Fantasia is the best film festival in the world. Every year, the weird, the wild, and the wondrous grace Fantasia screenings, and from big to small films, the craziest stories are allowed to be told with full abandon. I’ve been covering Fantasia with Father Son Holy Gore for the past 7 years in a row. Each time the festival rolls around, it’s one of my summer’s most exciting, gruesome, strange highlights.
Below are a whole bunch of my most anticipated films at Fantasia 2026, all of which I endeavour to cover. If you’re in Montreal and can get tickets, get out to see these and so many others! If you’re not able to attend the fest, make sure to keep your eye on Father Son Holy Gore for reviews of soon-to-be-released films that will certainly get picked up for distribution quickly after they screen, and reviews of short films that will undoubtedly either a) be made into feature-length films sooner than later, or b) help the filmmakers get enough notice to find funding for their hopeful features.
Time to dig in.
Just remember: at Father Son Holy Gore, and certainly at Fantasia, we like it raw and wriggling!
Features
Corpus
Directed by Corrin Evans
Screenplay by Evans & Lily Cowles
Set during Summer of 1998, Corpus follows nightlife photographer and drug dealer Sayo (Jeff Wahlberg), after he’s invited to a party by a longtime crush and rising film star Vince Marlowe (Brodie Townsend). But the party’s not what Sayo expected. He meets three mysterious women named Billie (Lily Cowles), Wren (Nuha Jes Izman), and Cata (Ching Valdes-Aran), who take him on a seduction and terror-filled ride.
Corpus sounds like it’ll haul us back into the late ’90s and immerse us in the era while also pulling us down plenty of dark city corridors along the way on a journey of queerness, sex, and self-destruction.
Ferine
Directed & Written by Andrea Corsini
In Andrea Corsini’s Ferine, an elite art collector (Carolyn Bracken) finds that her well-curated life falls apart after she experiences a brutal loss. She begins to realise something feral grows within her. This soon puts her on a collision course with a mysterious trafficker dealing in exotic predators.
Ferine feels like it’ll take a big bite of our collective jugular and refuse to let go.
Motherwitch
Directed by Minos Papas
Screenplay by Papas, Evripidis Dikaios, & Nikolas Kouroumtzis
Motherwitch is set in Cyprus during 1882, when a painter called Eleni (Margarita Zachariou) seeks to resurrect her lost children; however, she inadvertently summons the kallikantzaros, a malevolent creature out of modern Greek folklore that dwells underground but comes to the surface during the twelve days of Christmas in order to terrorise people.
Papas’s film mixes Gothic and fantasy to tell a story about grief, parenthood, and art’s power. It’s also a gothic horror that challenges the status quo, as Eleni must not only contend with a horde of kallikantzaros, she must also confront authoritarian men in her village, from a priest, to a violent father, to a sleazy lieutenant. Brace yourselves for Motherwitch.
No Rest for the Wicked
Directed by Kasper Kalle
Screenplay by Rasmus Birch
A young fisherman (Egor Venned) takes centre stage in No Rest for the Wicked, as well as his secret relationship with a whaler (Pilou Asbæk) stranded on his island. The fisherman’s torn between his secretive relationship and the heteronormative forces of family and religion against him.
No Rest for the Wicked is poised to deliver gothic horror concentrated on one of the genre’s most enduring figures, alongside a big dose of folklore. Some of the best gothic horror has always been that which deals in romances, especially troubled ones. No Rest for the Wicked seems to be a story about love against all odds told with a dark, grim atmosphere befitting of the Gothic.
Nightborn
Directed by Hanna Bergholm
Screenplay by Bergholm & Ilja Rautsi
After Hatching, Hanna Bergholm returns with Nightborn, a tale of two new parents, Saga (Seidi Haarla) and Jon (Rupert Grint), living in a Finnish forest as their lives descend into a nightmarish world of fairy tales and legends. Saga quickly believes something’s not quite right with their newborn son, though nobody seems to trust her judgement.
Is Nightborn about to be another terrifying film about un enfant terrible? Horror loves nothing more than terrifying, monstrous children, as well as the horrors they inflict upon their parents. I say bring it on, but, in reality, I don’t need any more convincing to not have my own children.
Sour Minnows
Directed & Written by Harrison Atkins
Harrison Atkins’s Sour Minnows centres on Ricky (David Brown) and his roommate Tepper (Chase Williamson) when they witness six men sensually licking the pavement on an empty L.A. street. From there, reality bends, and Ricky’s being pursued by The Yellow Thing, an entity that wears peoples’ skin.
Some of the best films I’ve witnessed at Fantasia, as well as other genre festivals, have been those that move towards the surreal. Sour Minnows feels like it goes straight off the deep end, in the best sense of the phrase. Atkins’s film may be the darkly funny, horrific experience we need(/deserve) in
the Year of Our Lord 2026.
The Glorious Dead
Directed & Written by Toby Poser & John Adams
They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky,
they’re altogether ooky, the Adams Family are back!
In The Glorious Dead, a trusted sheriff (Toby Poser) and her young deputy (Zelda Adams) try to save their little US town after strange events cause paranoia and fear to spread.
When the Adams Family come bearing a new film, you can rest assured there will be beautiful practical horror effects, a unique storytelling slant, and thoughtful performances. Fantasia just wouldn’t be the same without them and their impressive indie filmmaking. The horror genre itself is lucky to have them and their beautiful, terrifying brains.
Shorts
Altérer
Directed & Written by Sounjata Phojo
Edith, a woman in her sixties plagued by memories of her daughter, avoids looking around, terrified of catching a glimpse of the creature behind her hallucinations.
A simple yet horrifying premise that makes Altérer sound like a waking nightmare waiting to happen.
The Bleeding Truth
Directed & Written by Jérémy Guertin
The Bleeding Truth comes with a deceptively concise plot description: when a mysterious film is found in the DVD player of his room, a motel guest gives in to the curiosity of watching the unknown.
What can we expect? Who knows. Sometimes the simplest ideas result in the most horrifying results.
Bagman
Directed & Written by Connor & Vaughn Gaston
Connor and Vaughn Gaston’s Bagman follows Nat, who tracks animals via a wildlife cam. When a black garbage bag appears in the brush, she alerts her supervisor, who can investigate on-site. When she witnesses something disturbing and her supervisor disappears, she must decide whether to drive five hours to the scene or watch the horror unfold online.
Bagman strikes me as a story about the presence of screens in our lives and how the act of watching can lure us into dangerous territory, stuck between the rock and hard place of complacency/action.
La Bleue
Directed & Written by Thomas Robillard & Alex Trépanier
Thomas Robillard & Alex Trépanier’s La Bleue involves Samuel, a young sailor, as he’s unwillingly drawn into the hunt for a man-killing blue whale by Richard, a crazy old captain seeking revenge.
Clearly a riff on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, La Bleue‘s poster alone suggests a dark journey, though if it leans into its Melville influence, it’ll be full of horrors, more than a few laughs, albeit sombre ones, and at least a drop of the fantastical.
Breeder
Directed & Written by Sapphire Sandalo
Sapphire Sandalo’s Breeder tells the story of a woman under extreme family pressure to become a mother, and she risks losing her ability to choose when she’s visited by the Tikbalang, an awful creature from Philippine folklore.
Sandalo’s short will hopefully be yet another chilling addition to the canon of motherhood’s horrors, as well as the horrible pressures of heteronormativity (because, yes, heteronormativity affects everyone, even the straights!).
Bruised Sky
Directed by Gary Kent
Screenplay by Kent & Micheal Nolan
Bruised Sky takes place in early 1970s rural England and focuses on George and Tommy, two teen friends-of-a-friend who meet up on an Essex basketball court before one invites the other to accompany him to a dealer’s home to score some weed.
The plot description could easily be for a coming-of-age drama, yet Mitch Davis has described the film as gut-wrenching, upsetting, and even queasy. Doesn’t that make you want to see Bruised Sky and potentially be warped by its nasty powers? Apparently the film was inspired by one of Hannah Arendt’s famous quotes: “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” This one could be something brutally special.
Ceiling King
Directed & Written by Mats Udd
Ceiling King centres on a woman called Emma (Sanna Sundqvist) returning to her childhood home to deal with things after her father dies. She finds an old telephone answering machine and plays the tape inside. She hears her father’s voice from long ago, along with that of her childhood self. But she also hears something else…
Mats Udd’s short is all about grief and those childhood fears that wriggle their way out of our younger days and into our adult lives. Proper nightmare fuel in waiting.
Exhibit
Directed by Lars Bürmann
Screenplay by Hürcihan Gül
In Lars Bürmann’s Exhibit, Kim (Luzia Oppermann) leads a troubled life: she’s homeless, desperate, and crippled by painful lesions from an undiagnosable condition. A wealthy artist (Imme Beccard) takes her in, offering both trust and pills. And where else can Kim go?
Exhibit has been described as Lynchian, and it certainly sounds like an unflinching look into the darkness of the human condition.
The Fated Hour
Directed & Written by Peter Hengl
Peter Hengl’s The Fated Hour is set in Austria during 1810. Just before her wedding, a woman visits the grave of her younger sister. As the day approaches, she finds herself unable to share in her bridegroom’s joy. Over dinner, she recounts to him the strange story of her sister’s life and death, as well as the dark legacy left behind in her sister’s wake. Soon it’s clear the woman is not merely mourning her sister.
Hengl brings Fantasia a piece of Gothic full of melancholy and dark, likely terrible, things.
Fester
Directed & Written by Max Parr
Fester begins after a man’s girlfriend decides to end their flatulent-filled relationship and he begins to suspect she’d been unfaithful to him.
Max Parr’s short promises to be strange, gross, and a little stinky. Fester seems ready to address two aspects of intimate relationships that can cause indigestion between two people:
farting in front of your partner and infidelity.
Mancave
Directed by Fredrik S. Hana
Written by Hana & Jamie Turville
Repression and secrets are on display in Fredrik S. Hana’s Mancave. A simple, promising synopsis: Charlotte is pulled into a labyrinth of repressed fantasies and dark secrets when she discovers that her husband, Didrik, has a hidden room in the family’s garage. What is Didrik hiding in that room? What will it do to his and Charlotte’s marriage?
Mancave may be filled with horrible, unspeakable delights; one can only hope!
Fuck Face
Directed & Written by Dean Puckett
Dean Puckett, whose film The Severed Sun is one of the more underrated horrors of the 2020s so far, comes to Fantasia this year with the wonderfully titled Fuck Face, a short film about a single mother and her child who have a nightmarish experience when a politician knocks on their door.
In the age of Trump and Brexit, Puckett’s politically-minded horror will feel right at home in a Western world absolutely turned upside down by right-wing madness.
Sleep Through Summer
Directed & Written by Erin Mick
Sleep Through Summer is Erin Mick’s fever-dream vision of a world in which the violence of men is dealt with using an unusual form of therapy. The plot centres on Miss Dana (Mick), who’s tasked with rehabilitating Linus (Jordan Dawson). Her unique form of therapy involves gradually degrading Linus, even goading him, as several other young women are brought into the mix, too.
But rehabilitation is never easy, and always messy.
Mick’s Sleep Through Summer begs the question:
what will it take to fix broken, violent men, and at what/whose cost?
Father Son Holy Gore 