Directed by Jim Demonakos (founder of Seattle’s Emerald City Comic Con) and Kevin Konrad Hanna, this engaging documentary is about the world of Mike Mignola and the world he’s created around Hellboy.

Comic book and movie geeks — umm, speaking for myself, that’s the same audience — will enjoy hearing from Doug Jones, Guillermo del Toro, Patton Oswalt, Ron Perlman, Neil Gaiman, Mike Richardson, Art Adams and so many more about how the comic and movies came to life, but the true joy is in discovering how Adams bonded with Mignola and his brothers, how much of Hellboy is Mignola’s father (and himself) and how Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar was inspired to make Hellboy so personal.

There are also moments where the creator discusses how many times he felt defeated and how his family and later wife would help him overcome his fears. Even if you know nothing of the comics, the parts of this movie where Perlman breaks down remembering bonding with his father over movies (and getting the same opportunity to make something so personal as Hellboy), the way that Mignola and Del Toro overcame their artistic differences and how Mignola’s daughter ended up writing his favorite story (and how it keeps returning to his work), as well as how Mignola created a shared universe where others could have the same creative freedom that he found will emotionally reach you regardless of your level of comic or genre movie knowledge.

For those of us who know and love characters like Lobster Johnson and Ben Daimio, this is everything.

Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters is playing as part of the Burnt Ends part of Fantastic Fest.

You can get a virtual badge here.

Roscoe (Phillip Andre Botello) is in a weird place in life. He’s a janitor for a scuzzy love motel ad his girlfriend has brought another man home for strange rituals. But he does have a stash of powerful hallucinogenic worms, visions from a floating worm that is speaking directly to him and perhaps a new friendship with Benny (Trevor Dawkins), a moped enthusiast who is trying to manifest a homunculus baby from a sex doll.

Basically, a Hallmark movie for the kids.

Director and writer Alex Phillips said that this movie is “a meditation on psychosis. The only accurate way to convey insanity is to disregard the literal truth. All Jacked Up and Full of Worms is a dream that is impossible to break from autobiography. It’s about expressionistic maggots born in real wounds – maggots growing into big worms, too fantastical and deranged to be real, despite feeling heavy, wet and alive.”

I found it right up my alley — a gore-filled take on loneliness, connection and love that will make fans of movies like Society stand up and cheer through their tears and normal folk retch in their popcorn. That’s a standing ovation in my world.

“Worms are life, worms are love.” If you’re the kind of person that looks at a worm and wonders not just if you can cut it in half and create two lives but also eat one of them and trip balls, well, this movie was either made for — or by — you.

If you’re attending Fantastic Fest in person, All Jacked Up and Full of Worms will play at the following times:

Tue, Sep 27th, 2:30 PM @ Theater 9

You can also get a virtual badge here.

This film will debut on Screambox on November 8.

Get ready to watch something strange.

Filmmaker Oscar Harding grew up near farmer Charles Carson. Carson would give the family his homemade video tapes, which seem like he was hosting a TV program but he was all by himself. Or he was surrounded by cows giving birth. Or puppeteering his stuffed cats. Or wheeling his dead mother around so she could see the farm one more time before she went into the ground.

Carson was…well, the jury is out. Was he an outside artist? An early adopter of posting videos online before there was the internet? Or maybe someone with some deep mental issues?

Beyond getting to see the actual videos, the film also speaks to Karen Kilgariff (My Favorite Murder), Derrick Beckles (TV Carnage), Everything Is Terrible and Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher from The Found Footage Festival to learn why the videos are artistically important while also, yes, just odd.

“There we are, that’s life on a farm.” Carson says this several times and it makes me think about how he came from a world that is a constant circle of life and also so removed from the city that he may as well be an alien. He would keep giving these tapes, stories about life on the farm to his friends and neighbors. Were they entertained? Shocked? Upset?

Yet this movie never laughs at the man. It points out that he may have had issues, but he also saw death in a different way than we do. Perhaps by looking at it with a sense of humor, he was ahead of us, people who might look down on him and think him uneducated. I see him as a man with no guile, one with a sense of humor that could be surreal but he may have never encountered that art himself. He was, in a sense, a unique island of a man whose video output lived beyond him, made its way to people who could keep it alive and now, miles and decades away from a man long dead, we can appreciate what he left behind, even if it’s a video of him holding up a huge piece of afterbirth.

If you’re attending Fantastic Fest in person, Life On the Farm will play at the following times:

Thu, Sep 29th, 11:30 AM @ Theater 2
Thu, Sep 29th, 11:30 AM @ Theater 6

You can also get a virtual badge here. You can learn more about this movie on its official Facebook page.

Severin Films, who released the original Birdemic, wants to move past Birdemic 2: The Resurrection and introduce a new and better take on the birds. Or so they said, but after a decade, not much has changed.

Gerontologist Evan (Ryan Lord) and marine biologist Kim (Julia Culbert) have learned from her collecting ocean water samples that the water has become too acidic due to global warming. That means that the birds, always those CGI birds, are mad. But first, there’s romance.

Director and writer James Nguyen did it all himself this time and man, it’s certainly a movie. There’s nearly an hour about climate change where every conversation and even the artwork references it. If you think the media isn’t spending enough time on this issue, this movie is out to make up for it.

It also has a lot to say about how good Vertigo is.

There’s also a lot about how Mr. Green, an Elon Musk-esque billionaire is our only hope.

And then twenty minutes in, this movie remembers that it needs bird attacks and gives you bird attacks.

To get there, there’s a long karaoke slow dance scene, a space elevator and lots of making out.

I think this movie has a brand name now that guarantees that lots of people are going to want to watch it.  I can’t believe that there was one of these movies much less three. There are long stretches without dialogue or even music. There’s no real story until it’s almost over. And by this point, either James Nguyen is in on the joke or so far into himself that he doesn’t realize what he’s making or probably both.

In case you want to know where your money went when you bought all of those Al Adamson and Dennis Steckler box sets, you can see it on the screen here.

If you’re attending Fantastic Fest in person, Birdemic 3: Sea Eagle will play at the following times:

Thu, Sep 29th, 2:45 PM @ Theater 1
Thu, Sep 29th, 2:45 PM @ Theater 2

You can also get a virtual badge here. You can learn more about this movie on its official Facebook page.

The SSSP kaiju defense taskforce, led by Kimio Tamura (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is dealing with tons of monsters that have made their way to Earth. Luckily, they are soon joined by Ultraman, perhaps the greatest enemy of giant monsters ever.

I spent much of my childhood making Ultraman’s beam hand motion and watching and rewatching every single episode of the show. Every time I met a Japanese person as a kid, I wanted to know more about Ultraman and imagine my surprise when I learned how many more shows there were that — in the pre-internet times — we never got here.

I got that same childhood wonder and joy from this movie, which was made by the same team that created Shin Godzilla — there will also be a Shin Evangelion Theatrical Edition and Shin Kamen Rider — director Shinji Higuchi and writer, editor and motion capture performer Hideaki Anno.

Shinji Kaminaga (Takumi Saitoh) is killed in the line of duty as Ultraman battles Neronga. The robot feels badly so he takes the man’s place and soon learns that he feels plenty of love for the human race, despite the fact that some of them don’t trust him. There are a lot of interplanetary political machinations in this story yet it never gets slow or boring. If anything, it feels like an entire season of Ultraman jammed into one movie.

There’s Zarab, the evil Ultraman, as well as Mefilias, the world-destroying Zetton, Gomess (a modified Godzilla from Shin Godzilla, just like how the original was a Godzilla suit when he was on Ultra Q), a Mammoth Flower, Larugeus, the Ultra Q monster Peguila, Kaigel, Pagos and Gabora (who along with Neronga were all made up of the Toho Baragon suit on the original Ultraman and Ultra Q), as well as cameo appearances from vehicles — often in the background or as models on desks — of Gohten from The War In Space, Alpha and Black Shark from Lattitude Zero; the Mole, FAB 1, Fireflash and the five Thunderbirds from Thunderbirds; and the Enterprise from Star Trek.

Info for this article and this image came from the amazing https://wikizilla.org/wiki/Shin_Ultraman

This is also the first Ultraman movie to be made by Toho. Does that mean we’ll ever see Godzilla versus Ultraman for real? One can hope.

The best part of this movie? It’s so episodic that there’s a new monster or crisis nearly every thirty minutes. Man, this is great. If you love kaiju, Ultraman or just want to have some fun at the theater, make sure you see this when it comes out in American theaters this fall.

You can watch Shin Ultraman with a Fantastic Fest virtual badge here.

Kaiko City is plagued with poverty and crime. When a mass murder at a bathhouse occurs and yet local businessman Wataru Gojo (Lily Franky) is acquitted, the cops realize that traditional methods no longer apply.

Three members of the Violent Crimes Unit join a disgraced former police captain in jail for murder named Torada (Hitoshi Ozawa), to get evidence on Gojo, his dealings with the yakuza and even worse — his connection to South Korean organized crime and a yearning for a career in politics.

Hitoshi Ozawa is sixty years old but has made a career of playing roles just like this: hard men willing to do hard jobs no matter the cost. You may know him from Takeshi Miike’s Dead or Alive or may even go deep and know Japanese V-cinema. He’s the best part of this very good movie. And Tak Sakiguchi (Versus) is in this as a silent killer gunning for the police.

Directed by Kensuke Sonomura and written by Ozawa, this is a film filled with twists and turns but most importantly action. It also has so much of what works in Japanese crime cinema, that being the ever-twisted connection between cops and crime, with characters that have a foot in part of each world and yet pushed and pulled by concepts like duty and honor.

But this is all about the stunts and fights, too. Sonomura has made a career in stunts, from directing the action in movies like Baby Assassins, Black Rat and The Machine Girl as well as directing Hydra. He’s also lent his fight choreography to video games including Devil May Cry 3, Devil May Cry 4, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Resident Evil 3. He’s also choreographed the action scenes for some world-class directors including Mamoru Oshii, Yudai Yamaguchi, John Woo and Donnie Yen.

This movie is deliriously exciting. Make sure you catch it.

If you’re attending Fantastic Fest in person, Bad City will play at the following times:

Wed, Sep 28th, 8:30 PM @ Theater 2
Wed, Sep 28th, 8:30 PM @ Theater 3

You can also get a virtual badge here.

The description for this movie is, of course, just to trick you into this surprising film: “South African enfant terrible filmmaker and artiste-cineaste Manus Oosthuizen (Michael Smulik) meets with Rotten Tomatoes-approved indie film critic Babette Cruickshank (Sophie Kathleen Kozeluh) in an Echo Park sound studio. With key members of Manus’s crew joining, they record an audio commentary track for his new elegiac feature documentary Razzennest. But the session goes down a different path. The ultimate elevation of arthouse horror, just not as you might expect.”

You can say that again.

Directed and written by Johannes Grenzfurthner, who also created the astounding Masking Threshold, this is a movie that literally plays with the way that we embrace physical media — commentary tracks if you need to be triggered by your love of being surrounded by stacks of plastic cases and disks — in an exciting and senses destroying way.

Grenzfurthner said of this film, “Razzennest not only gave me the unique opportunity to write a love letter to genre films and rain ridicule on pretentious arthouse films, but also to write a love letter to arthouse films and mock the inherent problems of genre films. It allowed me to realize my decades-old dream of making a film about the Thirty Years’ War and its endless atrocities without needing a budget of millions of dollars to depict the war’s bloody significance. Also, Razzennest provided an exciting chance to portray a fascinating landscape, the Rohrwald, which is only a few kilometers from where I grew up.

Razzennest is horror, satire, drama, a ghost story, and a tale of survival told on a very improbable cinematic canvas. Given the political climate in the United States and other Western societies, the film is a necessary reflection on the undead legacy of murderous Christianity.

Enjoy Razzennest while you still can.”

I really don’t want to spoil the surprises inside this movie, but suffice to say the exploration of the horrors of war in the movie within the movie soon spill into the movie we’re watching but yet because it’s a commentary track — again for a movie within the movie, but we’re watching it as a track for a film that could exist — we become more intimately involved, as if we were learning from it as we’ve come to expect. Yet when all hell — heaven? — breaks loose, the commentary becomes the narrative and the film becomes color commentary to what we are hearing.

Trust me. It works.

Now I want to see how Grenzfurthner pulls off a commentary track to this movie.

I watched Razzennest as part of the Burnt Ends films of Fantastic Fest. You can learn more about the movie at the official site.

Elisa is a 12-year-old girl who lives with her father after the death of her mother. She’s obsessed with a comic book superhero and thinks that she has the same powers, which finds her putting her life into danger at nearly every opportunity.

Meanwhile, a painter named Héctor and his wheelchair-bound wife Úrsula are engaged in a battle of wills over lack of emotional support and an upcoming gallery show.

How are they connected? And is that really Elisa’s hero Galerista wandering the alleys and streets at night with her gigantic canine Dante? Can Elisa really use her powers to bring the man who killed her mother to justice? Just how is she able to withstand blades and possess super strength? And how is this all connected?

Just as how the superhero violence in this movie feels distant and anything but the gaudy combat you expect, the sex scenes in this feel at once real and clinical, as if they are pushing you away for the prurient reasons why they usually happen in films. Similarly, while Úrsula has no feeling below her waist, she still has desires, yet the impotentcy of her husband Héctor causes him to seek release elsewhere. He has everything yet can’t figure it out.

Elisa may or may not be a superhero, but she’s grappling with trauma from the death of her mother that manifests itself through a retreat into fantasy and perhaps even self-harm. Her father begins to follow her down that same path; there are no easy answers because life, unlike cinematic universes, is messy and has no real ending.

Director and writer Sadrac González-Perellón has really crafted something special here, even if at times he’s working at pushing the audience away by keeping them at a calculated distance. Work your way through; there’s something wonderful at the heart of this.

If you’re attending Fantastic Fest in person, Amazing Elisa will play at the following times:
Thu, Sep 22nd, 8:30 PM @ Theater 7
Tue, Sep 27th, 8:15 PM @ Theater 2
Tue, Sep 27th, 8:15 PM @ Theater 5
Tue, Sep 27th, 8:15 PM @ Theater 8

You can also get a virtual badge here.

María José’s (an incredible performance by Macarena Gómez) life has fallen apart. Nearly everyone in the small town of Leon, Spain could care less about the suicide of her bullied son years before. As she prepares to jump off a ridge, Lucía appears. She’s a strange little girl who might just be the prophecy of a local legend about stopping an impending apocalypse come true. Whoever she is, she holds hope for María José, who is now savoring the chance to be a mother again and, well, take horrific revenge on everyone that hurt her or her son.

Imagine if everyone that was wrong in a small town finally had to confront the wrath of God — or Satan — and the corrupt cops were set ablaze, the ineffectual church was decimated and the gossips were torn asunder. Imagine no longer, because this film is a delirious blast of red-hued style and violence.

Director David Hebrero, who wrote this film with Javier Kiran, this movie may not be set in America, but it reminds me of the small-town hypocrisy that I grew up in and takes things beyond that into its own out-of-reality world. This is Hebero’s second movie, which is quite frankly mind-blowing because this movie is absolutely overloaded with style, substance and just plain greatness.

Lucía (Sofía García) is Damian Thorn as protagonist instead of antagonist. That’s a bold step to take and this movie just keeps making bigger leaps throughout, starting with an astounding “Wish You Were Here”  inspired visual and then just getting even stranger from there. Consider this my highest recommendation.

Don’t leave at the end. Sure, we’re all conditioned to stay through the credits for surprises, but this time the wait pays off.

If you’re attending Fantastic Fest in person, Everyone Will Burn will play at the following times:

Fri, Sep 23rd, 11:55 PM @ Theater 9
Tue, Sep 27th, 11:35 AM @ Theater 1
Tue, Sep 27th, 11:35 AM @ Theater 2

You can also get a virtual badge here.