Ah yes, time to make movie plans again while gods laugh at me. Especially this year I have felt their filmic wrath upon me, more than ever. While it was the flu that knocked me off my socks in February, it is currently the concussion I have had since the beginning of July because of a shelf full of books falling on my head that I have had some problems ever since, like bad concentration, tiredness and not really being able to watch cinema due to eye problems. It is getting gradually better, and the chances are more than good I'll fully recover but it has intervened with my reading and movies. For other people this may be a minor inconvenience but books and movies are basically what I live for, so I also feel depressed ever since, since I also missed most of my planned visits to open air cinemas. I still have some time for that, if the weather plays along. Last week I caught the last GDR movie that was shown at the Freiluftbühne Weißensee, Jadup und Boel (1988), and it was unproblematic, so my hopes are high.
So it's a good time to make some more plans, haha. The upcoming Fantasy Filmfest (September 4 - 11) offers excellent opportunities for that, but that's not all, there are other movies I haven't been able to watch and I'd like to catch up in that department. For example, there are two movies (Longlegs and I Saw the TV Glow) I wanted to watch at the Creepy Crypt, but they were/are sold out! Of course, it is my goal to spread the word and make the Creepy Crypt more popular, but it's a real shame not being able to buy tickets for awesome previews. Interestingly, more and more people prefer spending their Saturday nights at the cinema. I'm lucky, though, these two films will be shown in regular cinemas and I can watch them with normal folks.
Let's start with the movies that caught my eye in this year's Fantasy Filmfest selection. The festival pass was sold out pretty quickly, before even most titles were known, so I missed that train. I'm not complaining though, because now that the selection is almost complete, I see that I'll skip many movies, especially those focusing on martial arts, revenge dramas and true crime. The tickets for the showings can be purchased from August 26 on, so don't miss the date if there are films you really really want to watch.
Dark Match (Canada, 2024)
A secret buried in my past happened during my first years in Berlin, while I was sitting outside some bar in Friedrichshain and having a beer with a work colleague, and a group of slightly goth looking, tall, strong, dark-haired girls approached us with shiny eyes. They were recruiting other girls for their roller derby team, and I don't know if it was the beer, or the hope to build some sort of camaraderie, or my physical resemblance to these girls - it seemed only natural that I said yes.
My bad, because I suck at roller skating/ roller blading and can't possibly chase people on them. I tried practicing with them for one whole day which gave me bruises but at the same time made me feel badass for months after. My career as an athlete was short-lived, but I developed a certain affection for wrestling and one on one fighting sports. Nothing too obsessive, but a slight joy. This joy combined with my passion for horror, makes me very attracted to the Mexican wrestling sport lucha libre and the masks the luchadors wear - it looks uncanny.
So why am I telling you all this? Because the thumbnail to this film on the FFF website shows a lucha libre fighter, and that's the only reason I want to watch it.
Handling the Undead (Norway, 2024)
I still haven't read anything by John Ajvide Lindqvist, but have thrown this title into my TBR-list, because I will probably never get to read his vampire novel, but might try out this one. But I will first watch it, and other than it is a Zombie movie, famously not my subgenre at all, I know nothing, Jon Snow.
I don't suppose I know much Norwegian movies, except the awesome Dead Snow series for which I can forget my dislike for the genre. Fun fact: Gisle contributed to the soundtrack of it!
Hunters on a White Field (Sweden, 2024)
I really have no idea what to expect from this one, to be honest. On a first glance I thought it looked (also the actors) deceivingly like The Ritual, but it's Swedish, so the actors can't be the same and this might be about people hunting and torturing each other for sport, I don't know. We'll see.
Les pistolets en plastique / Plastic Guns (France, 2024)
Something a little light amongst all the darker movies is a necessity when attending a film festival - and so are eye drops. So when I saw the trailer of this, where the French police officer tries to persuade his Danish colleagues to return a French citizen who on his trip to Denmark is arrested and accused of murdering his wife
and three children, I laughed out loud, it's hilarious.
Sayara (2024 Türkiye)
Even though always a staple of Turkish cinema, the trope of the underdog against politically and financially powerful enemies literally exploded in the 2010s when a certain TV drama called Ezel, loosely based on the Count of Monte Christo, was broadcasted. The degree to which people related to and rooted for this tormented character on his quest of revenge was incredible, all over the world I dare say, and it is to this day insanely popular.
So I'm really really curious what Can Evrenol, one of the few Turkish horror directors, is making of this trope, how he will interpret it and if he will be able to bring something new to this subgenre.
As an aside, Ezel is unlike many many Turkish telenovelas actually very good, with twists and turns and the story structure basing on a poker game, so at the end of each episode cards are shown and you're surprised no matter what the outcome is and the storyline changing drastically every time the cards are mixed and redistributed, the constellation of friends and enemies is also mixed up. You can watch it on YouTube, it is even available in many different languages from Spanish to various Eastern European languages, just not Western languages, I think.
Sleep (2023 South Korea)
Not sure what I should make of the trailer, in which a young woman tries to take her husband's sleep problems under control. Apparently his character changes and he becomes nasty. I'm always open to South Korean movies, and this looks like, though nothing groundbreaking, something worthwhile to pass the time with.
Speak No Evil (USA, 2024)
OK, so this movie is on this list for the only purpose of me saying that I WILL NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE. This movie already exists, namely as a Danish production from 2022 and there was absolutely no reason for an American remake, like wtf? Is the story not worth anything when the characters are Dutch and Danish? I swear this kind of behavior aims to keep the US-Americans narrow minded and thick. Boooh!
The original movie by Christian Tafdrup is amazingly unsettling, if you want to know.
Things Will Be Different (2024 USA)
This is the only movie from the USA I will watch during the festival because I'm assuming the others will be regularly shown at theaters anyway, so I'll save my energy. This one I chose because it looks indie and I saw the name of Justin Benson in the cast and wrongly assumed he directs it (he's only playing a role). Anyway, after a robbery two estranged siblings find a farmhouse which offers a passage for time traveling and weird things occur. I'm not a very big fan of time travel stories, but the ones that work, work. Like the first Terminator films, or Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, or Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, or The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton etc. Maybe this will work too.
The Well (2024 Italy)
My eyes popped out of my head when I saw the trailer to this, this is wonderful and looks to me like one of the best horror movies of the year! All I know it's about a restaurateur who is sent to a small Italian village to restore a picture from the Middle Ages, but with the figures in the picture animated to bring horror to our dimension, this is exactly the kind of art horror I love and really hope it's worth the hype.
The two US movies that are in the festival selection but that I plan on watching later in normal showings are; Strange Darling (2023), a slasher, and The Substance (2024) in which body horror meets plastic surgery.
Before they disappear completely (pun intended) into the void of unwatched and forgotten movies, here come a couple of quick pitches of titles from my backlist, as a refresher:
Desaperacer Por Completo (Disappear Completely)
A grieving father is desperate to reunite with his
lost child and ends up on an island where this seems possible. Although the premise sounds predictable but still compelling, I truly feel drawn by the aesthetics of this film, those hooded people on the field look terrifying.
Admittedly, this doesn't look like an artistic masterpiece, but the idea of encountering Zombies at a music festival sounds fun and quirky and the colors look so good!
The ethical dilemma of movie characters put before an impossible choice can perfectly lead to the exploration of values, beliefs, humanity. Here, 20% of the world population must disappear for the world to be saved (in reality it's more like 60%) - How American! An older married couple volunteer to die, but the wife bails out at the last moment, and the guards who have come to their house state that they have to take two people as agreed upon. So they need to decide who from their family must die with Grandpa. Whom will they choose? It's directed by a Cronenberg.
The film about a hypnotic late night TV show which fucks with your consciousness will be in German cinemas from August 22 on. This is based on a short film titled "We're All Going to the World's Fair" which was shown at the Final Girls Berlin Film Festival some time ago.
I really like the woods, like if I'm not feeling well, just take me on a forest walk, into the nature, and I'm good again. Just not for too long, because I love my shower and laptop too. And I would most definitely, absolutely, undoubtedly lose my shit if I met the slasher in this movie in the woods. I don't even want to think how scary that would be, so I'll just leave it to other people in films to meet him in nature, in a violent nature.
A Pakistan horror film is not something you see every day, so yes, even though I have no idea where the story of a mother and a daughter whose husband and father has died is heading, I want to find out.
I wasn't able to see this on Creepy Crypt because it was sold out - but I saw Peter F. Hamilton instead, which is fine. I am guessing that Nicolas Cage as the baddy will be crazy terrifying in this, this might be another of the year's best horror movies and the best part is that I can see it in theaters as early as this weekend.
Another forest horror movie which won't diminish my love for the woods. But it might creep me out and make me a little paranoid, like Jaws still does every time I'm swimming in the sea. I don't much get the trailer, probably some kind of eco horror with the outcome that humans are the pest of this world.
Don't feel particularly attracted to this story as British folk horror isn't really mine, BUT this book has been selling well at the Otherland for years now and I even own the book, unread, and I feel like I should have some kind of knowledge of what it is that's so scary about it.
This is it, there are lots of movies coming and I'm especially excited about the FFF as usual. What I would really want to do for once is to go international and attend the Viennale, which takes place in October. Though I don't know if I can do it this year. But a girl can dream...
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