It’s that time again for my annual sojourn to Fantastic Fest, the annual Alamo Drafthouse week long love letter to horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and just plain fantastic movies from all around the world. This year’s festival runs from Sept 18-25, here in Austin in the South Lamar location.

As in year’s past, I begin my coverage with a multi-part/day preview.

Fantastic Fest Preview Day One

Tusk

From the singular mind of writer/director and podcaster Kevin Smith, and conceived from one of Smith’s own Smodcast’s, TUSK is a story unlike anything that has ever been committed to screen before. A tale that is equal parts hilarious and horrifying, TUSK will stay with you long after the credits roll.

Closer To God

Dr Victor Reed has accomplished what many thought impossible, what many more thought criminal, and what still more thought deeply sinful and outside the proper scope of man: He has created another human being. Or, more accurately—though who really cares about accuracy in this world of 24 hour news cycles—he has cloned another human being. He has done so in secret, fearing the response that may follow if news were to leak out prematurely and without careful management. And when that does happen, the response is exactly what he wanted to avoid.

After a string of acclaimed short films, director Billy Senese steps into the feature world with a fiercely intelligent scientific thriller loaded with big ideas and challenging issues, fully expecting that audiences will keep up. While it may be too soon to call it a movement, Senese’s approach puts him in good company with recent efforts such as Zack Parker’s PROXY and Eron Sheean’s ERRORS OF THE HUMAN BODY as—if not a wave then at least a ripple—of filmmakers blurring genre conventions to challenge the increasingly murky and conflicted ethics of our polarized age.

Like the films mentioned above, the great strength of Senese’s work here lies in the fact that the fiction of his tale is not the science itself (which is perfectly plausible), while the interest is not showing off fancy technological innovations but in exploring how our current technological abilities impact—for lack of a better word—our souls. (Todd Brown)

Realiti

Vic is learning a lesson in the elastic nature of reality. He’s always had an inkling that what’s perceived and what’s actually real are not entirely the same thing. In fact, his awareness of this is precisely what has led him to a successful career in the media. But he’s becoming increasingly caught up in the criminal case of a woman who’s trafficking a drug that appears to warp time. When she’s captured with his wallet in hand, Vic realizes this disconnect may run much farther and deeper than he ever suspected, and looking behind the curtain may very well have severe consequences.

After making his debut with creature feature BLACK SHEEP before moving on to big-budget kid-friendly fantasy UNDER THE MOUNTAIN, New Zealand’s Jonathan King moves again in a surprising direction with his third effort, the micro-budget scifi thriller REALITi. A mind bending puzzle box conceived in part to demonstrate that big ideas are far more important than big budgets, REALITi plays like the bastard love child of Rod Serling and George Orwell as filtered through the classic New Wave. King and writer Chad Taylor create a recognizable but complex world here, riffing on ideas of perception and truth with the whole thing packaged up as a slick crime thriller.  A likely next step after a film about cannibal sheep? Not even remotely, but a very pleasant surprise. (Todd Brown)