Based on the Department Q series by Jussi Adler-Olsen, this is the fifth in a series of movies and seeing as how I haven’t seen any of the other ones, I think I can get past Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Fares Fares not being in this movie and Ulrich Thomsen takes on the role of Detective Mørck and Zaki Youssef as Assad.

Actually — the director and screenwriters have changed too!

In this one, a child trying to enter Denmark to meet with his father turns out to be carrying the passport of a man who has disappeared, but not before he allegedly took money from the nonprofit he works for and was also being investigated for pedophilia. Even weirder, the investigation into this man vanishing from sight was closed in just two weeks.

A lot of the fun of watching films at Fantastic Fest has been not knowing what I’m getting into. Sometimes you’re watching a movie about nuns that quickly pivots, other times you’re following the story of Gwar and then, still other times, you wind up in the middle of foreign crime series that you had no idea existed.

I’m here for all of it!

Somewhere in the backwoods of Latvia — perhaps even on the edge of a mythical forest — Sam is a long way from Belgium. He’s looking for his father and is distracted, which leads to him hitting a piglet with his car. He tries to bury it, but it’s still alive, so to make amends, he drives the piglet and its owner Kirke back to their farm.

He mistakingly trusts the girl, who is the daughter of a pig farmer. The next day, her family members attack him, throw him in chains and toss him into the pig sty. Now, he’s their property. Yet Sam will find happiness in slavery, along with that piglet who can talk and who becomes his friend. But Kirke’s jealous ex-boyfriend wants him dead so he can marry her and take the farm.

Director Aik Karapetian also made Firstborn, People Out There and The Man in the Orange Jacket. Who knew that his next film would be a near fairy tale where searching for your missing father in a foreign country ends up putting you either into the middle of a fairy tale or, perhaps more to Sam’s struggles, into The Odyssey, as Kirke’s name is close to Circe and she’s the one that turned all of Odysseus’ crewmen into swine before giving him the opportunity to stay and love her instead of leaving for home.

You can learn more about Samuel’s Travels at the official site.

After young Pandu witnesses the murder of an old man who refuses to leave his property and hurts local gangster boss Guru, he must turn to his deaf father Sandi. The trouble is that his father is also a gangster and if he turns against his crime family, he may as well just kill himself. But that’s what happens and Guru sends all of his men after boh Pandu and Sandi, who must face their reprisal face-to-face.

Writer and director Randolph Zaini started his storytelling life by acting out stories for his younger siblings with G.I. Joe figures, then years later came to America for school. That childlike beginning plays out here, as Sandi sees his depressive state as a series of anthropomorphic foxes and a blue bunny which symbolizes one of the first violent acts of his life, being forced to punch a friend in the face to prove that he wasn’t gay.

Today, he struggles to keep violence out of his son’s life, yet his very career is in ousting people from their homes so that real estate companies can take over. His entire worldview is even further skewed because Guru is at once the leader of the criminals and a cop, so any hope of the police helping him in his battle against the gang and the hired killer Butcher doesn’t exist.

Whlle this is an action film, it’s primarily about the relationship between father and son, as well as the hopes for something better for your child. If not for Pandu’s action, Sandi may have stayed under the cruel thumb of Guru for life.

Preman is playing Fantastic Fest. When it starts streaming, we’ll update this article.

The Langoliers may be at the bottom of Stephen King adaptions, but if The Timekeepers of Eternity has any say in things, we’ve been misjudging Tom Holland’s 1995 TV miniseries.

Animator Aristotelis Maragkos has printed every frame of that movie and used collage animation to reconstruct, remix and retell the story in an entirely new way, compressing 180 minutes into 64 and taking Bronson Pinchot’s character of Craig Toomey and making him the lead character and not the villain.

Much like Triple Fisher: The Lethal Lolitas of Long Island — which ran during Fantastic Fest last year — this film takes something we’ve seen before and deliriously recreates it as something bold, brave and fresh.

Beyond just a film, now that The Langoliers has moved into the world of paper, it can make comic book-like movements where multiple characters and angles can appear at the same time while the emotions can come out as darker shapes and jagged lines emitted from the actors. Even the ending moves from King, changing the source material in a way that makes this movie its own piece of art nearly separate from where it was sourced.

In the original film, the CGI Langoliers have been selected on so many worst special effects lists, so imagine my joy when they appear to merely be torn chunks of paper that tear through the reality of this story.

Maragkos spent years making this, but trust me, it was beyond worth the effort. I have no idea if this will be playing anywhere past Fantastic Fest, but if you get the opportunity to see this movie, take it.

The title of this movie is Xhosa and translates as Good Madam, as the white madam is at the center of this film, a comatose woman being looked after by Mavis, the mother of Tisdi, this movie’s protagonist. As they live in the wealthy suburbs of Cape Town — yet always apart from the city — the darkness within the old woman’s home may engulf everything and everyone.

Directed by Jenna Cato Bass (who co-wrote the script with Babalwa Baartman), this movie may take place decades after the end of apartheid, but the shadow of the past looms large. Tisdi has been estranged from her mother, who has spent the majority of her life with the home of Madam — Diane — and even raised her son Stuart alongside the rich white children.

Only Mavis is allowed to enter the room of the dying woman — which reminds one of Burnt Offerings — while keeping the home immaculate, as if the lady of the home could rise at any moment and nothing has changed. Her sacrifices to her duty have even kept Mavis from going to the funeral of her mother.

Why are Mavis and Stuart so comfortable in this home of white privilege and Tsidi so haunted? Why was she rejected and her brother accepted and perhaps even adopted or co-opted? And why have we never seen Madam outside of photos from the past? And when Tisdi’s daughter Winnie been loved by Mavis so easily when a connection between mother and daughter has been such a trial?

As Americans, we may struggle to understand the complicated history of South Africa, but sadly, we all understand the struggles of racism and enduring horrible relationships that only have one worse thought: what if tomorrow is worse than the pain we have endured in the days before?

Mlungu Wam is at Fantastic Fest now. When it begins to stream, we will update this article.

Masking Threshold is one of the stranger films I’ve seen in some time, almost a YouTube video filled with non-stop zoom-in screens and talking from a person we never see, an IT person (physically played by Johannes Grenzfurthner with spoken performance by Ethan Haslam) who has been dealing with non-stop ringing in his ears for three years. Somehow, someway, he has to make the sound stop. And the theories he comes up with will not only change his view of the world but perhaps even destroy nearly everyone in his world.

The film that unspools is the journal of this man, starting as the meticulous work of an investigator who goes mad as the sound keeps assaulting him with medical science claiming there’s no cure and any scientists he shares his theories with branding him a lunatic. So he plays into exactly what science believes and gradually goes insane, the screws coming out as we watch along, going through each experience with him before some moments happen that are difficult to face. His fingers smashing an ant starts his detachment and within minutes, he’s moved up to slugs, birds and more. Yes, it’s just how they claim a serial killer starts to feel no emotion for small animals, but the journey into fringe belief — while doing all your research via the internet and social media — provides a reflection into how Pizzagate — referenced in the film — and Q-Anon can take over the brains of even the most rational of human beings.

Beyond the sounds of silence driving the protagonist to find a cure, he’s already isolated by being a geek and queer. That means that he has plenty of time to transform his bathtub into a green hell, to order all manner of gadgets, to slowly losing his home to his growing theories.

The description of this film claims that it’s a chamber play, a scientific dissertation and an unboxing video, but it’s also like watching a time-lapse of something — or somewhere or someone — going through the stages of rot.

Artist, filmmaker, writer, actor, curator, theatre director, performer and lecturer — Johannes Grenzfurthner is a force of nature. His films Traceroute and Glossary of Broken Dreams were documentaries that have led to this pseudo-reality that can only have one violent ending. This may be the most unnerving film that I watched at Fantastic Fest, but it may also be the one that sticks in my head for the longest.

Toby Poser, John Adams, and their daughters Zelda and Lulu made The Deeper You Dig, a movie that divided Becca and me. For their follow-up, the Adams family has created a movie all about 16-year-old Izzy (Zelda), whose mother (Toby Poser) keeps isolated due to a rare illness. Yet as Izzy begins to grow as a woman — beyond playing metal songs (written by Toby and Zelda) as the band H6LLB6ND6R without an audience may not be enough — she escapes to another home in the woods where she meets Amber (Lulu), who gives her a bikini and the chance to drink with teenagers.

Yet when she consumers a live worm, the hunger of being a hellbender opens her eyes and she soon learns exactly why her mother keeps her from others.

At first, I felt like this movie was kind of like seeing an opening act at a show and not feeling the first few songs that they play. It feels inauthentic. Not metal? Silly facepaint? And then before you know it, you’re nodding your head and feeling the urge to headbang by the end of the set. This film took some time to grow on me — The Deeper You Dig had some of the same issues — but when it works, it works.

The effects either look great for the budget or remind you of the budget, yet never feel like they’re organic to the film. That’s fine — this is a very DIY effort — and it actually becomes charming. I’ve never really trusted homeschooled kids who are too close to their parents, but maybe this is one of those families that gets the dynamic right.

It’s intriguing that Hellbender has been playing Fantastic Fest with Luzifer, another film that centers on an isolated relationship between a mother and child, albeit one that’s more sacred and profane at the same time.

Hellbender has been picked up by Shudder and will be airing next year on the streaming platform. Right now, it’s played at Fantastic Fest.

Johnny is a street-smart kid who spends his weekdays in a group home but soon learns that he can no longer go home on the weekends. He’s a mover and shaker, though, as he sells cocaine and avoids getting caught because after all, he’s just a kid.

Then he meets Antony, an actor whose pocket Johnny tries to pick. Agreeing not to press charges, he soon starts to use the young boy as his new cocaine source, but they both may have a greater destint. However, no one escapes the drug trade, whether they’re a dealer or a user.

The first full-length film written and directed by Jeroen Perceval, who has acted in films such as Bullhead and Borgman, Dealer doesn’t shy from some hard subjects beyond drugs, including poverty and abusive families. The bond between the two leads — Sverre Rous as Johnny and Ben Segers as Antony — should lead to better lives for both of them, as Johnny desperately needs attention, the ability to become an actor and an escape from his hellish existence. And Antony needs to connect to someone young as well as the chance to redeem himself after years of addiction.

Of course, that means that there’s no way that this movie can end happily. The write-up for this movie claimed that it was “brutal and unsparing,” and trust me — they were not lying. This Belgian film takes you deep inside a world that you probably never should want to be a part of. Both selling and taking drugs are not blameless crimes, as there are victims on both sides. And once you start, you may never escape, no matter how great your intentions.

Dealer debuted Tuesday at Fantastic Fest and will be available later this year. We’ll update this review when we have more information on how you can see it for yourself.

Imagine Christine with political messages. Yes, in King Car, Uno — a taxi company owner’s son — is able to speak to cars — because he was born in the back of a taxi — and has become close friends with the vehicle that saved him from a traffic accident as a young child at the cost of his mother’s life.

Uno gives up on cars from that point on, going to college to study ecology until a new law that bans cars over 15 years old from the roads destroys his father’s business. He’s never been close with his dad, but his strange Uncle Ze — the reason behind an argument that led to his mother driving into that fatal accident — harnesses Uno’s ability to speak to the rusted out autos.

Now, Uno is listening to the old cars, hearin their complaints of no longer being allowed on the roads. And he’s found the car that was his friend from childhood and transformed it into something called King Car.

But King Car may have ideas of its own. And this might be the end of humanity.

The technology that Uno and Ze have invented allow lower income drivers to remain on the road. Yet why has Uno turned his back on ecology and embraced the machine?

There’s a lot jammed into the trunk of this film, as if it were packing for a weekend trip and decided that it needed every single suitcase it only stuffed beyond overflowing. There are mechanics who have become possessed and move in synchronized dances. A car spouting rallying cries and fiery speeches within an assembly line. A man who has slowly become more and more part of the machine, running up a hill like an ape seeking a bone. A woman who yearns to make love to King Car. And plenty of socio-philosophical messaging.

Renata Pinheiro — who co-wrote King Car with Sergio Oliveira and Leo Pyrata — has some great ideas in this film that don’t always pay off. You do have to appreciate the audacity, however. There’s promise here, however, despite the need for more focus.

King Car is playing Fantastic Fest. When we have streaming information, we’ll share it in this post.