finale; I could see this easily converted to the stage for an intimate evening of laughs and violence.
7/31: OBEX
One of my favorite films so far, and another instance where someone else on the 366 team needs to check this out later. The symphonic keyboard portraiture, retro-television helper, and incorporation of classic adventuring help make Albert Birney‘s latest dream both a delightful, simple story, as well as quietly strange experience.
Conor Marsh is a computer artist (“Send me $5, and I’ll draw your portrait with my computer!”) and a shut-in. The year is 1987, and Conor’s small home is stuffed with enough vintage tech to bring a nostalgic tear to the eyes. There’s a dog, too, named Sandy. The film’s first half establishes the pair’s daily routine, while nightly Conor has dreams about driving his mother around in her car. This idyll is upended by an advertisement for “OBEX”, the latest in computer graphics and design, which promises to put you in the game. Not long after installing the game from the floppy, Conor’s dog goes missing, and he must adventure far and wide to find her.
Beautifully shot, cleverly assembled, and more endearing than I had expected—especially consider the ubiquitous cicadas.
The School Duel
Todd Wiseman, Jr. puts forward an unpleasantly likely scenario: in the near future, the “Free State of Florida” has outlawed gun control, and in an effort to mitigate the concurrent rise in school shootings, has devised an event dubbed “The School Duel,” wherein volunteers and recruits are assembled for a Battle Royale-style event. The hope is that this will nip potential shooters in the bud, and the hype over the Kings (the winners) and Martyrs (everyone else) is one of those fury-frothing exercises designed to keep everyone angry enough not to ask questions. Kue Lawrence stands out as a good-hearted, though misguided, 13-year-old who is selected out of a misunderstanding of a particular list he had compiled. With guns everywhere, tensions permanently elevated, and manipulative ill-doers in charge, nobody stands a chance.
8/1: All You Need Is Kill
From the far-flung corners of deep space, a deadly metaphor crashes down in Southern Japan, destroying everything within a 20km radius. More seriously, Kenichiro Akimoto’s adaptation of the wildly popular manga of the same name is a thrilling adventure, with the quality of animation to be expected from the good people at Studio 4°C. Rita, a low-level technician working at the site where “Darol” (the name of the tree-form alien) lands, wakes up one morning and dies from an unexpected attack on the massed workers. She wakes up again, remembering everything, and so on, and on, as she attempts to live longer and longer into the day, restarting every time she’s killed; except twice. Twice she restarts mid-motion.
What is going on? Some of this explained (more so, as to be expected, in the source material), but Kenichiro focuses on Rita, the manga’s secondary character, and her growth as a fighter, character, and person unfolds colorfully, beautifully—and violently.
8/2: Foreigner
As an avowed middle aged white guy, I am not the target audience for Ava Maria Safai’s feature debut. (This target audience, explained during the director’s introduction to the screening, are “tween and teen” girls of immigrant backgrounds.) That said, I found plenty to enjoy in Foreigner, and detaching myself from myself (if I may), I recognize how this would go over well with those it’s aimed at—a group that deserves catering to. Anyhow, the story: recently arrived from Iran, Yasamin enters a new high school in Canada. She desperately wants to fit in, and it seems the surest way to do that is joining the creepy-troupe of popular girls, and dyeing her hair blonde. There’s some demon stuff, dad-ly overexuberance (blasting Farsi classics from the car radio does the father no favors… except with me), and a touching double-shot finale. I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t called on during the Q&A, because, being a different kind of foreigner, I wanted the director to explain to me just what is up with Canada and hockey.
But that explanation probably would have run the program far too long.
Circo Animato 2025 (Shorts Anthology)
“Mother of Dawn” – dir. by Clara Trevisan
Three chapters, “Night,” “Mother,” and “Dawn”, wherein a knitted star demon devours suns that merge in its belly. An egg forms from the void, cracking open to release life, and the star demon is born anew.
“Off-Time” – dir. by Nata Metlukh
Red squares emerge from a laptop and phone, to be sorted into tidy green-square grids. Time zaps forward, and backward, passers-by are disregarded and life’s hectic nonsense splutters, siloed by its own component momentum. Walking along the sidewalk, bearded protagonist moves the camera, which failed to pan right. Hectically amusing.
“Knead” – dir. by Chen Baosi
Perhaps the hands of the creator, forming an infant, which morphs into toddler, which morphs into child, then an adult. Soft-line grayscale, with corrective slams of the fist and squeezing of the fingers. Creation creates, and drilling down the generations, we wonder: can this cycle of conformity ever be broken?
“Dark Globe” – dir. by Donato Sansone
Lo-fi violence, with lift-tabs and flipbook developments, accompanied by “live” sound effects. The artist’s hand injects a green glowing syringe into his creation, and a muscle man emerges. Bullets and bombs fly, the Earth explodes, and we finish with a man in the box. Darkly comic.
“Ordinary Life” – dir. by Yoriko Mizushiri
A symphony of line and music. Behold, at the start, an inverted mushroom on a table, near a pair of resting hands. They pluck fungal frills, invoking notes of a piano. What follows is unclear, but maybe it’s a romance between two women. Shadow lines on hands and walls slice away, playing with the animation medium. Things become no clearer when the soft line of the drawings becomes slightly furrier.
“In the Blink of an Eye” – dir. by Kwak Eun-yeong
A school girl diligently approaches the test in front of her, and with a vertical crunch, the screen goes to black, and time rushes forward. Her life comes in bursts: college, career, marriage, children, old age. The sides of the screen compress her face, before clamping together. Only in old age, looking back on everything, are we shown a horizontal blink of an eye.
“Anyone” – dir. by Thao Tran
This new animation taught me a word for old animation: “phenakistoscope”. So that’s what those pretty spin-wheels are called. This multivariously-itemed thingy inspired the cryptic notes, “multi-m??d, lips spinning, eyes & mirror / curtain open, curtain closed.” Thinking back on it, this presentation about presentation hits fast and shiny, so I’d hope we can dig this up for our Saturday ‘do.
“Bon Appetite” – dir. by Wang Ziyu, Yu Jinhong
It’s fun to see an artist out-O’Keefe O’Keefe, and golly if this animated short didn’t feature the most vulvic flowers I’ve ever seen. The sheep in the Edenic back-drop falls hard for this little plant, and things become enveloped and pulled away from only to reveal a new version. The French of the title isn’t proper, but that’s okay: this is art.
“On the Other Side…” – dir. by Wang Mingyu
If I ever see this Japanese short again, I’ll be amazed. Of the eleven cartoons on display, this alone had no promotional poster or image. Very mysterious, and in keeping with the goings-on. The score mimics the images, picking up tempo and depth as a dark motorway vignette transforms into something livelier. Special shout-out to the ants. Love you little guys.
“Skroll” – dir. by Marten Visser
Speaking of lovable creatures, Visser’s tour-de-force is a wild and wacky romp. Kicking off with a seaside cliff dive (imminent, mind you), the camera pops over to some anti-Zoo activists. Blowing open the gate, a few normal things escape, and then a few very strange things escape and run amok. Cut to a street scene, and a fellow with a magical bag pulls it over an unwitting queuer, who promptly transforms into yet another inexplicably vicious beastie; the others in the queue observe this, and gesture that they’re game for the bag treatment, too. Thumbs up to the thumbs-up gnome; and holy heck, there’s mushroom cloud parachuting.
“Éiru” – dir. by Giovanna Ferrari
Three times too small to be a true warrior of the Flame Clan, little Éiru does, however, fit down the newly dried well. Poetry and jagged edges abound, as does a motion and lighting scheme reminiscent of Son of the White Mare (though the characters look a bit more realistic in their way). There’s a lesson in this one, not just about the benefits of having half-pints around. Something to do with life, tolerance, peace, sharing, &c., as the Flame, Stone, and Wood clans encounter the unexpected emerging from their empty wells.
Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II – The Ashes of Rage
I’ve been looking forward to this since I saw it announced after the first Mononoke screening last year, and it did not disappoint. Alongside chapter one, and the anticipated chapter three, this belongs squarely on the Apocrypha list, so hopefully we can whip up a three-fer when the trilogy of tales (with individual paranormal cases per film, and an overarching cloak-and-dagger drama carrying over all three) are completed. Kenji Nakamura and Kiyotaka Suzuki, pretty please.
In the meantime, enjoy my review of Mononoke the Movie: Chapter I – Phantom in the Rain.
8/3: Thelma du pays des glaces
Unlike most people at this festival, I saw the flying bathtub which was part of the yearly montage of film snippets shown before each Fantasia screening. Also, again unlike most people, I saw the other Latvian animation featured this year. (The first being this much different item.) These two unlikely circumstances stemmed from one feature: Reinis Kalnaellis’ children’s cartoon. Upon entering, I did not know just how children’s a cartoon it was, but it soon became clear I was in for something for the very young. Dubbed into French, with subtitles mostly obscured during the projection, I still followed along as Thelma went on a circuitous adventure after failing to send out a birthday invitation in time. No worries, though, as she meets up with Vilhelm the cat and his roommate Sophia the mouse (beyond that, the relationship is not clear). Escapades ensue as the trio attempt to get Thelma back home to meet her birthday properly. I’m not sure what this means, but the implication in the film is that a birthday is some kind of literal entity, encountered preferably (only?) at home. So, um, yeah. Not bad for kids’ movie, I suppose, and it taught me that I can just about understand French dialogue intended for the post-toddler crowd.
Holy Night: Demon Hunters
Lim Dae-hee directs Don Lee as he goes punch, punch, punch against goons, cultists, and ultimately a major demon. Holy Night promises that Don Lee will punch, and it delivers. I ask for nothing more. Farewell, Fantasia. It’s been a hoot.