A little warning before going over to the FFF reviews - I really wanted to chill these last two days of my time off work, so today I met up with my friend Qinqin to go play some mini golf and then go to Swampfest. While walking around Turmstrasse an idiot of a person exhaled a full load of her crack right into my fucking face and I collapsed and had to spend the day at the ER after that. I'm still very shook and upset, but no harm done bodily, the doctors said. I sometimes hate Berlin, please stay safe.
The 40th edition of the Fantasy Filmfest opened spectacularly on September 2 in the big Auditorium 1 of Zoo Palast where all the fancy events take place (it was full to the brim!) and there couldn't have been a better present for me than to have the FFF start a day after my birthday!
As a small present all participants of the opening screening were gifted a DVD, Dogman by Luc Besson 😍, and after that I dived into a full week of films, films, and films. Enjoy my reviews of this wonderful past week's screenings.
Recent events at CSD Berlin once again reminded us that a stance against hostility against the queer community is more relevant than ever, and I'm glad that the Fantasy Filmfest not only chose Leviticus as their opener, but also featured a number of movies picking up the issue.
Leviticus is a very touching tale that showcases this hate in all of its various forms, especially social and religious, the horror being tangible and imminent. I like the concept of the one person you desire most being the biggest source of pain, the biggest danger for you, because it is kind of like that in life too. The actors were casted perfectly, I really felt and rooted for them.
I really enjoy this kind of films where a complete different world than the one I'm living in is shown and yet the underlying sorrow is the same. I guess we all are somehow struggling in life and to see how and with what other people deal with gives me a little alleviation.
The film starts in a Mi'kmaq reservation and takes us through time and space, yeah really, and explores a very individual, but also quite universal pain in the past of these people. I actually got a little emotional watching this because it reflects something that happened in my family too, so yeah, that was sad. But also over.
Histoires de la Nuit/The Birthday Party
For some reason I forgot to buy a ticket for this French movie but I was in luck because my colleague from work, Sabine, invited me as a birthday gift and pushed the movie back on my radar. And it was a great thing - it's always when I decide to see a movie spontaneously that I end up really liking it, I guess it has something to do with low to no expectations.
Two beautiful houses in a quiet rural area in France - in one of them lives artist Cristina and in the other a little family, Bergogne, Nora and their daughter Ida. The neighbors live a quite life and are a little community unit visiting each other, helping each other out, although there are reflections of moving somewhere else less isolated.
All of this changes with the visit of three men, and their idyllic life turns into a nightmarish home invasion. To make things worse, it's Nora's 40th birthday party, so there are guests - invited as well as uninvited ones.
This was a thrilling and very captivating ride that took the audience to unforeseen places, where each mistake from the past needs redemption.
Also, I will be a little shallow and say what everyone watching this movie was thinking: Monica Belluci is soooooo beautiful! I could keep looking at her forever.
The Restoration at Grayson Manor
A very flamboyant mother/son duo, gay heir and party boy Boyd Grayson and his dictatorial mother Jacqueline who is obsessed with the idea of having a grandchild, lead a sort of love-hate-hate (yes, double hate) relationship which consists of Grayson provoking her with endless affairs (with men) and her insisting he make a baby.
During a freak accident both Grayson's hands get severed and his boyfriend killed, so Jacqueline has to bring in a whole set of medical professionals and sponsor their research that will give Grayson his hands back. And do more.
The movie was really a hoot, it was very entertaining to watch, and through the on-stage interview of director Glenn McQuaid I learned that day that there is a horror subgenre called "the severed hand subgenre". Fascinating.
Also the screenplay was written by Clay McLeod Chapman, an author I very much enjoy reading, but I didn't feel brave enough to raise my hand and ask the director a question about how that was, because I felt too shy.
Nebâ Afutâ Dâku/Never After Dark
There were a couple of movies in this year's FFF that were genuinely scary for me and I think Never After Dark, the story of a traveling medium (what a neat job!) who helps ghosts find their way out of this world, was one of them.
In ghost stories, especially the ones from Japan, there's this one moment of dread when you realize that the ghost the psychic is trying to contact is not a nice entity, it means you actual harm and is not here for a puny revenge story. Sometimes those puny revenge stories can be good too, but it takes a rather special story that merges timelines and dimensions all the while scaring the shit out of you. This one is that special, I liked it.
A genuinely unsettling and clever ghost story that I really want to rewatch, hopefully the Creepy Crypt will pick it up, because it was a complex story and I still have some questions in my head.
Just imagine that at 4 o'clock in the morning your best friend knocks on your door to tell you that life is just a simulation and nothing is real. That's what happens to Bruno who takes the idea very seriously. Bruno and his friend Jackie then go out after his wife instantaneously gives birth to a daughter (without umbilical cord) and start collecting proof, glitches or bugs that will approve their theory - the whole ordeal is comedic.
While discussing their list of glitches sitting at a café, a guy eavesdrops their conversation and joins in, apparently he has been trying to prove that everything is a simulation for years. The discussion will only further solidify our guys' opinion. But what are they going to do about it?
It is no wonder the FFF is a fan of Quentin Dupieux's work. This pastiche of the "world as a simulation" subgenre will unfortunately not make it really big in any country (Maybe France? I hope I'm wrong.) but with its sly humor and yet weighty content it will gather a cult following. A delight to watch this refreshing film which is barely an hour long.
A very Japanese film in which a convenience store becomes the stage for a capitalistic nightmare driving people apathetic and mad.
It's the little details that make this movie: the opening, rising and then failing of a quiche restaurant on the other side of the road, a worker who takes home expired products being fired for it, a weirdly costumed figure claiming her individuality while shopping, a hairdresser training class, a store management training class, the frustration of a cook at a restaurant - there are many little scenes, little details related to or outside of the main plot set in the convenience store that make this movie what it is.
Arthur from FFF mentioned in his speech before the screening that it is a Berlinale film and that they rarely get the chance to show Berlinale films (remember, I was very upset that I missed this film among others) and it's annoying because I'd love to rewatch this movie to catch some more details I might have missed. I'll need to purchase the DVD or Blu-ray, I guess.
French body horror is on its way to snowball into a complete genre of its own and although I'm all here for it, I was a little underwhelmed by Marion LeCoroller's Sanguine.
The film follows the story of Margot, an intern at the country's most prestigious Emergency Room, the competitive and high tension atmosphere, and how that atmosphere puts the young doctors under pressure. And they try to cope with it.
More and more young people are being brought in with weird symptoms, like insomnia for weeks, bleeding out of the pores, heart problems, excessive growth, and Margot starts seeing a pattern, and she also starts experiencing her own symptoms that will make her life literal hell.
I didn't stay for the post-screening interview with the director, but before the start of the film we were shown a little greeting from her, as is usual for the Fresh Blood movies that compete at the FFF, in which she mentions that she made this movie as a metaphor for the time she worked in the finance sector and the high-pressure environment there. I initially thought that this is a pandemic film, but I was wrong. My problem with it was that the metaphor was not very subtle and a little flat, and it's my own preference that I like movies like this to have a little more enigma, but just a little (because there was another film at this festival that was way too much open-ended and mysterious for me too. So there needs to be a balance). Sanguine is a visual feast, though, its visuals very distinct, the use of flashy and lively colors in contrast to the claustrophobic and dark backdrop was lovely, really.
Everyone reading Protean Depravity should know by now that this was THE movie I have been waiting for, mainly because I really really enjoyed watching director Damien McCarthy's previous film Oddity. And did it meet my expectations? Yes! Yes it did even surpass them, and for me, Hokum climbed the ladder even higher than I had expected.
This is basically the story of a lapsed horror writer getting locked up in a haunted (by witches) hotel after a string of mysterious events and him trying to find a way out.
I won't say a lot here, because the movie will get its own separate blog post where I'll explain the horror in it and its effect on me. It is one of the best movies I have watched this year and yes, it is scary af.
Get Shorty
Some years there's no shorts program at the FFF at all but the lack thereof is always tangible. It is always such a nice Sunday morning/afternoon activity to make your way through curated shorts and then vote for a favorite. And this year the selection was especially strong and fun, I'm happy to say. I personally was on the fence between a couple of short films while voting, and here they are.
Casimir Nozkowski, USA 2025
A New York woman gives a little help to a ghost who came back from the limbo in order to help him settle old scores and move on into the afterlife.
Their little night out turns into a kind of tourist attraction for the time traveler and has the added bonus that a douche bag gets a fright, which everybody is happy about.
jealous people are ugly people
Theo James Krekis, UK 2025
A couple and their friend sharing a house escalate things when their envy for each other's accomplishments gets out of control. Made everyone laugh.
This funny short reminds heavily of What We Do in the Shadows in that it's about a film student documenting the life of a 237 year old Jiangshi, a sort of vampire (but not really?). I was a little confused as to the nature of the vampire, it didn't feed at all, was able to go out into the sun and could be filmed, but didn't appear on photographs, but maybe I'm overthinking. Overall loved this, in fact, I voted for this one to win.
Another mocumentary (these seem to work really well in the short form, am I wrong?) about one of the last people on Earth, an old grumpy grandma, after the robot invasion. And she's quite the rebel.
Ahmet, a dear friend of mine that I met at the University of Wuppertal some twenty years ago, recently died of a brain tumor. He once told me a story about his home city Edirne, a small city at the Turkish/Greek/Bulgarian border intersection. Edirne was, along with the Turkish Black Sea coast, the region that was presumably most affected by the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Back then, Ahmet had just started school and at the tender age of five or six, in the aftermath of the catastrophe, his teacher entered the classroom and first thing in the morning announced to these little people that they would all die from cancer (Turkish teachers can be very rough, I'm still flabbergasted how we mentally, physically and emotionally survived school) and I often think about that, especially after his untimely death. Because we will never know the real reason people get cancer or tumors or other sicknesses, we count it as life and move on.
In the widest sense, Mutter explores this theme. It is set in Zonguldak on the Black Sea and follows the story of Gül who gives birth to a deformed child and sacrifices a lot to keep this little person alive and to keep it a secret. Living as a woman and making it on your own in a small town in Turkey as well as the economic crisis that devours people more and more are both issues that dominate the tone of the movie and the often absent monster baby takes the figurative back seat.
My feelings are mixed, apparently special effects in the shape of red painted glue being peeled off your body is all the hoot in terms of body horror this year and I still don't know why the title is in German.
I didn't love this movie but I quite like lead actress Hazar Ergüçlü generally and it wasn't the worst one I saw during this festival. That honor goes to another film.
I guess from this point on my ratings go downhill (except for Ghost in the Cell) and it's weird that I have the feeling that the FFF put all the good films to the beginning and just sort of added the rest.
I don't want to say Nervous is bad per se, it follows a woman who starts not to be able to hear men's voices after moving to Korea with her husband/boyfriend, and that concept is interesting in itself.
I will be brutally honest, though: Any film that shows elongated close-up scenes of an actress dancing in the style of a cheesy music video for minutes and in turn neglects to properly build up and handle the mystery at the heart of the story is a misfire. The director was on the stage before and after the movie for a Q and A and he in advance warned that all the clues are in the movie, you just have to pay attention. Well, paying attention didn't help, and, much like a joke, if you have to explain the punchline of your movie, it didn't really work.
The thing is that, in the age of social media they get so much attention that basically the whole country knows them. And watches their every move. And not all the attention is good attention, and then there are those genuinely sick. This game escalates into dimensions that it becomes impossible for them to protect their sanity, their integrity and even their relationship.
Phew... What can I say? So basically nothing that happens in this movie is unforeseeable, nothing surprises really. The problematic is on the table, but Auru brings nothing new, nothing clever. To make up for the lack of storyline, it heavily relies on flashy visuals and gore, which is a shame, but definitely enough and satisfactory for some viewers.
On a side note I enjoyed listening to the language because I would recognize a word every now and then (I realized that the numbers and body parts are same in Turkish and Kazakh) and I thought the two lead actors were insanely beautiful, both of them. I stayed for the director's interview, but his answers to the interviewer's questions were rather enigmatic and I didn't get much from it.
Ghost in the Cell is the second movie that this year's stupid Berlinale botched, but Fantasy Filmfest made all good again, I'm so much grateful for that.
Indonesian horror is something else, really, all those curse, jin, ghost and black magic movies, with their very distinct visual style are really hard to watch alone because they're bone chilling. Take that style and place it into a prison where nobody can escape, but make it comedy, and voilà you have Ghost in the Cell.
There are a couple of chilling and brutal scenes here, but the general tone of the film is hilarious and promises a very, bloody fun time.
Alex' life is turned upside down when his new neighbor and work colleague Axel turns out to be his doppelgänger, but a better one. He has more hair, he is athletic and doesn't smoke, he has a hot wife with whom he does all those fun things while Alex is just plain miserable and makes life miserable for everyone around him. But is the grass really greener on the other side of the fence?
You think you know what this movie is about but you don't, hehe. The ending is quite unexpected and shocking, but the fact that the trailer already shows the best parts of the film, such a shame...
My last FFF film was also the worst one, not going to lie. Having read a lot of extreme horror books that showcase exactly what this movie is about, I think this was really not that good and kind of pointless if it's not your kind of humor. When initial tension at the kidnapping of a woman and her daughter by a guy dressed as an older woman passes, the son she is supposed to have sex with is revealed and a couple of grossout elements introduced, the story gets quickly annoying. Too bad really, I thought it started funny but got silly very quickly and doesn't really hold up.
Well, these couple of bad apples didn't spoil the bunch and I'm happy in general with the films I was able to see at this year's FFF, which were 16 new movies, two classics (Don't Look Now and The Chaser) and one short film screening. After purchasing the initial amount of tickets I wanted to have, I kind of forgot about buying new tickets, so there were a couple of screenings that were sold out when I remembered that I want to see that particular film (like Buddy and the closing film Hope), but I hope that I'll be able to see those at the Creepy Crypt or elsewhere.
On the last day of the festival there was an uncanny moment when we finished watching The Better Me, and I wanted to get out the glass doors to go eat something and spend some time at the Thalia Café before my next screening, when I saw that they weren't letting anyone out, and in front of the glass doors soldiers with weapons and even a couple of snipers were preventing people from going out of the buildings due to some bigshot Middle Eastern politician visiting and wanting to leave his hotel right in that moment. It was uncanny because the street was empty except the soldiers with weapons and standing at the glass doors, looking outside, it felt like Stephen King's The Mist when a group of people gets stuck in a supermarket. Everyone standing there and looking out in fear. We waited there for about half an hour not knowing how long it will take but ultimately it ended. The queue for the next movie was all the longer when they finally let people into the street and inside the cinema.
Having reached the end of this year's FFF, I again feel a little broken and wonder if I'm OK with my life and the world, because it felt so good to just pretend to be in different worlds and lives for a whole week. I'm struggling at the idea of not going to the movies tomorrow and having to face my own life all 24 hours. I'm being dramatic, though, I'm just feeling a little estranged from life and will get over it. In any case, there's still the Creepy Crypt who seems to aim at a very Halloween-y autumn time, Obscura, whose full program you can find here now, the Joe Hill reading (I somewhat hope that Stephen King will be secretly disguised and sitting in the audience to see his son), and Halloween night.
Stay happy and safe until then!
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