5 Can’t Miss Fantasia Film Festival Picks

Now in its 17^th edition, Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival is once again offering up an intriguing mix of the action, horror & sci-fi films that the festival built its reputation on, as well as an increasing number of documentaries, comedies, and even a foray into live theatre.

With 120 features from around the globe, poring through the festival’s phonebook-sized program is a definite early summer highlight for every self-respecting film geek. However, for the slightly less obsessed, deciphering the festival’s often hyperbolic-laced film descriptions to decide upon a few picks can be a bit of a task. With that in mind, here are 5 potential highlights from this year’s edition, based on word-of-mouth from previous screenings (where applicable), and of course, this author’s own infallible intuition.

Mistaken for Strangers

The National have a reputation as being an overly serious band, which made the decision to bring along lead singer Matt Beringer’s younger heavy-metal loving brother Tom on tour with them all the more interesting. Ostensibly hired to film the band in the midst of their tour for 2010’s massively successful High Violet record, the film apparently devolves into Spinal Tap-esque territory as Tom, who still lives at home at 30, struggles to cope with the band’s rigorous touring schedule and the increasing fame of his older brother.

A rumination on success, resentment and family, Mistaken for Strangers should appeal to anyone who has ever lived vicariously through someone close to them, whether you are a fan of The National or not (and you should be of course).

5-25-77

Long-anticipated by Star Wars fans, director Patrick Read Johnson’s (Angus, Spaced Invaders)   autobiographical love-letter to the glory days of 1970’s sci-fi cinema is finally seeing the light of day.
In 1970’s suburban Illinois, Johnson is swept up with creating backyard Super 8 sequels to the sci-fi hits of the era, including Jaws and 2001. His fandom eventually turns proactive, and a trip to Hollywood in search of an audience with a Special Effects producer leads to a surprise meeting with Steven Spielberg, and a special advance screening of a yet-to-be released film called Star Wars. Needles to say, a young Johnson is completely enraptured with the film, an obsession he then has to juggle alongside the typical adolescent angst of suburban teenagers the world over.

Filmed in a stop-gap manner over a number of years, 5-25-77 (the film takes its name from Star Wars’ release date) features a cast that includes John Francis Daley (Freaks and Geeks) aging throughout the years of filming, potentially lending the film a slightly jarring quality, which if anything, indirectly ties 5-25-77 to Johnson’s early backyard extravaganzas.

5-25-77 has taken on a nearly mythical status over the years, with naysayers arguing that the film didn’t even exist. It was only on last year’s Heart of Dorkness tour that Johnson began screening the completed film, and the consensus seems to be that this sweet ode to sci-fi and adolescence was well worth the wait.

Confession of Murder

This action-packed serial killer thriller was a hit in South Korea this year, and will likely continue the Fantasia’s loyalist’s wide embrace of the Korean action genre.

15 years after a brutal confrontation between a detective and a serial-killer suspect goes awry, an author publishes a best-seller called “I Am the Killer”, claiming responsibility for the series of killings just as the statute of limitations on the murders has past. However, the initial detective has his doubts, which sets him on an increasingly over-the-top hunt for the truth.

A tough-as-nails detective story filled with outlandish twists and a dose of blockbuster action set-pieces, Confession of Murder seems tailor-made for this festival and looks to be a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

Lesson of the Evil

Those who feared that infamous Japanese director Takashi Miike had finally given up the extreme violence of his early work, notably the stomach churning Ichi the Killer for his more relatively straightforward action fare, are in luck. The advance word on Lesson of the Evil is that it firmly re-establishes Miike as one of the most unrelenting filmmakers in Japan (no small task give the country’s often deranged filmography).

The film centers on an unhinged high-school professor’s plot to brutally murder his students. For those still reading, the apparently black comedy takes the essence of the schoolchildren violence from Battle Royale (or, err, The Hunger Games) and infuses it with flourishes of absurdist fantasy as only Miike can. With all the furor of gun violence in schools these days, don’t except to see Lesson of the Evil at the local multiplex anytime soon, making its showing at Fantasia all the more vital.

The Conjuring

Unjustly branded as a kingpin of the horror “torture porn” sub-genre for creating the much-maligned Saw franchise, director James Wan takes a more Hitchcockian-approach to suspense with this haunted house tale. With a premise that sounds ripped right out of Ghost Hunters, two paranormal investigators (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson) are called into to investigate a series of strange disturbances at the home of a couple (Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor). Set in 1971, the film promises a classic Amityville Horror vibe, hopefully meshed with Wan’s over-the-top scares he employed to such great effect in the underrated Insidious. Allegedly loosely based on “true events”, this looks to be one of the purest examples of traditional horror on offering at Fantasia this year.