Fantastic Fest Preview: Put These Killer Genre Films on Your Radar Right NOW!

If you’re reading this and don’t already have a badge for Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, it may seem a little redundant for us to recommend a bunch of movies that are playing the festival. Here’s the thing about FF, though. The movies they play are kind of the cream of the genre crop. If it’s at Fantastic Fest, it’s worth of your attention. So if we’re putting a movie on this list, it means it should be on your radar whether you’re at the fest or not.

Also, we’ll be skipping the more mainstream recommendations in this list, because things like Arrival (pictured above), A Monster Calls and Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children are probably already on your radar.

Age of Shadows

What you need to know: This is the kind of movie whose filmmaker pedigree is a guarantee that A) it’s going to be incredible, B) it’s going to be incredible, and C) it’s going to be incredible. That may sound hyperbolic, but this is Jee-woon Kim we’re talking about. I Saw the Devil, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, A Bittersweet Life, A Tale of Two Sisters, The Quiet Family. He’s simply one of the best.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe

What you need to know: A few years ago a secret screening at Fantastic Fest treated 200+ fans to the surprise world premiere of Trollhunter, a movie no one really knew existed. Obviously it blew everyone away. Well, The Autopsy of Jane Doe is that director’s new movie. It’s about a father-son team of coroners tasked with figuring out how a woman with no obvious cause of death died. Presumably mystery and mayhem ensue.

Colossal

What you need to know: Colossal blew away a lot of people at its recent premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, and now it comes to American shores for the first time. It’s got a giant monster, Anne Hathaway and a mysterious connection between the two. Plus, director Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes) has a particular knack for finding a human connection in rather ridiculous stories, so we’ve got good faith he’s done that again here.

A Dark Song

What you need to know: I’ll be upfront: If you are going to Fantastic Fest, I want to recommend you see A Dark Song purely because it’s being paired with a short film called Givertaker that I just so happen to have written and produced. BUT, A Dark Song is going to have a life beyond the fest, and the early buzz on it is that it’s a remarkable story of a woman who spends months performing some kind of dark ritual.

Elle

What you need to know: We will always watch a new movie from the man who made Total Recall, RoboCop and Starship Troopers. Consider the case for why you should see Elle closed.

The Handmaiden

What you need to know: Park Chan-wook is back with another twisty story of revenge, double crosses and deep rooted perversions. It’s basically everything you want from a movie from the mind behind Oldboy, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance and Stoker.

The Invisible Guest

What you need to know: Oriol Paulo may not be a household name, but he’s a master of mystery. He wrote the remarkably satisfying Julia’s Eyes and The Body, which are both cool, twisty thrillers, so we trust him with the following premise: “A wealthy businessman wakes up in a locked hotel room with the body of his dead lover next to him in Orio Paulo’ latest.”

Nova Seed

What you need to know: Word has it that Nova Seed is a piece of insane animation that owes its DNA to the days of MTV’s Liquid Television. That alone should make this interesting, but another unique thing about this project is that it’s an animated film made entirely by one person over the course of four years.

Safe Neighborhood

What you need to know: A few years ago a movie called Undocumented came out and unfortunately just never found the wide audience it deserved. That’s a shame because it’s a taut thriller, but it certainly has us excited for that director’s follow-up film, Safe Neighborhood. This is the world premiere, so there’s not a lot known about it yet, but fingers crossed it’s something special.

The Void

What you need to know: How’s this for a brief summary, “There is a Hell. This is worse.” Pretty intriguing, right? It’s the new movie from a pair of truly fantastic Canadian filmmakers, Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski. They made the best part of ABCs of Death 2, “W is for Wish,” so if you’ve seen that, you can imagine there’s going to be some very creative visual effects gags here.

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