It’s that time of year again. io9 is about to head down to Austin, Texas for a week of fun, fucked-up films at Fantastic Fest, one of the coolest, most unique genre film festivals in the entire world. For a full week, the fest shows only the weirdest, most out-there, totally badass films that are coming soon to theaters, and we’re excited to jump right in.
The hard part about attending Fantastic Fest though is that every single movie sounds awesome. It was curated that way. So how do you choose what to see? Well, a few movies have names you’ve heard of—stuff like DreamWorks’ The Wild Robot, gory sequel Terrifier 3, or the anthology V/H/S Beyond. But beyond that, you just gotta go with your gut.
Here’s my process, cultivated over many years. I go through the entire list of feature films, read about every single one, and then rank them based on a) what I think the readers of io9 will be interested in, and b) what I want to watch. Then, I start at the top of the nearly 100-film list and attempt to work my way down it.
What follows are the 15 films currently at the top of that list which also happen to be a great example of just how weird and wonderful Fantastic Fest can be. The festival runs from September 19-26 in Austin, Texas. Click here for more. And stay tuned to io9 for our coverage from the festival.
Daniela Forever
Whenever Nacho Vigalondo makes a film, we take notice: Timecrimes, Extraterrestrial, Colossal. And now he’s back with a seemingly more emotional genre take starring Henry Golding (Snake Eyes, Crazy Rich Asians). Golding plays a man who loses his girlfriend but discovers a drug that lets him relive memories of her. That won’t go well.
Ick
Torque. Detention. Bodied. These are the awesome films of music video director Joseph Kahn. His latest, Ick, stars Brandon Routh as a teacher fighting a “parasitic alien entity.” If we know Kahn, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Chainsaws Were Singing
A film that sounds like a spiritual sequel to Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Cannibal the Musical, Chainsaws Were Singing is a horror musical about a man who must rescue his new love from a signing, chainsaw-wielding maniac. We’re so there.
Escape From the 21st Century
Combining three things I love very much—action, nostalgia, and sci-fi—Escape from the 21st Century follows a group of kids who are able to access their future selves. And for some reason there’s a lot of martial arts involved.
Mr. Crockett
In what sounds like a twisted take on A Nightmare on Elm Street, Mr. Crockett follows a mom who thinks she’s found the key to calming down her wild kids: a new children’s TV show. The problem is, the TV show allows a killer to come into your house, kidnap your kids, and kill the parents.
Dead Talents Society
With a plot that sounds like Beetlejuice seen through modern social media, Dead Talents Society is about a recently deceased woman who realizes that to stay a ghost, she must craft a successful ghost persona that other ghosts must follow and adore.
Ghost Killer
A woman who finds herself haunted by the ghost of an assassin teams up with him to take down his killers.
Frankie Freako
The latest film from Steven Kostanski, the mind behind the recent cult hit Psycho Goreman, Frankie Freako follows a man who becomes obsessed with “a rock n’ roll goblin that promises to turn your life upside down.”
Else
Two strangers deal with a rising pandemic that causes its victims to fuse to the environment around them—and the disease is spread by eye contact.
Daddy’s Head
After losing his father, a young boy is haunted by a frightening monster. Who, oddly, bears a striking resemblance to his dad.
Memoir of a Snail
Featuring the voices of Sarah Snook and Kodi Smit-McPhee, this stop-motion animated film is about two orphans separated when their parents pass away. It’s not as exciting a premise as the rest of these movies but it’s just a very intriguing pairing of medium and subject matter.
Mads
We’ll let the Fantastic Fest team the work here: “tweaked-out French club kids battle a rage virus during one crazy night, all in on single, unbroken shot.”
Chain Reactions
We don’t cover a lot of the documentaries that play Fantastic Fest but when they’re about the making and legacy of arguably the most influential horror movie ever, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, we pay attention.
Little Bites
Cher—yes, that Cher—produced this horror film about a mother who will do anything to save her child from a monster who attacks them. The monster promises it won’t attack the child if the mom just, you know, lets him eat her flesh.
Planet B
Adèle Exarchopoulos (Ennui from Inside Out 2) stars as a woman shot in the face with a non-lethal round who wakes up on an island called Planet B, where the French government puts problems it doesn’t want to deal with.
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