OBEX (2025)

OBEX
Directed by Albert Birney
Written by Albert Birney, Pete Ohs
Starring Albert Birney, Callie Hernandez, Paisley Isaacs, Frank Mosley, Dorothy
Running time 1 hour and 30 minutes
Currently unrated by the MPA

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

One of my favorite films from my time covering the 2021 Fantasia International Film Festival was a weird little piece of brain candy that got stuck somewhere in my mind called Strawberry Mansion. A near-future dystopia film where an omniscient megacorpo has the ability to audit dreams in order to draw more taxes, Strawberry Mansion highlighted a distinct visual and tonal style, a strong sense of individuality, and a touching message about love, art, and the importance of living a life. It stayed with me--enough so that I picked up the physical release as soon as I could--and firmly put filmmakers Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley on the map for me.

OBEX comes once again from director Birney, going solo on this one, though he co-wrote it with Pete Ohs. Themes about the ephemeral nature of life, as well as a fondness for VHS tapes, a fantastical story, and a melancholic bittersweetness mark OBEX as coming from one of the minds behind Strawberry Mansion, but as with any auteur (or auteur in the making) what really delights me is where the films differ from each other. In contrast to the brightly-colored and thematically sweeping Strawberry Mansion, OBEX is shot in black and white and, despite a third act trip into a sword-and-sorcery fantasyland, feels very intimate.

Conor (Birney) lives a very solitary life in a small home in the year 1987. Aside from his beloved dog Sandy (played by Dorothy), and the occasional through-the-closed-door interactions with neighbor Mary (Callie Hernandez) who does his grocery shopping for him, Conor does not interact with anyone. He watches a three-high stack of era-appropriate TVs, and offers his services as an ASCII artist for $5 a pop via magazine ad: "I will draw you with my computer". It's while checking out his latest ad in Personal Computing magazine that he sees an ad for a computer game called OBEX. Via the U.S. mail, also conducted like a dead-drop, Conor exchanges $20 and a self-shot VHS audition tape for a personalized OBEX disk (or perhaps it's a diskette?).

Initially the game experience is a bit of a letdown: overly simplistic gameplay with confusing objectives and rules, though the main character sprite looks just like Conor and his trusty steed is named Sandy. But after becoming frustrated and throwing the diskette (I'm going with diskette, it's a nice, vintage word) in the trash, things start to become a bit hazy. Odd, potentially supernatural events begin unfolding in small ways at first, and largely without Conor seeming too concerned, but as time wears on, it seems like the demon IXAROTH, the game's antagonist, may be affecting the real world.

If this sounds a bit like Brainscan (1994, dir. John Flynn) that's because it is, though OBEX pays homage to the ur-text for movies where a demonic entity manipulates reality: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, dir. Wes Craven). In NoES, Freddy Krueger is a visceral, vengeful creature acting out a punishment on the children of the townspeople who murdered him, while in Brainscan, The Trickster is a demon who obfuscates reality in pursuit of a more immersive gaming experience. IXAROTH falls somewhere in between these two in really interesting thematic ways.

[Spoilers to follow for both A Nightmare on Elm Street and Brainscan] 

Despite numerous characters' disbelief that "this can't be happening" throughout the Nightmare franchise, it is happening. Freddy is a real threat, so much so that the franchise's seventh installment, Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994, dir. Wes Craven), moves up one level of the reality, bringing Freddy into "the real world" where previously, he had only been a character in films. Conversely, all of Brainscan's threats and dangers are ultimately revealed to be The Trickster living up to his name--though to be fair, there is a reality-breaking mid-credit stinger that's just... wonderfully, delightfully confusing.

As events unfold in OBEX, we are given snapshots into Conor's backstory and subconscious through a series of dreams where he is driving with his sick mother in the backseat, taunting and almost haunting him. It becomes clear that Conor's unstated agoraphobia--an anxiety disorder signified by feeling unsafe in certain, usually unfamiliar locations--may be a response to his grief. When IXAROTH invades his home, through Conor's stack of TVs, and kidnaps Sandy, he takes away Conor's only safe space and threatens his only real remaining connection to his life. It's on his ensuing quest to rescue Sandy that Conor will be forced to confront his past traumas, go well outside of his comfort zone, and even address some uncomfortable truths about his childhood that he seemingly wished to avoid thinking about.

The last aspect of OBEX that I wanted to address is the use of, in my eyes, heavily thematically-relevant cicada imagery. Conor's home is surrounded by them, with a lone bug even invading his space from time to time, and once he sets off on his grand quest, he encounters them as obstacles and enemies in service of Conor's demonic nemesis. We're familiar with butterflies as a metaphor for personal growth and rebirth and it's obvious why they are the more commonly-found imagery, but I think the frequent insert shots of cicadas molting included in OBEX are meant to represent the same thing. To Conor, they're undesirable because they represent the kind of difficult forward motion in his life that he is avoiding making. On top of that, their constant chittering acts as a metaphor for the constant noise of distraction modern life and technology allows us.

As a film, OBEX is at times unsettling, at times thrilling, but always fascinating and made with a deliberateness that's extremely confident and self-assured. You can enjoy it on multiple levels; the technical aspects of the filmmaking, the engrossing horror/adventure story, or the emotional core, and get quite a lot out of it, but if you leave with one takeaway, let it be this: Albert Birney is a filmmaker to watch.

Fantasia International Film Festival 2025 - Week 2

Doc’s Fantasia Fest Journal
Week 2: Features
The Fantasia International Film Festival runs until August 3rd

Get tickets HERE 

By “Doc” Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

The Fantasia International Film Festival is always an amazing opportunity to sample films from around the world that might otherwise not be exhibited so prominently. Though there are exceptions--for instance Ari Aster’s latest film had its Canadian premier here on July 16th, and genre legend Takashi Miike is involved in three films at this year’s fest--most of the films here don’t have a built-in audience and generally lack the marquee names of Hollywood productions, but what they lack in mainstream recognizability, they more than make up for with creativity and unique filmmaking choices.

Below, I’ve chosen four films to highlight that I hope you’ll keep an eye out for in the future.

Transcending Dimensions
Written and directed by Toshiaki Toyoda

A mysterious disappearance, a finger-chopping cult, a hired killer, and a conch shell that opens the path to higher planes of existence all collide under the stylish direction of Toshiaki Toyoda as the film Transcending Dimensions. In a story where nothing and no one is exactly what it seems, or at least not for the reasons you might think, you’re forced to be patient and allow it to reveal its secrets around you. Transcending Dimensions feels like a Kiyoshi Kurosawa mystery with a dash of David Lynch, aided by a legitimately fantastic soundtrack (no lie; this flick turned me on to the amazing band Sons of Kemet) and some truly dazzling visuals. I can’t say I fully understood all of it, but I loved going along for the ride.

Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist’s Journey (Kakukaku Shikajika)
Written by Date-san, Akiko Higashimura
Directed by Kazuaki Seki

Akiko Higashimura’s autobiographical manga series comes to the big screen as an emotionally engaging bit of melodrama that’s as much about the struggles of the creative process and issues of self-worth as it is about the Gruff Mentor cliché. Mei Nagano anchors the piece with a light but magnetic performance as Akiko and plays incredibly well off of the, at times, comedically hard-nosed painting instructor Hidaka, played by Yô Ôizumi who you’re as likely to know from his voice work as his live-action appearances. Somehow, despite never really throwing any huge curves my way, I was fully engrossed in this simple, sweet, personal story. Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist’s Journey is one of the more purely heartwarming things I’ve seen at Fantasia this year.

Stuntman
Written by Anastasia Tsang, Oliver Yip
Directed by Albert Leung, Herbert Leung

I quite liked this debut feature from the Leung Bros., while I acknowledge that it’s a little messy. In that way, the experience of watching Stuntman is a lot like watching the stunts of the era that it holds in such high esteem: maybe not quite perfect, or painless, but impactful and decidedly real-feeling. Stuntman follows a once-renowned director and stunt coordinator, “Heartless” Sam Lee (Wei Tung) as he takes one last job which calls into stark relief his lifetime of issues both on-set and in his personal life. It is at times unpleasant to watch, not for any graphic or triggering reasons but because you want to like Sam and watching him torpedo his good will in ways that feel almost deliberate is just heartbreaking, but ultimately a fitting love letter to the gonzo stunts of the 1980s and the performers who embodied the “Hong Kong spirit”. Imagine Sammo Hung making The Wrestler (2008, dir. Darren Aronofsky) about stunts and you’ll have a decent idea of the sense of humor and character pathos this flick delivers alongside the stuntwork.

Rewrite
Written by Makoto Ueda, based on the novel by Haruka Hôjô
Directed by Daigo Matsui

One of the films I caught during the 2023 Fantasia Fest was River, which introduced me to writer Makoto Ueda’s interest in the “tiny loop” concept--he collaborated with director Junta Yamaguchi on two films exploring the idea of small scale time loop adventures, the aforementioned River, and Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020)--leading to Rewrite being very high on my Want To Watch list. Ueda, working this time with a new director and adapting someone else’s story, is still in the playground he seems to enjoy so much. One day in the school library, high schooler Miyuki (Elaiza Ikeda) discovers that new transfer student Yasuhiko (Kei Adachi) is actually from 300 years in the future! Over the next 20 days, as she shows him the sights of her era and finds out that he was drawn there after reading a young adult romance novel set at the time, they begin to fall awkwardly, tenderly in love and Miyuki vows to write the novel that he will one day find in the future: The Perfect Loop. But ten years later, on the day she expects a timey-wimey visit from her younger self, young Miyuki never shows. Now, with her high school reunion looming ever closer, Miyuki must figure out exactly what really happened in that halcyon summer all those years ago. Ueda’s familiarity with the tropes of time travel allows Rewrite to play in that space while focusing on telling an effective emotional story, one about personal growth, about being happy with what you have, and learning to accept the past. 

MOTHER OF FLIES (2025)

Mother of Flies

Written and directed by John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser
Starring John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser
Running time 1 hour and 32 minutes
Currently unrated by the MPA

Mother of Flies comes to Shudder some time in 2026

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

The Adams Family (with one 'D') may not be the household name that The Addams Family (two 'D's) is, but they have a much better track record when it comes to making me excited for their next movie. Parents John Adams and Toby Poser, and daughter Zelda Adams currently have five feature films under their belt--though John & Toby have other credits pre-dating their current configuration--as well as writing, performing and recording music as the band H6LLB6ND6R, which also features daughter Lulu Adams. Think of them as a spooky Partridge Family.

To me, the Adams clan ARE the Fantasia International Film Festival. Starting in 2021 with Hellbender, every Fantasia I've covered has had an Adams Family film screening or premiering at it, with this year's Fantasia Fest being no exception. Hellbender hooked me, and hard. A lonely teen (Zelda) pushes the boundaries of her sheltered life and slowly comes to realize the magical necessity of being so divorced from the wider world, all made with the style and aesthetic of an acid trip in a haunted wood. While follow-up features Where the Devil Roams (2023) and Hell Hole (2024) each had elements I enjoyed, their latest, the eerie slow burn Mother of Flies feels like a return to form in the best way.

Dropping the audience into events close enough to the story's beginning to draw you in, but still with enough occultation to keep you guessing, the film follows Mickey (Zelda) and her dad Jake (John) on a semi-impromptu road trip to meet Solveig (Toby), a solitary naturalist and healer who lives in a kind of harmony with nature. Her home is a tree house that's more tree than house, she claims not to eat aside from "...the air as I speak...", and when we are given insight into her POV, she speaks in poetry as though her entire life is an incantation.

The exact details of how and why Mickey has come to Solveig is the film's first mystery, but not an overly hearty one. Just when your creeping suspicions are proved correct, the focal mystery switches to exactly what is actually happening out there in the woods. The film's grandest narrative magic trick however, is making you focus so much on this facet that you ignore other mysteries unfolding right in front of you. This is supported by excellent direction, editing (by John), creative and well-realized visual effects (Trey Lindsay is credited with digital, John & Toby with practical & makeup), and of course, a moody and atmospheric score from the family band.

Watching this little tribe of creatives continue to evolve as a unit is the greatest treat for me. Where Hellbender felt very adolescent, with its skewed examination of young adulthood, Mother of Flies is much more mature with themes of mortality, belief, and motherhood. Zelda Adams especially has grown as an actor, and really digs deep here offering one true standout, emotionally raw scene. John Adams and Toby Poser play to what I think of as their strengths: Jake is a slightly no-nonsense dad who means well, but is in over his head and Solveig is a mystical cipher. Toby manages to convey and imply so much with just looks and the occasional verse of narration. It's a really captivating performance.

I think the Adams Family's films work best for me when they're making spooky, ghost story pictures and Mother of Flies is certainly that. The gorgeous cinematography accentuates the tranquility of the woods, heightening the disquieting undercurrent that hums underneath everything, allowing for scares that bloom before you like a dark flower rather jump out of the underbrush like a frightened animal. Though there are some truly visceral moments, none of them ever feels gratuitous and the film ultimately has something to say about the power and importance of faith.

Making a movie of any scale is an impressive endeavor, and even though the Adams' like to keep their productions pretty minimal, the fact that they've managed to Daffy Duck four films in five years (as well as other projects besides) is an admirable testament to their creative spirit. I hope they keep making films together for as long as they all want to, and I hope each flick invites more people to sit around the campfire.

Fantasia International Film Festival 2025 - Week 1

Doc’s Fantasia Fest Journal
Week 1: Animation
The Fantasia International Film Festival runs until August 3rd
Get tickets HERE 

By “Doc” Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

The Fantasia International Film Festival’s 29th year is off to quite a start. I’ve seen some truly w-i-l-d stuff, some of which I’ll be talking about below, but what’s most impressive and important is the variety! I don’t know about y’all, but I’m a sucker for animation. Though it has admittedly started to shift, for a long time animation in America was viewed as “for kids”, and most of the stuff that broke free of that label did so by leaning heavily on shock tactics like sex and violence. I believe that animation is its own art form, capable of telling any kind of story, and for any type of audience, exactly the same as film.

I think there should absolutely be animated features for all tastes. To that end, I’ve selected four animated features from this year’s Fantasia, and arranged them from most- to least-accessible to all audiences.

I Am Frankelda (Soy Frankelda)
Written by Arturo Ambriz, Roy Ambriz
Directed by Arturo Ambriz, Roy Ambriz, Mireya Mendoza

A sprawling storybook epic with maybe a turn or two too many, I Am Frankelda is still a marvelous debut feature as well as an actual triumph of stop-motion animation and creativity. And I Am Frankelda is all about creativity, about the world of fiction where dreams and nightmares come from. When an aspiring young writer’s stories enable that world to cross over with ours, an epic battle between the various clans inhabiting the so-called Realm of Spooks ensues. The worldbuilding is a little unclear, but, like a half-remembered dream, the logic doesn’t matter as much as the feeling you’re left with. I think animation geared towards children should do more than just distract them. To that end, I Am Frankelda is an impetus to follow your passions, both in its messaging and its methods. There are so many creative tricks and gorgeous visuals to be found that it’s worth watching on that metric alone, but as a sweet, all-ages friendly film about chasing your inspirations, it’s impossible to beat.

ChaO
Directed by Yasuhiro Aoki

A riff on The Little Mermaid (the 19th century fairy tale more than the 1989 animated film, to be clear) with touches of environmentalism, futurism, and a specific flavor of character design and animation common to STUDIO 4°c productions, ChaO is at its core a very sweet love story. When an aspiring engineer and designer, Stephen (Oji Suzuka) falls overboard during a punishment by his boss, he awakens in the hospital having somehow won the heart of the Princess of the Ocean. The movie follows their, pardon the pun, fish-out-of-water romance, which teaches a lesson about how buried traumas of the past run the risk of ruining good things in your future. I love the animation aesthetic of this studio; aside from shape-shifting merpeople, there are humans of all shapes and sizes (Stephen’s boss is mostly an orb for instance), but even the “standard” humans are exaggerated and instantly identifiable. The only thing keeping this from being all-ages friendly is some very inoffensive but juvenile moments, like a character perpetually picking their nose, or someone with the nickname “boobie rocket missiles”. Nothing to clutch pearls about.

Death Does Not Exist (La mort n'existe pas)
Written and directed by Félix Dufour-Laperrière

When firebrand Helene (voiced by Zeneb Blanchet) freezes at the moment her group of ragtag revolutionaries storms the compound of a local wealthy family, she is forced to watch as everything falls apart. Fleeing into the wilderness to avoid security, she unknowingly sets off on a spiritual journey where she will confront her past, her future, and the horrible moment she is running away from. There are some shocking moments of violence, and graphic depictions of skinning and eating animals, which is balanced and almost heightened by comparison to the delicate, painterly-textured animation style that utilizes color in very unique ways. Emotionally moving, and with a tantalizing sense of the supernatural, Death Does Not Exist is a tremendous example of what the term “adult animation” can be.

Dog of God
Written by Lauris Abele, Raitis Abele, Ivo Briedis, Harijs Grundmanis
Directed by Lauris Abele, Raitis Abele 

To say that Dog of God has a lot going on would be an understatement, no matter how frequently or decisively you say it. First things first: the rotoscoped animation--a process which I’m particularly fond of, wherein filmed elements are animated directly over top of--constantly flirts with the uncanny valley by presenting characters and environments that feel realistic and tangible, but somehow off, and drenched in the color palette of a blacklight poster. Then there’s the subject matter: sex plays a major part in the narrative, with frequent appearances from butts, bare breasts, penises of many shapes and sizes, and The Devil’s Testicles (I don’t know why I capitalized that, it just felt polite). However, if you can look past what seems like shock tactics, there’s also a very mystically fascinating film constructed here. Though playing with a power struggle between the local pastor and a local baron, wherein barmaid Neze (voiced by Agate Krista) is either dangerous witch or a helpful naturalist healer, the depiction of the supernatural crosses into numerous houses of belief. Imagine Ken Russell’s The Devils set at the foot of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain, with the palette of Panos Cosmatos, and the whole thing is a segment in 1981’s Heavy Metal, and you’re getting close to the aura of Dog of God. Not for everyone, but extremely for some of us.

 

Fantasia International Film Festival 2025 - Preview

FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL returns for its 29th year

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

In the last 29 years, the Mission:Impossible franchise has released eight espionage action films of varying quality, while, despite the title, there are only 23 years between zombie flick 28 Years Later and its franchise originator. In 29 years you could experience almost an entire year on Saturn, which equals 29.4 Earth years, though interestingly the days on Saturn only last a little over ten and a half hours. If you had money to burn, you could build an elaborate and expensive 500,000 gallon pool in your backyard in Covington, Tennessee like this guy, or circumnavigate the globe in the exact path and manners of travel as in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days approximately 132 and a half times! Or you could be like the Fantasia International Film Festival and grow into a renowned exhibition of films from around the world!

Founded in 1996, the Fantasia International Film Festival has evolved from merely celebrating Asian genre cinema--a noble pursuit in itself, certainly--into an annual destination for genre films and filmmakers of all stripes from around the world. It has become a place to seek out highly anticipated films from the more independent-minded creators in the industry, and to see world premieres of films great and small! To still be around after 29 years is an amazing feat.

In my past experiences with the festival I’ve discovered some truly amazing films, and this year’s crop of films is as exciting as you could hope. There’s an animated zombie-style film from legend Takashi Miike with cats in place of the zombies (as in: if you get bitten by a cat, you turn into a cat) called Nyaight of the Living Cat; there’s Ari Aster’s cognitive dissonance COVID conflict film Eddington; there are pictures about stalkers, screenlife, stop-motion, and Smurfs! Truly, there’s something for probably everyone.

To that end, while the following films are the ones I am most excited for, that doesn’t make the others any less worthwhile. One of my favorite aspects of film festivals is watching something you were only medium-eager to see and having it be one of your favorite films of the year. It’s happened to me many times, and I’m always so grateful for it. With that in mind, let’s take a look at just some of what will be available at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Dog of God
Directed by Lauris Abele, Raitis Abele
Canadian Premiere
Acquire tickets HERE

Apparently based on “the most famous werewolf trial”, this rotoscope animated film capitalizes on the attention that Academy Award winning feature Flow has brought to animation from Latvia, but to very different stylistic ends. Brother directors Lauris and Raitis Abele have made something with fascinating and tantalizing visuals that tells a story about the struggle for power between a priest and a baron involving witchcraft, hedonistic frenzy, violent madness, and *checks notes* the Devil’s testicles! Aside from the incredibly unique animation, the sex and the violence, there’s something special about Dog of God that immediately made me think “I bet Ken Russell would have loved this”. As a diehard Ken Russell appreciator, I can’t wait to check it out.

Anything That Moves
Directed by Alex Phillips
World Premiere
Acquire tickets HERE

Having not even seen a trailer for this film yet, I can say it is high on my Want To Watch list. Director Alex Phillips’ previous film, 2022’s All Jacked Up and Full of Worms, caught me by surprise--I would never have imagined that a film about being able to get high by stuffing worms under your skin would be as sweet and as genuinely funny as it was--and made me very excited for whatever Phillips made next. Turns out it’s Anything That Moves, apparently a loving throwback to the earnestness of 1970s era pornography about a bike courier / sex worker and his various clients. Shot on Super 16mm to better emulate the feel of the films which inspired it, I’m curious to see what, no pun intended, comes from this.

ChaO
Directed by Yasuhiro Aoki
North American Premiere
Acquire tickets HERE

As an appreciator of animation, I’m a fan of Studio 4ºC who have been involved with numerous very singular projects--Tekkonkinkreet, MFKZ (a.k.a. Mutafukaz), several segments from The Animatrix, among many others--so their credit in this trailer immediately grabbed my attention. Beyond that, this take on a star-crossed love story uniting the differing worlds of mankind and fish-folk looks sweet, stirring, and genuinely hilarious. A reimagining of The Little Mermaid that seems focused on mankind learning to live more harmoniously with nature, ChaO really seems like my kind of flick. Fun fact: Another Studio 4ºC feature, All You Need is Kill has its North American Premiere at Fantasia as well!

Ya Boy Kongming! The Movie
Directed by Shuhei Shibue
North American Premiere
Acquire tickets HERE

Though I am unfamiliar with the manga this is adapted from, it sounds like something I’d enjoy reading: As he lay dying in battle in 234, military strategist Zhuge Kongming wished that his next life would be one of peace, and he is reincarnated in modern Tokyo where he is adopted by club kids and falls in love. The trailer mainly showcases Kongming’s day job as a DoorDash delivery courier, and his getting involved with a popstar, encouraging her to enter a contest to win a record contract. It might not be the most original plot, but the heightened nature of the characters, along with the lushness of the feature’s visuals, it all projects “FUN”! I’m looking forward to checking it out.

I am Frankelda
Directed by Arturo Ambriz, Roy Ambriz
North American Premier
Acquire tickets HERE

Another animated feature from another pair of brothers, Arturo and Roy Ambriz--proteges of Fantasia supporter, Oscar winner, and big ol’ monster-loving sweetie Guillermo del Toro--bring Mexico’s first stop-motion animated feature! When author Francisca Imelda attracts the attention of the owl-boy prince of the world her stories describe, he attempts to break the membrane between the worlds to be with her at the same time that his parents are actively endangering both worlds! Previously appearing in a series of Cartoon Network interstitial shorts, the characters and world of I am Frankelda appear as a carefully crafted love letter to fantasy and the arts. I am thoroughly ready to be enchanted.

What do you think? Do any of these titles jump out at you? I encourage you to visit Fantasia’s site for titles and updates, and see which other films pique your interest. I’m sure there will be at least a few. If you’re able to attend in person, Fantasia offers numerous live events including a book launch for MovieJawn contributor Payton McCarty-Simas’ new book That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism, and the American Witch Film, talks from industry professionals like producer Anne-Marie Gélinas, composer Danny Elfman, or Troma head Lloyd Kaufman, and even an opportunity to see the I am Frankelda puppets in person!

The festival has an especially robust Fantasia Retro lineup as well. This batch of restorations and 35mm repertory screenings is frequently only available in-person. This year’s titles include angelpunk anime Angel’s Egg (a collaboration between Ghost in the Shell director Mamoru Oshii & Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano), John Woo’s previously hard to find Bullet in the Head, J-Horror classic Noroi: The Curse, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the 1980s sleaze-revenge flick Night of the Juggler starring James Brolin, among many more!

Stay tuned to MovieJawn for further coverage of the Fantasia International Film Festival from myself and fellow MJ contributor Rachel Shatto, and as always: Long Live the Movies!