Fantasia Fest 2021: Dispatch 3
Boundless imagination propels The Great Yokai War: Guardians, the latest feature from the prolific Takashi Miike. A sequel to The Great Yokai War (2005), Round Two finds the director working with better special effects and his own enhanced filmmaking skills in the service of a compelling story of family honor and folklore. A wonder to behold, the wide range of humanoid yōkai are enacted with impressive makeup and prosthetics, as well as effects both practical and computer-generated, the combination of which yields something akin to a Japanese Pan’s Labyrinth. Add in a pair of excellent child performances from Kokoro Terada and Rei Inomata as the Watanabe siblings and we’ve got by far my favorite film of the fest thus far. Grade: A-minus —Edwin Arnaudin
Operating as what could be described as an “anti-Dr. Strangelove,” The Unknown Man of Shandigor is a Cold War-era oddity that works more than it doesn’t, but may still be an acquired taste for those not in tune with some of its more farcical elements. Director Jean-Louis Roy revels in camp and ’60s atomic paranoia as his cartoonishly devilish Dr. Von Krantz (Daniel Emilfork) subverts the spy genre by inventing a formula capable of preventing nuclear war, which he cleverly calls the “Canceler.”
The proceedings become increasingly bizarre as various espionage agencies vie for control of these very important atomic secrets. Russia, the U.S., and even a mercenary group working for the French government called the “Bald Heads” (led by Serge Gainsbourg, who ritualistically and sadistically serenades his minions as he embalms a fallen comrade) are all in the picture, each operating in their own peculiar ways.
The crux, though, is Sylvaine Von Krantz (Marie-France Boyer), lonely daughter to the famed inventor of the Cancler. As she pines for her lost love Manual (a clearly non-French-speaking Ben Carruthers), she inadvertently lets slip where the formula is hidden, instigating yet another shadowy cabal of spies to join the fray, culminating in the use of one of the weirdest James Bond-style gadgets I can think of.
All told, The Unknown Man of Shandigor is a wild ride through Cold War spy tropes, but its many moving parts often bog down the fun. Don’t get me wrong, though: watching Gainsbourg act the villain is alone worth the effort, but when you factor in the absurd knowledge that the film’s bodycount — including a man melted by chemicals and another succumbing to an unseen sea creature — is based on the world’s superpowers competing for the ability to end war rather wage it, the oddity and subversion at hand takes on a whole new meaning. Grade: B-minus —James Rosario
With Kratt, Estonian filmmaker Rasmus Merivoo has taken an old legend and given it a modern twist. The premise, while preposterous, has all the ingredients for a dark horror comedy, but what we end up with is two hours of throwing spaghetti at the wall with nothing sticking. Two children making a deal with Satan to summon the creature Kratt to do chores for them has a certain edginess that would seemingly appeal to the genre crowd. However, the two kids playing the leads are distractingly bad, and just about every other speaking role appears to be played by complete amateurs.
If Merivoo could stick with the Kratt and it’s chaos, the film might have found its footing, but there’s so much going on here that it’s difficult to keep the narrative straight. There’s a lot being said about technology and how it’s raising our kids, but there’s also a weird environmental tangent and what seems to be some kind of smart phone Siri conspiracy. None of these detours are explained and often things happen to get a laugh at the expense of a focused narrative.
Still, all of the above may have been better served via a series of vignettes about a small town whose residents are falling prey to various distractions. But as is, none of the would-be fun ideas are brought to fruition. Grade: F —Joel Winstead
When a film opens with the attempted execution of a cannibalistic witch-creature that can be killed neither by hanging nor hail of bullets, then tops it off with some fantastically affected Satanic Panic-styled heavy metal music and a giant “666” flashing on the screen, you’d better believe you have my attention. But while the opening minutes of Hellbender — the tale of a teenager who slowly begins to discover her family’s long association with the occult — seem tailor-made for my sensibilities, the bulk of the film can’t live up to its wonderfully mental opening sequence, leaving it feeling flat and rather uninspired.
Part of the problem is that, in addition to never matching the wildness of its opening, Hellbender is, at its heart, a short film that’s been awkwardly stretched into a feature. By cutting several scenes, the familial filmmaking unit (John Adams, Zelda Adams, and Toby Poser, all of whom also star as well as direct and write) might have better honed their story into something truly special and memorable.
Instead, Hellbender’s most interesting elements (its mythology and clannish paranoia) are sacrificed for overstretched and borderline dopey bits about rebellious teens. The visual and thematic possibilities hinted at early on, along with its mostly successful “twist” ending, could be something of real note for genre fans under the right circumstances, but as it stands, we’re left stuck in an awkward limbo between being given too much and wanting much more. Grade: C —JR
(Photos courtesy of the Fantasia International Film Festival)
