Fantastic Fest 2018: Our 25 Most Anticipated Movies

This year's Fantastic Fest lineup might be the best yet. Picking only 25 most anticipated movies wasn't easy.
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Anyone who reads our little movie site knows that we love film festivals, and one of our favorites each year is Austin, TX’s own Fantastic Fest. It’s a week-long celebration of genre cinema with an eye for the ridiculous, the extreme, and the awesome. Five of us will be on the ground this year enjoying all the fest has to offer while a sixth samples its wares from afar, and together we’re hoping to see and cover as many of its 85 feature films as possible.

Our tastes vary as much as they overlap, and that’s extremely evident in the films we’ve each picked as being among our most anticipated. Keep reading for a look at the movies we’re most excited to see at this month’s fest.


Apostle

Outside of David Gordon Green’s much-anticipated Halloween sequel, Gareth Evans’s Apostle is probably the easiest sell of this year’s Fantastic Fest. A film about a turn-of-the-century cult, written and directed by the guy behind The Raid, and featuring one of our more idiosyncratic Hollywood leads? Dan Stevens has proven he can anchor action-packed and weird in The Guest and Legion. Watch it before it hits Netflix, and then probably watch it again. (Matthew)


Bloodline

Ever since 2011’s Goon, Sean William Scott has been picking more and more interesting projects that showcase his range in a way that no dessert-fornicating teen comedy franchise ever offered. In Henry Jacobson’s Bloodline, he plays a father who lets nothing come between himself and new family. As a new dad myself, I can relate to that kind of rage. I’m anticipating a very gritty Fathers Knows Best, but in an alternate Universe where Danny Thomas is Patrick Bateman. (Brian)


The Boat

The sea is vast and indifferent to your mundane plights. Forget whatever sharks or sea monsters lurk underneath, I’ve always found its seemingly endless depths rather horrifying. You’re never going to get me aboard a sailboat daring to skirt the ocean, but I’ll happily watch some unnamed fool fall into that predicament. Add an unnatural fog and an unknown enemy threatening to pull our hero to the bottom of its frozen hell, and I’m all in to live out my genuine fears in fictional form. Joe Azzopardi is as much a prisoner to his surroundings as his character, trapped in an isolated location and experiencing the reality of his doomed situation via practical effects instead of harmless CGI. Everyone loves to witness an actor put himself through hell for entertainment’s sake. (Brad)


Climax

The last time we saw a Gaspar Noé movie at Fantastic Fest, it came with a seizure warning. Enter the Void is still the best film I’ve seen that came with such a disclaimer. So when his new film Climax is described as “a neon-soaked dreamscape of sex, violence, drugs, bold graphics, and catchy techno,” I’m in for all of that. Even the techno. At least, I think so. (Neil)


Deadly Games (1989)

Anyone with a strong moral compass has to have the exact same thought when watching Home Alone: Kevin McCallister is a maniac and Christmas is a nightmare. One of my favorite cinematic perversions is the Christmas horror film, which I would argue includes Home Alone if you look at it from the Wet Bandits’ and/or an ER doctor’s perspective. Deadly Games appears to combine both my skewed (according to my therapist) view on a classic family film and my favorite horror sub-genre as a young boy must use his wits and acumen at setting traps to fend off an evil Santa Claus. Ho ho holy hell is this perfect for me! (Brian)


Dogman

Word out of TIFF was that this one packs a mean, little punch. Marcello is a meek dog groomer whose life is plunged into chaotic violence thanks to his friendship with a local thug. Gomorrah director Matteo Garrone returns with a real-life horror event that is guaranteed to drop its audience into a confrontation with their own morality. There will be no easy answers. (Brad)


Donnybrook

You’re going to make a lot of friends at Fantastic Fest if you come bearing films with Frank Grillo and Pat Healy, so naturally, Tim Sutton’s Donnybrook has been one of the standout titles on my calendar ever since it was announced. Plus, given the wealth disparity in this country, the film’s premise — poor people competing in a bare-knuckle fight for a life-changing sum of money — promises to have more teeth than your typical no-holds-barred action movie. (Matthew)


An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn

Have you seen The Greasy Strangler? Do you want more? If you answered “Yes” to one and “Yes” to two, keep reading. If you answered “No” to two… well, I’m sorry. Your life must be very sanitary and serious. An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn is director Jim Hosking’s return to the realm of viciously ugly absurdity. This time he’s dragged Aubrey Plaza, Jemaine Clement, and Craig Robinson along with him. I hear this film has a lot less grease than his previous entry, but I’m sure Hosking will not hold back on the fidgety and awkward sense of humor that fueled The Greasy Strangler. Look, it’s not for everyone, but if you’re willing to accept your pervert self, Hosking’s comedy strikes hard, and I can’t wait to see what these actors do with his material. (Brad)


FP2: Beats of Rage

No one, and I mean no one, knew what to make of The Trost Brothers’ 2011 opus The FP. It was a glimpse into the apocalypse; an apocalypse sponsored by Goodwill built inside a dilapidated arcade. The strange amalgam of 90s nostalgia and absurdly aggressive street lingo made for something impossibly entertaining that went on to become the flagship release of Drafthouse Films. Now, with Beats of Rage, Jason and Brandon Trost bring us the sequel for which we’ve been desperately waiting, even if we can’t adequately communicate why. (Brian)


Girls With Balls

Original stories are always ideal, but the familiar can be made entertaining, thrilling, and more than satisfying when executed well, and that’s what I’m hoping for here. We’ve seen girls in trouble at the hands of rednecks too many times to count, but the team dynamic and the girls’ bitchy attitudes promise a real punch as they face off against the lecherous pricks around them. If we’re lucky this will be a worthy double feature with the fantastic Assassination Nation heading soon to theaters as another tale of teenage girls tired of taking shit from men. (Rob)


The Guilty

Nothing excites me more than when a genre film takes a would-be limitation — a limited budget, say, or a singular location — and turns it into an unexpected strength. The Guilty is a film that takes place in a single location, but knowing that it was selected for this festival, that suggests first-time feature director Gustav Möller swung for the fences and connected. (Matthew)


Halloween

Setting aside my fandom for John Carpenter’s original film, and the forgiving eyes with which I have subsequently watched (most of) the sequels, David Gordon Green, from all trailer indications, has tapped into something that made Halloween great while also finding bold new context to justify H40. The tagline to the 1978 film, “the night he came home,” speaks to Carpenter’s feelings about the horrors of Vietnam hitting the suburbs. Jamie Lee Curtis, returning as Laurie Strode, is dealing with her own war, and not simply the battle to destroy a man who won’t take no for an answer. Laurie is struggling with PTSD as a trauma survivor, which should add a lot of weight to this slasher sequel. (Brian)


Hold the Dark

Jeremy Saulnier is quickly becoming one of Fantastic Fest’s favorite filmmakers. This year he brings a potentially gnarly man vs. nature vs. the nature of man film called Hold The Dark. And where 2015’s Green Room delivered a different side of Sir Patrick Stewart, this one promises something a little different from Westworld star Jeffrey Wright. He plays a writer who is hired to investigate the deaths of three children in the Alaskan wilderness. Was it wolves? Or something more sinister? (It’s probably going to be something far more violent and sinister.) (Neil)


Holiday

When’s the last time we had a good sun-drenched crime drama featuring beautiful people doing bad things that will inevitably lead to some horrible fate? Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers comes to mind. From Denmark, newcomer Isabella Eklöf makes her debut with Holiday, which seems to be a sort of Spring Breakers meets Nicolas Winding Refn’s Neon Demon. Plenty of beauty and brutality in equal measure. (Neil)


In Fabric

The hypnotic and atmospheric filmmaking of Peter Strickland is like little else you can experience on the big screen. You may have discovered his previous works Berberian Sound Studio and The Duke of Burgundy as an iTunes “Indie Discoveries!” pick or on your streaming service of choice. And they’re still great when you watch them at home. But being in the theater is something else entirely. The way Strickland wraps you up in a blanket of allure and holds you tight is both welcoming and, at times, unnerving. To see what he has planned this time around should be at the top of any Fantastic Fest attendee’s to-do list. (Neil)


Laika

As a sucker for space-race stories, I’ve always been fascinated by the tragic saga of Laïka, the first dog rocketed into the final frontier. Director Aurel Klimt was not interested in telling the horrific reality. Instead, using stop-motion animation, Laïka’s adventures continue beyond Earth’s orbit and catapult her far beyond the stars to glorious new lands of alien wonder. That’s the hero’s fantasy we all wished for this poor little pooch dognapped off the streets of Moscow and sealed into a fiery rocket-propelled coffin. (Brad)


May the Devil Take You

It’s hard to think of a short film more memorable than Timo Tjahjanto’s “Safe Haven” segment from V/H/S 2, so I’d probably be lined up for May the Devil Take You even if the synopsis didn’t suggest it was one of the most imaginative demonic films of the past decade. This film seems like a loud, bloody mess, and I can’t think of anything better at 11:50 PM. (Matthew)


The Night Comes for Us

The Raid’s Iko Uwais landed another role in a Hollywood production this year, but Mile 22 once again failed him and his immense fighting skills. It’s a guarantee that Timo Tjahjanto won’t make the same mistake. The film sets Uwais loose in a crime-ridden Jakarta as he uses every muscle and weapon at his disposal to protect a young girl, and I am stoked to see it all go down. (Rob)


Overlord

If you’re a sucker for World War II horror films, you’ve probably gotten an embarrassing amount of mileage out of titles like Frankenstein’s Army, Dead Snow, and The Keep. Not to knock any of those films, but creature design and good ideas can only get you so far; I’ve always wondered what would happen if a major studio made a hybrid horror/war film with an A-list cast. Lucky, lucky me. (Matthew)


Piercing

Nicolas Pesce directed The Eyes of My Mother, one of my favorite contemporary black & white horrors, and he’s in the process of shooting the new Grudge remake. Piercing looks to be nothing like either of those projects. That’s exciting on its own. Here, Pesce adapts a twisted thriller from Ryu Murakami (Audition) regarding a family man’s decision to order an escort for the sole purpose of murder. Christopher Abbott (It Comes At Night) is the husband and father looking to branch out into slaughter, and Mia Wasikowska (Stoker) is the potential victim. Piercing promises plenty of squirms amongst two very uncomfortable character mindsets. With comparisons to Brian De Palma, Agatha Christie, and Bret Easton Ellis, I’m sold. (Brad)


The Standoff at Sparrow Creek

This list is mostly made up of films we’re excited to see for the first time, but a few of them will be highly anticipated re-watches. I’ve seen and loved Piercing, The Guilty, another title below, and this incredibly tense feature debut from Henry Dunham. It’s essentially a single-location thriller set over one night as a small militia group struggles to identify who among them perpetrated a murderous assault on a policeman’s funeral. It’s a tight, nerve-wracking watch brought beautifully to life with sharp cinematography and a stellar cast of familiar and highly talented character actors including James Badge Dale, Patrick Fischler, Chris Mulkey, Gene Jones, and more. It’s a solid ride, and it packs an ending guaranteed to stir up conversations. (Rob)


Starfish

A young woman struggles with the death of her best friend while dealing with the horrific Lovecraftian end of the world. That’s how Starfish is described by Fantastic Fest programmer Noah Lee in the festival program. Stop right there, you’ve struck gold. (Neil)


Sudden Fury (1975)

Film festivals are the best place to discover new finds without marketing or other people’s thoughts clouding a first watch, and that gift isn’t reserved strictly to brand new movies. Genre label extraordinaire Vinegar Syndrome has already established themselves as brilliant rescuers of forgotten cinema, and in addition to their monthly Blu-ray releases they’re also bringing some of their finds to the fest’s big screen. This Canadian thriller from the 70s is one example. I’d never heard of it before its announcement here, but the brief synopsis sealed the deal. I’m in good hands, and I know I’m in for a twisted treat. (Rob)


Tumbbad

Places, like people, sometimes create expectations based on past efforts. So just as it’s understandable to expect beautiful brilliance from Park Chan-wook or laughable amateurishness from Uwe Boll, you’d be forgiven for expecting song and dance from an Indian film. In the case of that last instance, though, it really just means you need to watch more Indian movies. Tumbbad has no musical numbers, but it does deliver gorgeous cinematography, captivating production design, gory wet stuff, and delicious horror beats in the service of a story about greed’s long reach through generations. (Rob)


The Unthinkable

Something is happening in Sweden. What? I don’t know, and that’s the best way to enter any movie — particularly ones of the thriller variety. It’s a disaster film of some sort, and having recently watched and loved another Swedish disaster picture, Aniara, I’m ready for more grim and icy dread. (Rob)

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