A tear from a winged eye seeds life on Earth.
CONTENT WARNING: Garden of Eden nudes.
Tag Archives: 2026
2026 FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL: NOM NOM NOM, PART NOM NOM NOM
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Montréal 2026
An ace of diamonds signed by a cartoonist rests alongside its fifty-one unadorned companions.
7/30: Recluse
Henry Chaisson goes full tilt 1980s BBC spook story here, with his slow pacing matching the gloomy atmospherics. A sound engineer (a profession seemingly irrelevant to the goings-on) must return home to attend to her dying father, a famously troubled artist who suffers a nasty gasoline burn at the film’s beginning. The lead is, appropriately, a cipher, with costars carrying various degrees of mysterious weight (shouts-out to Fantasia regulars Toby Poser and Kimball Farley). If you can slip into the measured nature of the game, Recluse is a satisfying little spooker.
The Leader
Alternately funny, sinister, and unbelievable, The Leader chronicles the rise and devastating fall of Marshall Applewhite and his “Heaven’s Gate” cult. Members are harvested from the dejected and hopeless masses and molded into a helpless existence. Tim Blake Nelson positively shines in Michael Gallagher’s docudrama, but the real gem is Vera Farmiga as co-founder Bonnie Lu Nettles. Here down to earth seriousness gives weight to the experience, making Bonnie’s death in 1985 a preemptive death knell. Well-crafted and very unsettling.
Never After Dark
After the serious let-down of The Mouths, Dave Boyle’s J-Horror restored my faith in the phenomenon. There’s the expected blue-cold darkness, and a ghostly fellow with slashed mouth hunting for something at certain hours of the day, but there’s also warmth and fun. Airi is a ghost hunter with a sidekick in the form of her deceased older sister (appearing in mirrors as a young girl, having died many years prior) and a disinclination toward live people (her semi-flirtations with a new client’s skeptic son are delightfully awkward). Her rig to visit the other realm is a doozy, involving a zoetrope, a candle, and a receptacle to burn a lock of hair, and the mid-century Continue reading 2026 FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL: NOM NOM NOM, PART NOM NOM NOM
CASPER KELLY ANSWERS FOR “BUDDY”.
Busy scheduling meant there was no official interview with writer/director Casper Kelly about his magically macabre movie, Buddy. However, we were mindful enough to bring a recording device to the lively and informative Q & A session immediately following the film. Keep an ear out for a loud, hopefully familiar voice.
FANTASIA 2026: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: BUDDY (2026)
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DIRECTED BY: Casper Kelly
FEATURING: Delaney Quinn, Cristin Milioti, Tristan Borders, Madison Skyy Polan, and the voice of Keegan-Michael Key
PLOT: A group of children’s-show friends attempt to escape from the increasingly homicidal titular unicorn.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Buddy’s lair is carved directly into the sheer walls of the uncanny valley, sure, but the denouement’s dreamy poignancy secures Kelly’s caper a place in our weird hearts.
COMMENTS: You may not know it, but Buddy wants to be your friend. And even though he’s just met you, he loves you very much. But unless you want to spend the remainder of your existence (or perhaps longer) cycling through an endless series of singing, dancing, frolicking bromides, do not extend your hand to this beastly television host. Watch out for your family, too, because once they’ve gone Buddy, there’s no going back.
Buddy will appeal to a number of audiences: horror fans seeking something candy-coated and full of carnage; adventurous viewers yearning for the sinister side of wacky; drug aficionados who have themselves tasted of the butterscotch psychotropic flower petal; and especially anthropologists studying television culture of the late second millennium. This film is a simulacrum of excesses that, in hindsight, feel almost barbaric.
I am not referring to the creepy gore found in Buddy, no. I speak of the bombardment of treacly songs and horrific performance foisted on the youth of yesteryear—and, regrettably, today as well. Strip away Buddy’s murderous rampages, and there’s still an ever-pulsating technicolor blob of repulsiveness. When we root for Freddy and her liberated buddies, we’re not just invested in their physical safety: we want them to escape to live a well-adjusted life, with all its surprises and misfortunes.
Casper Kelly leaps out of the fire and into the impossibly vibrant world of 1990s children’s programs with his latest film, and the product of his imagination both sears the eyes and slashes the mind, all while also capturing the heart. During Kelly’s introduction to his movie, he commented on his own children’s viewing of the various late-20th-century “children’s classics.” I can only hope and pray that those days are gone, that the memories fade, and that in years to come we can look upon Buddy as a totem of daytime horrors past.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
FANTASIA 2026: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SOUR MINNOWS (2026)
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DIRECTED BY: Harrison Atkins
FEATURING: David Brown, Suzanna Son, Chase Williamson
PLOT: Ricky workings on writing projects until memory lapses begin plaguing him after a grocery run.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: When men lick the road with abandon, and small fish appear in your pocket, and boom mics come alive, things ain’t quite right.
COMMENTS: “Really? You don’t find that disturbing?” Tepper has just been scrolling through his phone, landing on a picture of an ornamental plant growing from a raised stone urn. Roommate Ricky doesn’t share Tepper’s discomfort about this image and the benign object within. But by this point in Sour Minnows, it is already difficult to tell what may and may not be ominous, as the narrative has already proven as slippery as a fish.
The point of view slides around between the three main characters, screenwriter Ricky, his somewhat-girlfriend Aura, and the distracted Tepper. Each character becomes progressively compromised as they find themselves in situations they can’t control and awaken with only a hazy recollection of the events. Aura slathers a department-store evening gown with a rotted bird corpse, in order to astrally-project her hand into Ricky’s car to smear his headrest with the goo; Tepper’s mind wanders into a nearby window, either removing his television from the room or removing his own self; and Ricky attends a fancy media event where he receives a cryptic note before traveling through a tunnel connecting the men’s room to his home, frightening his sleeping doppelganger as he looms at his bedroom door.
If you’re comfortable with a lack of clarity and semi-detached performances (“Are you doing a ‘bit’?”), Sour Minnows is quite a treat. I saw it once, at its second screening, when the festival programmer introduced the movie with his remark that this would be the fourth time he’s watched it. Subsequent viewings probably unlock coherency, but even my one-time visit to the odd world Harrison Atkins has crafted and confettied proved satisfying. Not unlike the Tepper’s reaction to the urn, Sour Minnows is a bit disturbing, and more than a little absurd.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: