Fantastic Fest Top Five: ‘The Invisible Guest’; ‘Raw’; ‘Colossal’ and More

fantastic-fest

Fantastic Fest ended another amazing year in Austin, Texas. The largest genre film festival in the world curated an exciting lineup of action, horror, thriller, and sci-fi, delighting audiences with bold new cinematic visions worthy of the festival’s name. While there were plenty of amazing and fun movies to be seen in this year’s lineup, a few stand out from the crowd. Here’s our top five picks from this year’s Fantastic Fest and how they stack up.

The Invisible Guest

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Written and directed by Oriol Paulo, this film (which was a last-minute replacement on the day one schedule) is so meticulously-crafted that every frame, every glance, every detail is important. When Adrian wakes up in a hotel room bleeding from his head with the body of his lover in the bathroom, he’s forced to retrace all the steps that leads to this moment. As the events are slowly goaded out of him by a high-profile lawyer, the truth starts to reveal itself little by little. Rather than saving one big twist for the end, The Invisible Guest leaves an elaborate trail of twist-filled breadcrumbs that keep the audience in check while you try to figure out what really happened as the story gets told and re-told.

Part film-noir, part genre-trash, The Invisible Guest draws from the best influences in cinematic suspense, creating a layered, nuanced, outright spectacular experience.

The Handmaiden

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When Park Chan-Wook is in the director’s chair, you know you’re in for a movie that defies all convention, somehow fusing moments of humor, terror, sensuality, and suspense, often in the same scene. On its surface, it’s the story of a peasant living in 1930s Korea who’s called upon to be the handmaiden for a wealthy young recluse who lives in isolation with her uncle. But, given the kind of stories that Chan-Wook likes to tell, every character is a deep well of secrets, and their motivations slowly come to surface as the story progresses.

Based on the novel by Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, the film is a slight departure from Chan-Wook’s spectacular Vengeance Trilogy, but never at the expense of his wholly original storytelling, which is deserving of a genre unto itself.

24X36: A Movie About Movie Posters

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Just before the screening started, director Kevin Burke came out with his cellphone in hand to get a photo of the nearly sold-out theater — which was one of a few. Starting back with the earliest days of screenprint, and going through until the modern-day resurgence, Burke has crafted both a history lesson and a love letter to the often-unappreciated craft of illustrated movie posters. Brimming with interviews from both artists and collectors, 24X36 is a crisp, focused, and at times heartbreaking look about these iconic images that have played such an influential part of all our lives.

Raw

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Out of all the films playing at Fantastic Fest this year, none quite had the kind of buzz Raw did. After making headlines at the Toronto International Film Festival a few weeks back, the film was in danger of becoming inseparable from the hype. Even during its introduction, it was made clear that “is this too gory” is not the kind of mindset you need when going into Raw.

Sure, there were a few scenes that’ll cause some viewers to avert their eyes, but at its heart it’s an incredibly touching, viscerally human coming of age story about family, expectations, and the unending anxiety over figuring out just where you fit in. A show-stopping, wholly original debut from writer/director Julia Ducournau.

Colossal

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This is the kind of movie where the less you know about it the better, but when I was watching this movie, around the 40 minute mark I started thinking “maybe the ‘monster’ in this movie is some kind of metaphor.” But no, it’s very much a monster movie, and with the delightfully irreverent Nacho Vigalondo at the helm, it manages to complete subvert the genre, making something that are heart-breaking, hysterical, and belligerently original. While it may seem like a little… much (and it probably will be for some audiences), Anne Hathaway’s stellar performance as Gloria manages to ground the film without relinquishing any of its over-the-top sensibility. It was also the most fun I had watching a movie all year, and I can’t wait to see it again.

For more from Fantastic Fest, click here.

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