366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
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→
366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
Montréal 2026
Samuel de Champlain for my real friends and Samuel de Realplain for my sham friends.
7/23: Sekiro, No Defeat
Kenichi Kutsuna made an interesting choice here, though perhaps it’s explainable as being the less-expensive one. I have played the video game Sekiro, and managed to batter my way through a bit of the narrative; it’s a lush fantasy samurai epic, with supernatural doings throughout a long story featuring conspiracy, political machinations, betrayal, and so on. But the team behind the adaptation focused on something I did not expect. Sure, sure, there are some fights scenes of adequate quality, and the core NPCs are all there (special shout-out to the smirkingly tragic undying samurai mentor), but the film focuses on the father/son-esque relationship between Wolf and the Divine Heir, with sundry scenes of bonding between them—including making confectionaries for the townsfolk’s festival. (I do not remember this bit from the game, but again: I didn’t get far.) Curious soundtrack choices, too. Hm.
The Eyes
The rule of thumb for me at Fantasia is I should scale back my official reactions to films until I hear from my peers. I like to like movies, and this tendency can lead me to enjoy certain movies I possibly shouldn’t: like Yeom Ji-ho’s stalker/horror thingy, wherein the passing of one twin sister (both with a degenerative condition of the eyes) causes the other to suspect the circumstances and investigate the mystery—all while her own vision deteriorates. I got on board with the twists and tropes (“derivative” is a quick way to describe the film), but plenty here disagreed, and I have no arguments. Indeed, one famous film critic (and all-around horror afficionado) emerged from the screening with a look of abject bewilderment and an obvious need to get something off his chest. Being the nearest victim, I spent the next few minutes absorbing his incredulous disappointment.
366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
Montréal 2026
I briefly met a Danish fellow and complimented him on his film; he in turn complimented me on my jacket.
7/16: Kung Fu
Opening night, late night. Following my descent into Refn’s dreamscape, I took in a new kung fu comedy by Giddens Ko. An eight-century-old master of an esoteric martial art convinces two teenage losers to become his disciples, hoping to unlock their strength to aid him in his fight against his nemesis. Kung Fu delivers plenty of kung fu, as well as plenty of laughs in the first half (cheesy wuxia-style flashbacks with knock-off screen legends, and more snakes than I could count—for training, you see). The second half goes dark, as underlying causes come to the fore. While the stars are the fighting threesome (excuse me, foursome:the young, non-loser contemporary of the losers is a vivacious hoot),the nebulous Government Man steals every scene he’s in, providing an unanticipated menace.
7/17: Tunnels: Sun in the Dark
Chuyen Bui Thac walks a fine line (crawls a narrow passage?) with Tunnels, set within and above a circuit of rooms and tunnels inhabited by a couple dozen Viet-Cong fighters. The arrival of a clandestine intelligence group coinciding with the appearance of an eager outsider triggers tension. It was thrilling to experience the claustrophobia and comradery, as weapon and survival skills were on display (the outsider, in particular, showed an eagerness that bordered on death wish: watching him remove the explosive element of a failed bomb by heating the casing over a fire was… tensely amusing). Kudos to the director for his deft storytelling, and in particular for giving the Yankee soldiers far more fair a shake than expected. War is hell, and Chuyen Bui Thac makes it clear that none of these poor souls should have had to be caught up in its evil.
Trauma Or, Monsters All
Going for broke, Larry Fessenden ties together three of his earlier movies (Habit, Depraved, and Blackout) in the story of a young woman recently moved to Talbot Falls, NY, hoping for a quiet environment in which to work on her historical book about George Washington Carver (“You know, the peanut guy.”) When she observes strange activity by a neighbor’s Continue reading 2026 FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL: NOM NOM NOM, PART NOM→
PLOT: The wife of an adulterous husband takes revenge on their son.
COMMENTS: Families are dysfunctional in Asian Extreme Cinema. A typical example isTakashi Miike‘s infamous Visitor Q (2001). There are even more transgressive movies to be found, however, like Moebius perhaps the most disturbing piece in Ki-duk Kim’s provocative filmography. Here, the South Korean auteur further develops his pessimist worldview on human relationships and family dynamics. Let’s dare to take a closer look.
The story is divided into three acts. The plot revolves around an archetypal family including the Mother, the Father and the Son. When the Mother can’t stand the Father’s extramarital affair—with a woman played by the same actress—anymore, she takes revenge on their Son, castrating him. The events following this criminal act play out like a symbolic Freudian coming-of-age tale, showcasing the Son’s attempts to cope and the Father’s guilt and attempts to help.
Kid-duk nods to Euripides’ “Medea” from the beginning: Mother uses her child to punish the husband. This is only the beginning, however, not the climax. The events of this perverted family saga and boyhood tale include gang rape, kinky sex, masturbation with rocks and knives, and even a bit of incest. Despite the surrounding chaos there are touching moments of tenderness to be found in the way the altruistic Father tries to support his Son. But the tragic finale cannot be avoided.
Buddhist spirituality is portrayed as a means to redemption. In Ki-Duk’s masterpiece Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and… Spring (2003) an old monk dictates that lust is sinful because it brings jealousy and therefore crime, while a monk’s lifestyle brings comfort. Moebius further develops that thesis through a darker parable, and can be viewed as an origin story of sorts for a monk with similar convictions.
This is Kim Ki- Duk’s boldest piece not only because of the grotuesqueries he presents, but also because of the way he directs the actors. There isn’t a line of dialogue in the whole film. Characters communicate physically, through violent or sexual acts, grunts of pain and pleasure—or both simultaneously—and tremors. They become wild animals and in the most intense moments. When the three characters confront each other, their positions recall sculpturess from the Hellenistic Period, like the famous Laocoön Group.
All in all, this is a difficult film to recommend because of its graphic scenes and heavy subject matter. It is essential, however, for Kim Ki -Duk completionists, and perhaps the work from his late period that stands out the most. Moreover, it will appeal to fans of film parables that aren’t afraid to confront the darker corners of the human psyche and sexuality, in the vein of Lars von Trier‘s Antichrist (2009).
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
“Moebius is almost weird enough to be a creation myth, and that’s no small accomplishment.”–Sherilyn Connelly, The Village Voice (contemporaneous)
FEATURING: Yoon Jeong-hee, Lee Dae-keun, Lee Yeong-ha
PLOT: A corporate executive travels in search of her dead twin sister’s spirit, and her journey descends into a surreal nightmare.
COMMENTS: “I had read the original script. . . and I expected that once SplendidOuting was made into a film, then surely its ambiguous meaning would take on some clarity—so I watched it with that hope. But again, I still couldn’t clearly grasp what its meaning was supposed to be. In the end, I began to wonder if this film was meant to be some kind of puzzle: ‘Here’s the question, now you try to solve it.’” – Im Yeong, Film: Theory and Practice (March/April, 1978) (essay included in the booklet that comes with the Blu-ray)
Gong Doo-hee embodies the stereotypical woman who “has it all”: president of the appropriately named Royal Group, she presides over multinational business deals with the regal grandeur of a queen. When she isn’t expanding her company’s territory into far-flung parts of the globe, she lectures at a local women’s association, gives television interviews about feminism, and supports a charity for disabled children. But when she goes home to her own kids in her suburban mansion, she sleeps alone and dreams of a mysterious girl performing a ritualistic dance.
A widow, the one thing lacking in Gong’s life is a husband. We gradually learn, through voiceovers, how this troubles her; she’s clearly conflicted on whether or not to sacrifice her position in order to remarry. Whenever Gong is alone and we’re privy to her inner thoughts, a male voice narrates them. Are the men in her life still telling this liberated woman what to do? Or has she adopted a male internal monologue in order to increase her own sense of command and authority? This is but one of many fascinating ambiguities peppering the narrative, each of which reveals the complexity of Gong’s character, to the point of completely destabilizing her identity. When Gong consults a shaman about her repeating dream, she learns she had a twin sister who didn’t survive birth. The girl’s spirit still exists, but Gong needs to revisit the seaside community where she was born in order to communicate with her.
Just the thought of the seashore gives President Gong a headache, but she dutifully drives herself out of Seoul, leaving behind her chauffeur and her pampered existence. Upon arrival, she’s immediately recognized by the villagers who, in a disturbingly strange scene, surround her car and attack her. In the first of many sudden outbursts of violence against her, Gong’s “splendid outing” quickly takes a very dark turn. Mistaken for the runaway wife of a local islander, fishermen promptly catch her in a fishnet. After a beautifully noir-ish sequence where she’s suspended in a shadowy space by blood-red netting, a crew of female divers deliver Gong to her “husband.”
The rest of the film leaves the viewer wondering if this is a case of mistaken identity. Is Gong, the illustrious head of a corporation, now cruelly kidnapped and held hostage by a lawless populace? Or is she the village runaway, who abandoned her abusive husband five years ago to live an alternate life in the city? Or have she and her unborn twin somehow traded places in an act of cosmic reversal?
The plot hints variously at all these possibilities by selectively surfacing the protagonist’s memories. Day-dream(1964), a seriously weird film also about a woman undergoing a harrowing ordeal at the hands of a man with whom she has an ambiguous relationship, apparently influenced Splendid Outing‘s fractured structure. The quick edits recall Franco Arcalli’s work with Giulio Questi, as does the color symbolism of contrasting reds and blues. The soundtrack features a mix of traditional music and then-contemporary electronics, also similar to Day-dream‘s even more disorienting score. The changes in tone heighten the contrast between the past and the present, the rural and urban, but also underline moments of idealized femininity.
Director Kim intended the film as a political allegory, one so skillfully hidden within a modernist narrative that government censors failed to notice it. While knowledge of South Korea’s Yushin Era history adds even more layers to President Gong’s story, that background isn’t necessary to appreciate the film’s sense of style and mystery. Even though the ending provides a concrete answer for Gong’s surreal experiences, a profound uneasiness still lingers even after the outing’s over.
Splendid Outing initially found few screenings outside of its native South Korea. In 2026 Radiance rediscovered it and released it on Blu-ray. Unfortunately, it is not currently available for streaming.
7/30: Recluse
The Leader
Never After Dark
7/23: Sekiro, No Defeat
The Eyes
7/24: We’re Nothing At All
7/17: Tunnels: Sun in the Dark
Trauma Or, Monsters All
