FANTASTIC FEST 2023: The Wait (2023)

Fantastic Fest 2023 was from September 21 to 28 and has so many movies that I can’t wait to see. You can learn more about this movie and when it is played here.

Eladio (Víctor Clavijo) watches over the hunting grounds of the estate of Don Francisco (Pedro Casablanc) and has divided them into ten hunting stands. When Don Carlos, Don Francisco’s assistant, asks him to add three more stands — which would place them too close to one another — for money, his wife Marcia (Ruth Díaz) finally convinces him to take the money.

That’s when things go wrong. So wrong that his son Floren (Moisés Ruiz) is accidentally hit with a bullet and soon dies. Marcia kills herself. And Eladio is the one who is punished, not the rich elites that he has worked for.

Directed and written by F. Javier Gutiérrez, this finds Eladio soon descending into paranoia and the center of an occult conspiracy which may all be in his head. It’s an interesting film that combines the western — it’s shot in Spain, home of many an Italian Western — and folk horror.