Austin’s best-known film festival may be SXSW, but Fantastic Fest might be its best. Created by the Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League, it offers the best in genre filmmaking: horror, sci-fi, fantasy, thrillers and so on. This year’s fest is a slightly muted affair since actors and writers are on strike, and you wouldn’t know it from the crowd, the sort that wear “Music by John Carpenter” baseball hats, or have tattoos of Michael Myers as a sloth. We are at Fantastic Fest, where we’re reviewing the gnarliest movies so they’re on your radar before anyone else’s.
Strange Darling
In the introduction to Strange Darling, Tim League calls JT Mollner, the film’s writer and director, the next Paul Thomas Anderson. It’s a loaded comparison, one that clearly makes Mollner uncomfortable, although his film has a confidence and idiosyncrasy of a true original. Parts of the film are abhorrent, the kind of stuff that makes you question the values of the person making it, another way of saying it makes a strong impression.
A lengthy title card suggests the film is based on a true story, a dramatization of a prolific serial killer in the western United States (that is probably bullshit, a motif that Mollner lifts from Fargo). And before we get to the crackerjack first scene, a car chase between a Ford Pinto and an ominous-looking pickup truck, the film explains the story is in six chapters. They are told out of sequence: it starts with chapter three, then jumps forward and backward.
The less you know about the film, the better. The twists are not just clever, they are outrageous and subversive, a consistent needling of the audiences that makes a joke out of our sympathies. Mostly it involves a lengthy chase between two people, a man (Kyle Gallner) and a woman (Willa Fitzgerald), who are never quite what they seem. They flirt, they fool around, they take drugs, only to become mortal enemies later. How that conflict resolves shows Mollner trusts his instincts, taking his time for a satisfying payoff.
Some folks who see Strange Darling are absolutely going to hate it. It has a mean-spiritedness to it that often comes at the audience’s expense, even when the cumulative experience plays fair and turns the serial killer genre on its head. Between that and the gorgeous 35mm photography by cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi – yes, really – this is a film that is gorgeous and provocative, no matter how you land on it.
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The Invisible Fight
The martial arts film The Invisible Fight might be ideal film to program at Fantastic Fest. It is a strange mashup of genre and influences, with a kitsch factor that helps smooth over its lack of conflict. There is probably no audience for this film beyond the typical festival goer, and even then it’s a stretch.
The film is an unabashed throwback for Hong Kong action films from the ‘70s and ‘80s, also known as “wuxia,” that are a literal high-wire act. The major difference is the setting: the film is set in Estonia during the height of Communism in the Soviet Union. Director Rainer Sarnet finds an unlikely hero with Rafael (Ursel Tilk), a former soldier who is enamored with martial arts and heavy metal (the Black Sabbath tune “The Wizard” is dropped throughout the film, an auditory symbol for the purity of a badass living). In his quest for inner peace, Rafael finds himself in a monastery, one where the monks practice martial arts. For this film, devotion to God and devotion to kung fu are one and the same.
Most martial arts films have a scenery-chewing antagonist, whereas The Invisible Fight is a hangout movie with the occasional fight scene. Nearly all the drama is internal, a struggle for Rafael overcoming his own laziness and hang-ups to become the ideal the other monks see in him. A romantic subplot with Rita (Ester Kuntu), who may or may not be a demon, never quite develops as much as our interest in the wacky, charismatic protagonist. By the end, Rafael does not have the answer you may guess, and yet the journey is more introspective and careful than you might expect from its genre trappings, to say nothing of its constant heavy metal needle drops.
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The Fantastic Golem Affairs
The first scene in The Fantastic Golem Affairs is so bizarre and silly that it is hard to believe it is also literal. Two friends are playing a game on a rooftop, only to have one of them plummet to his death, but he does not turn into a puddle of blood and bone. Instead, he breaks into a million pieces of ceramic. This comedy from Spain also has a sci-fi streak.
It imagines a world where a company can manufacture lifelong companions, known as golems, that provide companionship to their human, non-clay counterparts. Juan (Brays Efe) did not realize that his friend was a golem, so he mourns him as if he was human. This tragedy sends him down a weird rabbit hole of comic misunderstanding, forcing Juan beyond his preferred status as a vaguely depressed loser.
The science fiction and comedy from directors Juan González and Nando Martínez ably mixes observation with the absurd. Some of the best scenes are lengthy dialogue sequences where characters belittle each other, then embrace moments later. It’s almost like Pedro Almodóvar meeting Michel Gondry, especially with the former’s embrace of queer culture, with an absurdism that eludes them both. More than anything else, audiences will remember a violent physical gag that happens not once, but three times, a gleeful reminder that blood is the funniest bodily fluid.
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Eileen
Otessa Moshfegh might be the most exciting novelist working day, or at least the most sinister, and Eileen is the first major adaptation of her work. It preserves a lot of what made the source material special, departing in ways that are both cinematic and a little confusing, and yet its thriller trappings suggest Moshfegh still cares about the dark heart of her characters.
It is set in the early 1960s in an anonymous Massachusetts town, where Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) is so depressed she cannot even see it. She lives with her drunk father (Shea Whigham), and works as a secretary in a prison. She amuses herself with sexual fantasies she barely understands, at least until Rebecca (Anne Hathaway) – the glamorous new prison psychiatrist – breaks Eileen out of her terminal ennui. Hathaway is terrific as Rebecca, an educated, confident older woman with platinum blonde hair and a style that defies the mediocrity of where she loves. Eileen becomes obsessed with her instantly, and the charm to the film is how these two women develop some mutual need.
That need continues until its climax, a hard right turn that is set in a basement where director William Oldroyd abandons any sense of reason. It unfolds like a dark version of the Todd Haynes film of Carol, except instead of lovers Eileen and Rebecca are accomplices in a crime that neither are prepared for. Eileen narrates the novel, something the film avoids, which means the actors and production must do the heavy narrative lifting. They are up to the task: parts of the film are downright gripping, and while the final scenes are ambiguous in a way that is perhaps not intentional, at least Oldroyd preserves the book’s bleak core. It’s one hell of a thriller.
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Riddle of Fire
There is a tendency for darkness at Fantastic Fest. Almost all the attendees are devoted horror nuts, and there is a pride in what kind of extreme fare they can embrace, or tolerate. That is what makes Riddle of Fire such a refreshing surprise. It is a kind-hearted adventure for children, a riff on The Goonies that somehow never gets too cute or precious for its own good.
It starts almost like a fetch quest, a common type of mission in a video game. Along with brothers Hazel (Charlie Stover) and Jodie (Skyler Peters), their best friend Alice (Phoebe Farro) wants nothing more than to play video games. But they can’t until they fulfill a series of favors, which somehow lands them in the woods overnight with a gang of violent outlaws who have supernatural powers.
Writer and director Weston Razooli knows these three kids, none of whom are older than 12, are cute as buttons. But he does not dwell on their innate charm, putting them in dangerous situations and letting them speak like the swearing heroes you see in Stand by Me. Razooli is able to preserve the wistful nature of his film thanks to its look – it was all shot on 16mm film, giving it a timeless feel, albeit one generation removed – and by supplying his kids with conflict beyond their years. This film never condescends to its young characters, treating the purity of their quest with the seriousness they feel it deserves.
Riddle of Fire has the potential to be a total crowd pleaser, the kind of film that families can see, provided their kids are precocious enough, without anyone being too bored. It does not have a lot of major stars and few special effects, so it is unclear whether it will get the attention it deserves. With any luck, it becomes the kind of film that kids will watch on endless viewings, to the delight (and mild annoyance) of their tired parents.
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