Ten Films I'm Most Excited to See at Fantasia Festival 2025

It's finally an anime adaptation of the cult manga, previously adapted for the screen by Doug Liman and starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. This adaptation looks more accurate to the source material, and the visuals are stunning. I enjoyed the Hollywood version, so let's hope lightning strikes twice on this fantastic property.

It's a mix of droll comedy, cosmic horror, and elaborate found footage insanity that creates a modern-day mythology around two restaurants battling it out somewhere in North America. It has huge Welcome to Night Vale vibes, and I have no idea how it will make any sense. Reportedly composed from hundreds of hours of real-world advertisements, I can't wait to be thoroughly baffled by every second of this madness.

A purely adults-only animated feature from Latvia that mixes Ralph Bakshi, Heavy Metal, and Ken Russell's The Devils to recreate the darkest of portraits of European history? I'm more than up for some nightmarish visuals that will burn their way into my soul. If nothing else, I doubt I'll see anything like this on the big screen this year.

I'm always on the lookout for films that make me feel stuff I don't usually experience, and Fucktoys certainly fits the bill. This super-trashy, maximalist satire mixes O Brother Where Art Thou with John Waters, and I couldn't be more excited. It most certainly won't be for everyone, but I for one can't wait to squirm in my seat as I giggle awkwardly for the entire runtime.

I love video games, but more than that, I love the culture around them and what they can mean to us in the grand scheme of things. I won't ever have the cognitive abilities to compete in a gaming tournament, so a hyperactive comedy like this, where the matches come to life through the imaginative renditions of how hey feel when we play them, is about as close as I'll ever get to experience these thrills.

I will watch anything with Don Lee in it, and so far the South Korean action titan hasn't disappointed. He's an incredible presence on screen, even when the material isn't as strong. This time though, it looks like the material lives up to his bigger-than-life image, with a setup that plays as a mix between Constantine, End of Days, and The Exorcist, complete with early Peter Jackson vibes in the splatter department. I'm sold.

With elements from the absurdist and horrific works of Junji Ito, New Group looks like an incredible trip into a nightmare that is both chillingly insane and all-too relatable at once. When students begin to form an ever-growing human pyramid at their school, a shy wallflower and a rebellious transfer student find themselves hunted by staff and other students for their refusal to conform. Kafka, body horror, and social criticism in one package? Sign me up!

I'm a huge fan of Takashi Miike, and I'm fascinated by how effortlessly he bounces between genres, often releasing multiple films annually. This year, he arrives to Fantasia Festival with three distinct titles, each with totally different styles. Sham is a Kafkaesque thriller, based on a true story of media witch hunts that happened in Japan, about a teacher falsely accused of physically assaulting his student. I can't wait to see how Miike, a maximalist director to the core, handles such an unnerving and inescapable nightmare.

I'm a fan of actor Jermaine Fowler, but an even bigger fan of writer/director Steve Pink, who previously wrote High Fidelity and Grosse Pointe Blank. That's why I have high expectations for this satiric look at fame, paranoia, and fitting in, where genre conventions are thrown out the window. It looks reminiscent of Sorry to Bother You, which Fowler also starred in, and if that's any indication of what to expect, we're in for a major treat.

This is a South Korean and Indonesian co-production about the immense class divide between the wealthy and everyone else, taking out the frustrations of the broken legal system to a natural extreme. After his wife is killed by a bored rich kid -- knowing they'll get away with the crime due to their wealth -- a devastated husband sets out to force a fair trial by any means necessary. Part legal thriller, part operatic revenge fantasy, The Verdict appears to be anything but boring or predictable. I'm fascinated to see if it will stick the landing from all the hard questions it poses.