ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Many of us human beings have felt at times like ripping out our own hearts, but in the fantastical world of director Kim Albright’s Canadian genre-blender With Love and a Major Organ (Canada, 2023), it is not only literally possible, but others can make off with them, too. 

Anabel (Anna Maguire) is a sensitive, artistic sort who seems to feel things much more than most of those around her. Friends and other acquaintances are obsessed by such things as online apps that require fewer feelings and less thinking. 

After having her romantic feelings toward George (Hamza Haq), a man she recently randomly met in a park, rebuffed, and becoming disenchanted with her friends and others, Anabel tears out her own heart and becomes a less feeling person. Meanwhile, George replaces his own heart with hers, and the world opens up to him in ways that he never felt before. 

Blending surreality, science fiction, and other genre-film elements with drama and occasional bittersweet humor, With Love and a Major Organ —written by Julia Lederer and based on her own play — aims for the heartstrings and plucks them quite splendidly. Though based on a play, Albright opens the story to a big, wide, colorful world, making it a true movie-watching experience rather than simply a filmed play. Anabel and George are wonderfully complicated characters, and they are brought to vivid cinematic life by Maguire and Haq, who lead a talented cast of supporting actors. 

Joe watched this film as part of The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN). You can learn more at their official site.