10 must-see movies at Fantasia

Starting Thursday, fans of horror, fantasy, manga, cinematic oddities and unclassifiable films will meet in downtown Montreal for the 27^e edition of the Fantasia festival. Where to start? What to see? The newspaper offers you its 10 programming favourites.

The red rooms

After winning acclaim in the Czech Republic at its world premiere, the film The red rooms finally returns to the fold. The filmmaker Pascal Plante will also be on site during the opening night of the festival to present his most recent project, a thriller in which two young women become obsessed with the work of a serial killer in the hypermediatized trial.

• Thursday, July 20 at Concordia University’s Hall Theater

Richelieu

For his very first feature film, filmmaker Pier-Philippe Chevigny transports us to the world of temporary agricultural workers. Marc-André Grondin plays the boss of a food processing plant, whose excessive directives create friction with a young translator in his employ. We are promised with Richelieu an anxiety-provoking drama lifting the veil on the lackluster reality of these foreign workers… In short, a subject in tune with the times.

• Friday, August 4 at the Cinéma du Musée

We Are Zombies

After creating a sensation there with his Turbo Kid In 2015, the Quebec collective Roadkill Superstars (RKSS) will close the Fantasia festival with the world premiere of its third feature film: We Are Zombies. This film adaptation of the comic The zombies that ate the world, by Jerry Frissen, invites moviegoers to dive into a world where humans try to cohabit with a horde of harmless zombies. The result is likely to be bathed in equal parts black humor and hemoglobin.

• Wednesday, August 9 at Concordia University’s Hall Theater

Sympathy for the Devil

Definitely, Nicolas Cage is resigned to making his mark in genre cinema. The one we saw recently in the very successful Renfield, mandy And At hell’s pace slips into the skin of a mysterious passenger who will show all the colors to the man forced to transport him against his will. The American actor may have canceled his presence at the festival due to the strike of actors in Hollywood, the screening will indeed take place.

• Saturday, July 22 at Concordia University’s Hall Theater

talk to me

His screenings at international festivals have created a huge buzz around talk to me, the directorial debut of brothers Danny and Michael Philippou. Qualified many times as the most terrifying film of the year, it features a group of friends capable of conjuring up spirits by means of an embalmed hand. And, of course, nothing will go as planned. Its premise and accompanying echoes put it at the top of our must-have list.

• Sunday, July 23 at the Hall Theater of Concordia University

tiger stripes

We eagerly await the North American premiere of tiger stripes, a film that won the Critics’ Week Grand Prize at Cannes this year. Malaysian director Amanda Nell Eu approaches coming of age with a feminist approach… and a healthy dose of body horror. The first images suggest a feature film in the same line as the now classic – even cult – Severe And Ginger Snaps.

• Monday, July 24 at Concordia University’s Hall Theater

Stay Online

This Ukrainian feature film filmed in the midst of the Russian invasion risks being particularly poignant and relevant. In keeping with the same spirit as Searching And missing by its use of computer screens to decline its intrigue, Stay Online follows us with Katya, a resident of Kyiv who will try by all means to help a young boy find his missing parents.

• Saturday July 22 and Monday July 24 at Salle JA in Sève

Eight Eyes

A few days before its world premiere, a great mystery still surrounds Eight Eyes; no trailer has yet been unveiled for this film flanked by epithets like “shocking”, “morbid” and “visually unimaginable”. “Your eyes may well liquefy in their sockets,” even promises the Fantasia website. Will it be as subversive as the highly twisted A Serbian Film, a work that rocked the festival in the summer of 2010? The answer in a few days…

• Friday August 4 and Sunday August 6 at Salle JA De Sève

The Sacrifice Game

Mena Massoud, Gus Kenworthy, Olivia Scott Welch and Madison Baines co-star in The Sacrifice Game, a horror film shot entirely in Montreal last year. Bringing us back to the early 1970s, this second feature film by Jenn Wexler features two students whose Christmas holidays are disrupted by a gang of violent intruders who arrive on their deserted campus. We already smell a divine perfume of BlackChristmas (the original, of course) perfume this projection.

• Friday, July 28 at Concordia University’s Hall Theater

Suitable Flesh

Horror legend Barbara Crampton (At the gates of the beyond, Re-Animator) stars in this feature film, where a psychiatrist becomes obsessed with one of her young patients. With a team assembled to pay tribute to the late Stuart Gordon, Suitable Flesh uses the codes of film noir and thriller to tell its plot full of black humor and sprinkled with a good dose of hemoglobin. That promises!

• Saturday, August 5 at Concordia University’s Hall Theater

The Fantasia festival runs until August 9. For the full schedule: fantasiafestival.com