First Wave of Fantastic Fest 2018 Films Include Slashers New and Old

By Kip Mooney • On • In Fantastic Fest, News Fantastic Fest, News 0

Fantastic Fest, the very best festival of genre films in the U.S., has announced its first wave of films, and as usual, there are a lot of excellent choices.

The headlining premieres include the J.J. Abrams-produced Overlord (which has long been rumored to connect to the Cloverfield universe) and the Gothic horror flick Apostle from Gareth Evans (The Raid).

Overlord will host its world premiere, with director Julius Avery (Son of a Gun) and much of the cast - including Wyatt Russell (Everybody Wants Some) - in attendance. The film follows a group of WWII paratroopers who find themselves behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied France, where they discover a lab filled with supernatural horrors. Overlord hits theaters on November 9.

Apostle will also host its world premiere. Hailing from Gareth Evans (The Raid), the violent period piece focuses on a man on a mission to save his sister from a demented cult. Unsurprisingly, the film is earning comparisons to The Wicker Man (the good one, not this one). Apostle drops onto Netflix on October 12.

Other highlights of the festival (so far) include Burning, a nominee for this year's Palme d'Or at Cannes; the stop-motion musical Laika; and Keep an Eye Out, another quirky comedy from French weirdo Quentin Dupieux (the killer tire movie Rubber).

There will also be restorations of several cult horror films, including Blood Lake (1987), Maniac (1980) and Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore (1997). The South Korean revenge flick Quit Your Life will also be shown in English for the first time.

Of course, this is just the first wave of films to be announced. There's bound to be plenty more weird and wonderful offerings from a festival that once let people watch the Ryan Reynolds movie Buried INSIDE A COFFIN.

Fantastic Fest runs from September 20-27 in Austin.

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About Kip Mooney

Kip Mooney
Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.

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