ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict 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.

Humor is subjective, naturally, and writer/director Toby Jones’ AJ Goes to the Dog Park is going to hit like mad with some viewers while leaving others scratching their heads. It’s an absurdist romp that at times feels like Jones and company tried every idea they had to see what would stick, and at other times treads in well-considered philosophical musings.

AJ (AJ Thompson) revels in the simple, quiet life he has carved out for himself in Fargo, North Dakota — where the film was shot — including coasting in a lower position at his family business, enjoying meals with family and close friends, and delighting in time at the local dog park with his pets Diddy and Biff. Fargo’s mayor (Crystal Cossette Knight) suddenly turns the dog park into her dream of a blogging park, which begins a spiral of unfortunate events in AJ’s life that have him going through some serious — comically serious, for the most part, with some dramedy also at play — existential reconsideration of his life.

From meta comments about crying CG tears to a wild third act that I won’t spoil here, AJ Goes to the Dog Park never ceases trying to entertain. Behind the film is a huge heart, and while some jokes may land better with viewers boasting a knowledge of Fargo, there’s plenty of shared human whimsy and wonder to give it wider appeal.

To borrow a phrase from Gorilla Monsoon during his days as an announcer for the World Wrestling Federation, AJ Goes to the Dog Park is a comedy “where anything can happen, and probably will.” If this sounds like your kind of humor, AJ’s mild-to-wild odyssey is certainly worth joining him on.

AJ Goes to the Dog Park screens as part of Fantastic Fest, which runs September 19–26, 2024 in Austin, Texas. For more information, visit https://www.fantasticfest.com/.

Directed by Yusron Fuadi, this Indonesian horror-comedy is very Cabin In the Woods as it begins. Five archetypes — the jock, the nerd, the rich person, the pretty one and the popular kid — all head off to a cabin where they’re warned away but stay anyways. We’ve seen it all before — from 1978-1981 we saw it hundreds of times — but then we learn that these characters are the mercy of a screenwriter who is trying to figure it all out. The greatest horror that they face isn’t a slasher killer, but the fact that they’re unreality and the whims of an omniscient creator will only get them killed in the worst of ways.

Ani (Anggi Waluyo), Budi (Ibrahim Alhami), Iwan (Adhin Abdul Hakim), Amir (Winner Wijaya) and Wati (Anastasia Herzigova) have all gathered at an old family vacation cabin that has fallen into disrepair, as you’d expect from the genre, and there’s a murder the first night. From there, Amir has to guide them — Scream style — through the rules of horror. Yet when they change from idea to idea, that gets difficult.

As characters die and come back to life, cars appear and re-appear, and even the style of film changes, the only way for the protagonists to make it is if they realize they are a narrative and embrace their unreality. That’s about the least spoiler-free way I can describe what I just watched.

The filmmaker knows you’ve seen it all before, but you have never seen it like this. And don’t worry. If you’re a slasher fan and don’t really want to consider all this meta-textural mumbo jumbo, there are just enough bloody murders to keep you sated.

You don’t have to go to Texas for a singing and dancing chainsaw massacre.

According to the official site, Chainsaws Are Singing was shot guerilla style in 2013, then spent a decade in post-production. Estonian filmmakers Sander Maran and Karl-Joosep Ilve describe their film as “Monty Python meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets… Les Misérables?”

Somehow, it lives up to that description and so much more.

And it’s from Estonia.

Tom (Karl-Joosep Ilve) thought that this was the worst day ever. His girlfriend has left him, leading him to considering suicide. That’s when he falls instantly in love with Maria (Laura Niils) and gets a new best friend in Jaan (Jaano Puusepp). This all gets ruined — and the day will get much worse — when they run into Killer (Martin Ruus) and his deranged family.

Now, that could be any horror movie made since Tobe Hooper put a cast through hell in the middle of a hot Texas summer and then lost the movie to organized crime. This is a deeply personal musical that’s nearly two hours of jokes every few seconds and stuffed full of singalongs and a chainsaw solo.

Imagine if early Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi outside a cabin, Trey Parker and Matt Stone all formed a band, then went and saw Gwar and thought, “Can we add even more blood and body fluids to what we’ve created? And what if a bukkake cult in the woods worshipped a fridge?”

This reminds me of when parodies were of the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker style instead of the horrible post Scary Movie dreck that passes for jibes at fim today. If one joke fails, stick around. There will be five more in the next second or two. It’s all too much and I mean that in the best of ways, as even its director said that it’s “too violent…too naughty…definitely too musical.”

Does every car really have to explode? Yes. Could the entire backwoods cult subplot be lost? Of course. But you know, these guys made the movie they wanted, one that even has a Pieces flashback and a mother (Rita Rätsepp) who has made his life into one of killing and a little brother who paints himself painting the same painting over and over again. It’s that rare film that allows you to not question things, to accept them, to feel like maybe you need something to block all the blood that has to be spraying out of the screen before too long. It’s not to be missed, as it was made with joy and delivers even more of that.

Too much is never enough.

Mona (real-life bodybuilder Jacqueline “Jay” Fuchs, once listed as one of the “ten best female bodybuilders in the world”and who was Rosi in Mad Heidi) is fortysomething bodybuilder whose entire life is spent sculpting her body, which means not living or eating like other human beings as she creates a body that holds up to an unreachable ideal. Everyone she meets or knows is someone who does the same, as she’s pushed to try new drugs or avoid certain meals by her manager Kurt (Julian Sands). Her only companion is her cat.

As she gets into the last three months before a competition, she meets a man named Nic (Adam Misík) in the showers. Their quick encounter burrows its way into her subconscious and creates a break in her normally disciplined life.

So much of Body Odyssey feels like its trapped between a world that is trying to place human manifest destiny upon the fragile body and rigors of aging while the environments feel either alien naturescape or future bleak. There are many voices inside Mona, all battling for control, all as she struggles to fight back against time, against a body riddled by decades of steroid abuse, against denial of the very simple pleasure of eating a carb.

This film looks and feels like it’s own world is so much stronger for that. Director Grazia Tricarico has created a place that is at once our existence and then not, a world where someone can hear the voices in the water and then begins to doubt everything; where the only way to reclaim what you want is at times to destroy.

I’ve thought about this movie several times since I’ve seen it and keep reflecting back on the ways it shows liquid and sinew. We may not all want a body like Mona, but we have to consider that she has created something that belongs to her, even in a world where men feel no issue with telling her how they’d like to photograph her or how her image could be co-opted for marketing. They only know her for a fleeting moment; she has had to construct this form for many, many years.

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.

Once upon a long time ago — well, the 90s — there was a little horror theme park, built in the middle of a Massachusetts cornfield, called SpookyWorld. This is the story of that place.

Directed by Quinn Monahan and executive produced by Tom Savini, this tells the story of SpookyWorld, which this movie makes the case for the idea that it “set the template for the multi-billion-dollar industry of terror.”

David Bertolino was the creator, making the park the first-ever multi-attraction Halloween theme park. He started by selling X-rated greeting cards and gag gifts before figuring our how to make a haunted house that could make money. He brought along horror celebrities like Savini, Alice Cooper, Linda Blair and Kane Hodder. And he had a major bit of insanity with Tiny Tim.

You may have seen some of Spooky World in Snapper: The Man Eating Turtle Movie That Never Got Made yet this movie will give you the real story. Well, the story that its creator wants to tell, but if you wanted to get an unbiased view, you don’t have anything else. This is everything the people who made and worked there would like you to know about a place that is sadly gone.

You can learn more at the official site.

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.

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.

Noa Altman (Maayan Weinstock) is an actress who has been forgotten due to her age. Every day is a new argument with her husband, martial arts master Uri (Nir Barak), as the money isn’t there anymore and his business is failing. Yet when he kills a Palestinian terrorist, he’s suddenly a big celebrity himself and all of their problems are solved.

Their problems are solved, right?

Director and writer Nadav Aronowicz then asks us, “What if it was all a lie?”

How can Noa stay in love with Uri? Can she feel comfortable as they become successful? And what does this say about the never-ending conflicts between Israel and Palestine?

Fighting terrorists in an action movie is easy.

Real life is where it gets hard to figure out who the bad guys are.

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.

Maria (Estefanía de los Santos) and Jesús (David Pareja) have just had a baby. He’s tired of her being the only one to make decisions, so he buys a coffee table without asking her. It is the most horrible piece of furniture ever. He pays for it for the rest of the movie.

This is being sold as “an uncomfortable, politically incorrect film with extremely black humor and a brutal tragedy.” That’s truth in advertising.

Directed by Caye Casas, who wrote the script with Caye Casas, this isn’t for everyone. But if you’re ready, I’ll give you a spoiler.

I mean, it’s going to ruin this, because the surprise is what the movie is all about.

So…

The table is missing a screw and it’s not stable. While Jesús is playing with his newborn son, he drops him onto the table and it slices the baby’s head clean off. Now, he has to hide the corpse from his wife, his brother, his brother’s wife and everyone else that comes to see the child, whose head is somewhere under one of the chairs.

If that’s the kind of thing you find amusing, you’re going to love this, one of the tensest times you’ll spend watching a movie. Not for expectant fathers. Or mothers. Maybe not for anyone.

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.

After a drunken game of charades, Juan (Brays Efe) witnesses his best friend David fall to the street below and explode into a million pieces in the ultimate dummy drop. Confused and consumed with sadness, he is about to go deep into the world of clay companions and the algorithm that determines how everyone will die.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9fksIiHrs0

Yes, Juan’s friend was a golem.

How can you not love a movie inspired by the scene where the German soldier is actually a porcelain doll in Top Secret!?

Directed and written by Juan González and Nando Martínez — also known as Burnin Percebes — this movie finds Juan in the middle of a conspiracy, tracked by a cop (Javier Botet); meeting Maria Pons ((Anna Castillo), a woman who has also seen men explode into bits and pieces; dealing with David’s lover Filtro Valencia (Nao Albet) and wondering why his father (Luis Tosar) doesn’t want to ever discuss the death of the golem.

Maybe working with his dad’s assistant Clara (Bruna Cusí), he will learn the truth.

Whatever it ends up, it’s going to be strange.