Fantastic Fest

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Fantastic Fest 2024 Movie Review: ‘The Rule of Jenny Pen’

Fantastic Fest 2024 kicked off with a bang yesterday. Many titles were at the festival, including The Rule of Jenny Pen, Never Let Go, and an acid trip of a concert with a weird fast-food-inspired band called Mac Sabbath. The festival also gave horror fans a debut for the latest sequel, Terrifier 3. We were able to catch all of these

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Humanity’s Survival and Prehistoric Horrors in ‘Out of Darkness’

One of the coolest compliments I ever heard the late, great Roger Ebert express about a movie was that, while you’re watching it, your mind keeps turning; the movie’s mysteries encourage you to explore your own imagination in regard to what you’re seeing on the screen. The new prehistoric horror film from Bleecker Street titled Out of Darkness is exactly the

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‘She is Conann’ Review: A Banksy-inspired Vision of Conan the Barbarian

She is Conann is not a Conan film. The characters are mostly here, including the addition of Red Sonja. But the acid dream of She is Conann has other ideas on its mind. In a weird, nightmarish feminine LGTBQ vision of the Barbarian. We see the iconic character through various stages of her life, bathing the brutal character’s journey in a tub of

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‘When Evil Lurks’ Review: A Whole Other Level of Fear

Horror, like any genre, is beholden to certain tropes. A well within the genre that’s been run into the ground is the possession sub-genre, to the point where trailers for a new Exorcist film are eliciting eye-rolls instead of the desired terror. Repetition of the same beats from possession films ad nauseam is to blame. To reinvigorate the possession movie, you

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Fantastic Fest 2023 Reviews: ‘What You Wish For’ and ‘Your Lucky Day’

Despite being different film subgenres, Your Lucky Day and What You Wish For are surprisingly similar. The two movies boast fantastic performers from Angus Cloud and Nick Stahl. Although Angus Cloud has passed away, his performance in the film is still a captivating force. Stahl, like Cloud, has also faced struggles, but his performance in What You Wish For may mark the beginning of a comeback for the underappreciated actor. Both

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Fantastic Fest 2023: ‘Dream Scenario’ Review

In the present era, popularity has taken a unique shape. Platforms like TikTok have enabled short and meaningless videos to thrust someone into unexpected stardom. Dream Scenario, starring Nicolas Cage, examines the contemporary idea of fame and how it can be a delicate issue in the public eye, even for something trivial. The movie cleverly utilizes satire to communicate its message,

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‘The Creator’ Review: A Perfect Audio-visual Experience With An Imperfect Story

Approaching a Fall/Winter movie season full of promising films, one has stuck out a surprising outlier: Gareth Edwards’ The Creator. The filmmaker burst onto the scene with his debut Monsters, displaying comfortability in playing with human perspective against large-scale threats. He then parlayed that into 2014’s excellent Godzilla, which then catapulted him into 2016’s divisive Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

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Fantastic Fest 2023: ‘The Toxic Avenger’ and ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’

It’s been an eventful weekend here at Fantastic Fest 2023, with lots of great films for fans of genre pieces. The festival started with a massive swing of a movie on the first night. Fans of the original Toxic Avenger are well aware of how nutso the original film is in execution. The remake is not much different and might be the

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Fantastic Fest 2023: 6 Films/TV Shows We Are Excited to See

The Cosmic Circus is happy to announce we will be in attendance at this year’s Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. Last year, Fantastic Fest brought a lot of surprise offerings that went on to be massive hits and even Oscar contenders. Smile opened the festivities in 2022 and became an enormous success. The Banshees of Inisherin made the rounds during Oscar

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