For the seventh year, Father Son Holy Gore will be remotely covering North America’s biggest, most exciting genre film festival, Fantasia!
There’s nothing like Fantasia because from big to small budget, the festival brings together an eclectic tapestry of feature and short films from all around the world like no other. Fantasia’s also become well known for helping films find distribution deals, as it provides such a large showcase for a variety of films at all ends of the genre spectrum. The cliché that there’s something for everybody is very true at Fantasia.
It’s not just the wide range of genre films that makes Fantasia special, it’s how the festival has always embraced the wild, the weird, the strange, and the transgressive; it’s part of the Fantasia identity. Fantasia’s a fearless space where so many incredibly powerful cinematic works are able to be shown to progressive, thoughtful audiences. This is the festival’s true power. While there are many great festivals throughout the year, Fantasia’s proven over the course of nearly 30 years they consistently support artists who want to push the envelope, whether in subject matter or form itself. Perhaps best of all, as mainstream Hollywood often tries to distance itself from work that’s genuinely transgressive and political, Fantasia embraces some of the most brave filmmaking being made each year with no signs of ever wanting to stop.
Below are just SOME of the films that Father Son Holy Gore hopes to cover during Fantasia’s 2025 run between July 16th and August 3rd.
Feature Films
Julie Pacino’s feature directorial debut I Live Here Now is a horror film starring Lucy Fry and Madeleine Brewer about a woman trapped in a remote hotel where prior trauma comes back to haunt her. Most people will insist on reminding you who Julie’s father is, yet she’s directed and produced some interesting shorts. I Live Here Now seems to have a surreal horror vibe, plus Brewer’s previous work in Cam and Braid, as well as Fry’s work in the Wolf Creek Series is all promising involvement.
Kurtis David Harder’s Influencer was a pleasant surprise and a horrifying spiral into contemporary identity, so it’s delightful to see that Influencers continues the unsettling saga of CW (Cassandra Naud). The first film cleverly satirised influencer culture while also exploring certain perils of identity. Harder included a few interesting little moments along the way that showed he was thinking on a higher level than just plot. Not many horror films over the past decade or so have been truly deserving of a sequel. Influencer and CW deserve another chapter. It’s intriguing to imagine the places CW might end up and the depths to which she may sink along her travels.
Hubert Davis is a well-known documentary filmmaker, now making a narrative feature debut with The Well, an eco-thriller about a world experiencing environmental collapse and the people left fighting over resources. The plot centres on a young woman and her family, whose secret fresh water supply is discovered after a wounded man stumbles into their home, and it puts them up against a dangerous cult. There’s always something interesting when documentary filmmakers step into fictional stories. They bring a sense of realism into what they do, no matter the genre. Davis clearly has things to say about the state of the world and where we’re headed. Looks grim and wonderful.
Mother of Flies is the latest dark treat from the Adams Family (John Adams, Toby Poser, & Zelda Adams): a story about a young woman after she receives a deadly diagnosis and decides to seek a dark magic cure from a witch in the woods. Every outing from the Adams Family is something unique since they pour every ounce of their creativity into every film they make. The family’s take on horror is full of indie sensibilities regarding how they actually film and create what the audience sees in each film. More importantly, the family’s perspective on horror is always fresh, challenging, and typically quite disturbing. After Hellbender‘s excellent addition to horror’s witchcraft canon, Mother of Flies promises more witchy goodness (or, should I say, badness), and perhaps something even darker.
Brock Bodell previously co-directed/co-wrote a haunting short film with Daniel R. Perry called Grief (available on YouTube via Alter), an under-15-minute powerhouse of a horror, so his solo feature film debut as director, Hellcat, feels incredibly promising. Hellcat involves a wounded woman waking up in the back of a moving camper tailer, as she’s told by a voice from a truck towing the trailer that they have to get to a doctor within an hour, or else…
Stressful much? A perfect setup for what sounds like a frantic piece of horror.
The Bearded Girl, directed and written by Jody Wilson, takes audiences into the realm of the circus sideshow, as Cleo (Anwen O’Driscoll) wrestles with her family heritage—being the 88th generation of bearded women—tradition, and all the potential wonderful things going on outside a circus tent in the big, wide world beyond. Wilson’s film isn’t a horror, it’s a genre film that uses the sideshow lifestyle to tell a coming-of-age tale, and carries with it a very Western Canadian vibe that will take audiences outside of Canada into the country’s heart.
The Australian film A Grand Mockery from Adam C. Briggs and Sam Dixon was shot on Super 8 film and pulls us along through the country’s darker side. It follows Josie (Sam Dixon), a troubled man dealing with mental illness, whose wanderings through Brisbane’s underbelly eventually lead him to the Sunshine Coast. He’s haunted by voices and addiction while his trek around parts of Australia feels more like being caught between Heaven and Hell. Apparently A Grand Mockery is a real underground work and an homage to the terrors of film. Put it right in our veins!
Father Son Holy Gore always tries to cover as many short films as possible during Fantasia.
So here are some intriguing shorts (listed with the sections they’ll run under) the site will hopefully feature coverage on during the festival.
Are You Afraid of Fantasia?
Claire Johnstone’s Crack is a short horror-thriller from Canada about an injured woman whose recovery gets dark when a troubling presence starts to haunt her. The film’s description on Fantasia’s site points to an unnerving experience that takes on the connections between the physical and psychological. The poster depicts a cyclist with eerie woods in the background and a large hand reaching down about to grab right onto the cyclist. Not something you’d likely want to be in the grip of, neither physically nor psychologically.
Kris Carr’s Grandma is Thirsty portrays a mysterious family living off the youth of children. Ripe for horror, and social commentary, too. The images of Carr’s film available online, such as the one above, are creepy. There are also two twin-like children whose image, in one hallway shot particularly, calls us back to The Shining.
Question is, how is the family living off the children’s youth? There’s obviously something monstrous going on. Is Grandma a cannibal? Is she a creature out of mythology? Is she just dying to cram a bit more sand back into the hourglass of time?
Whatever the plot and story, I’m in.
The descriptions online of Loud, from director Adam Azimov, evoke the potential influence of films such as Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up and Brian De Palma’s Blow Out: it follows a hopeful music producer after she records a violent event and becomes haunted by the sound. While Antonioni and De Palma’s films deal in crime mystery, Azimov’s short appears to head down a horror route. The tagline on Loud‘s poster reads: “If you can hear it, it‘s too late.” This is a common horror (and horror-science fiction) tagline that’s been used over the years, most often for creature features. It’s also a commonly-used phrase in the military referring to bombs. Maybe that means nothing. Nevertheless, Loud is intriguing, on all fronts.
All I know about Blair Bathory’s REM is that it was inspired by Briscoe Park, a fascinating photographer and videographer whose haunting conceptual photos/videos have been a favourite of many, including me, across social media for more than a few years now. Bathory is a multi-hyphenate—filmmaker, storyteller, actress, podcaster—whose wheelhouse is quite obviously horror, so between her mind and Park’s inspiration, REM is shaping up to be an interesting little short.
Born of Woman
According to most promotional material, Jasmine De Silva’s Beauty Sleep is “a retro futuristic short film about beauty, identity, and the dangerous pursuit of perfection.” The short focuses on a mortician who’s forced to give makeovers to living teens for their Sweet 16, until she has to be her most creative yet after accidentally killing a client.
Oh, it all sounds delightful in the most disturbed horror way! Always easy to love a horror when it takes on contemporary issues. There are certainly more than a few horror stories out there when it comes to the beauty industry. Slay us, Jasmine!
Iris Dukatt’s Long Pork takes place in an America post-overturning of Roe v. Wade, a country in which theocracy has fully taken over, and it follows a renowned butcher (Lena Headey) who meets the political predator responsible for her daughter’s death. You can see where this is headed, right? Sounds like a revenge thriller. And sounds like there’s a lot of rage in this one; a rightful rage. America’s fast becoming a fascist theocracy. We should continue welcoming work like Dukatt’s because anger and resistance often ends up creating unforgettable cinematic experiences. Sometimes, it even opens a few eyes, too.
Directed by Malu Janssen, Barlebas is part-musical period drama, part folk horror, set in the Dutch South in 1595, and stars singer Pitou Nicolaes as a woman accused of witchcraft. Janssen’s short is said to be a chilling exploration of how supposed witches were persecuted by the powerful. Even better, the short is “an ode to the voices of women,” which, worldwide right now, we could use more of in film.
One thing’s for sure, Barlebas is poised to be in a league of its own.
Celluloid Experiments
In Akil Rashad Anderson’s Mr. Black, an ageing Vietnam veteran returns home to discover his son has transformed into some kind of terrifying creature, but refuses to give up on his boy, except it’s all complicated by a strange crew of law enforcement officers who’d rather shoot first, ask questions later. Mr. Black sounds like a wild ride in only 9 minutes. Anderson’s previous short, Mr. Negro, was somewhat similar, depicting a man arriving home to find a creature in his house and his daughter missing. Mr. Black‘s focus on a Vietnam vet and a creature evokes shades of 1986’s Combat Shock, though it feels like something new might be lurking here, especially considering the angle of race.
So apparently Open Wide—directed by Sam Fox, written by Fox and Lara Repko—is equal parts jazz and horror. The short follows a good Catholic girl trying to expand her horizons when she meets a couple on a dating app, but once the three of them meet, their night goes from a potentially hot threesome to something much more nightmarish.
A bit of sex, a bit of music, and potentially some death? A proper Friday night!
Alyx Duncan’s The Sea Inside Her is a thriller about a grandmother and her young grandchild when their typical bedtime routine goes off the rails, as grandma’s fears being to take physical shape around her. Duncan is an artist, filmmaker, and choreographer who’s worked in live performance, installation, video-dance, music videos, documentaries, and more. Her background promises visual treats, and it’s easy to imagine a unique piece of work just from the poster image above.
Collective Delusions
Claire Barnett’s Freak is described as taking place on the birthday of a twenty-six-year-old woman called Lainey when her partner asks a question that tests the boundaries of their relationship: “What is your deepest, darkest fantasy?” The brief teaser available feels like it was taken straight from a VHS tape belonging to a real person. Not sure what genre this ultimately falls in, but it does already feel like a deeply intimate film. A few Letterboxd reviews are enough to whet the appetite here.
Winnie Cheung’s Last Call is about a street racer who deals with terrifying visions of a mysterious Serpent Woman following a brutal crash that begins to blur the lines between her waking life and darkest fantasies. The short’s been described as “an acid folk thriller” and “a pivotal work in modern feminist horror.” Can you say fever dream? Last Call certainly sounds like one. Cheung’s a storyteller with a penchant for putting fantasy, commercial aesthetic, and myth into her narratives, so this short feels like it could be a powerful experience.
Written/directed by the team of Ema Blin & Nathan Pupo-Greene, Fragments des Archives #76 – #77 is the digitised record of a supposedly divine corpus with no known equivalent in mythological, historical, or religious records. We love a horror that pretends to be real history because the narratives of history have often been written by people who want to frame those narratives in a certain light for very particular reasons, often not good.
Blin and Pupo-Greene’s short has a mystique about it that is downright delicious for those with a taste for pseudohistory. It’s almost guaranteed to be horrifying on some level, too.
Small Gauge Trauma
The Pearl Comb, directed and written by Ali Cook, takes place in 1893 when a Cornish fisherman’s wife becomes the first person to ever cure someone of tuberculosis, but after a doctor must go to investigate the claim, the wife’s unearthly powers come to light. The image above promises a bit of fantasy, though mermaids have more often in recent years played a big part in various horror stories. The Pearl Comb has the air of a fairy tale; perhaps one of the darker ones, like those that came before the toned-down children’s books we know so well today.
Marco Novoa’s Familiar involves a young man kicked out of his home because his parents cannot accept his homosexuality, and a woman mourning her motherhood, as their lives intersect and are irreparably altered. Yet this description vaguely covers the mad horrors that await you in Familiar, and to say anything else would only ruin the experience. (You can already watch the short here after it received the 2025 Vimeo Staff Pick Award at SXSW.)
Daniel Rands’s Tapeworm stars Antonia Campbell-Hughes as a woman who works in underground death matches and begins to seek a way out after she’s backed into a corner both financially and morally. Fantasia’s site describes the film as “unbelievably gripping, brutal and compassionate” and rooted in a great performance from Campbell-Hughes. Short films can be great and memorable for a million different reasons. One of the best ways is to place a character in a tight spot. Sounds like Rands has done that. An added touch to this thriller is locating the story in the world of underground death matches. Hard to imagine Tapeworm being anything other than intense.
Alex Thompson’s Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting is a fable set in the 1930s about mothers, their daughters, and the beastly things they hunt. The short has potential to be out of this world fantastic. The eponymous Selma and Em are played by Pollyanna McIntosh and Milly Shapiro. Lots of good stuff happening in this film: there’s the metaphorical potential in the word ‘beast,’ the setting of a 1930s Depression Era America, and a little alternate history, too. Thompson’s short has all kinds of potential to be a memorable slice of cinema. At the very least, don’t you want to see a griffin? Or maybe some other mythical creature(s)? If not, you need to reevaluate your cinematic priorities.
Even if a friend wasn’t in this short (actress Erin Mick!), it’d still be on the site’s radar because Findlay Ironside’s First Rites sounds like a little Gothic treat. There’s a yearning for something beyond death here, as Martha (Vanessa Gonzalez-Egan) searches for truth via the supernatural. And there’s at least one corpse! A tagline listed for the film on its IMDB page reads: “Would you want to come back?” Me, personally? Nah. But I am grimly interested in watching films about the people who do and those who, more often than not, regret facilitating their return. Maybe that’s what Ironside has in store. One way or another, First Rites sounds like it’ll be a proper work of the Gothic.
Father Son Holy Gore 