Fantasia 2024: Bookworm, Shelby Oaks, The Count of Monte Cristo

Let's get this out of the way, first and foremost: I'll probably never love a festival more than Montreal's Fantasia International Film Festival. It's long (runs at least two weeks), genre-focused (horror, sci-fi, animation, you name it), and eclectic as all get-out. On top of that, it's exceedingly Canadian. So it was a delight to learn that, for my first year as an Assistant Editor for RogerEbert.com, I'd get to do more than pilfer Fantasia's ever-generous screener library remotely this year - I would fly up to sunny Montreal, Quebec, and join the festivities.

The fest, which opened on July 18th this year and runs through August 4th, is a treasure trove of the year's most out-of-the-way genre works. Japanese and Korean thrillers aplenty, French and Canadian (and French-Canadian) indies runneth over, and you'll see more future Shudder Originals than you can shake a Psycho Goreman at. But the primary appeal for me has been steeping myself in the festival's culture -- an ugly American, taking his first brave steps across the national line to the relatively comfortable climes of French Canada. Sure, there are all the little nuances that set Quebec apart: the French language dominance, all the tres-continentale casual outdoor smoking. But there are the little festival traditions too: knowing audience members meow before every screening, or cheer when a wacky, decades-old commercial for Shin Ramen plays at the top.

But I also have a job to do, so here I am, breaking down the many, many films I'm catching at the festival during my weeklong stay here (and, surely, several days after I've returned stateside). And before we can get into all the scrappy little indies and international pictures Fantasia has to offer, it's worth looking into some of the bigger-ticket items that have studded this first week.

Fantasia's opening night picture was a deceptively sweet one, albeit with a pedigree that makes it perfect for the fest: Ant Timpson's "Bookworm," a surprisingly gentle and wry family adventure that borrows some of its thematic DNA from Timpson's previous work, "Come to Daddy," cleans up the gore, and replaces it with a heaping helping of Taika Waititi-an whimsy. Like "Daddy," it's another fragmented tale of fathers and children navigating a crisis, but this time with the roles reversed: this time, it's a precocious eleven-year-old know-it-all named Mildred (bright-eyed newcomer Nell Fisher, "Evil Dead Rise"), guiding her absentee, failed-magician father, Strawn Wise (frequent Timpson collaborator Elijah Wood) through the wilderness to capture footage of a fabled black panther. They need the reward money to help out Mildred's mother, who's lapsed into a coma -- which is the reason Strawn, who sired Mildred at a one-night stand and has never met her before, has finally dropped into her life with nary a clue how to parent. 

It's a delight to see Wood trudging through the same mystical plains he did decades prior with the "Lord of the Rings" films, this time in a much smaller, more intimate tale of failed fathers forced to grow up simply to keep up with their children. The vibe of "Bookworm" is decidedly '70s, from the hazy filmic look to the psychedelic folk tracks that permeate nearly every other scene. There's more than a bit of "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" in its deadpan drollness, which Wood takes to nicely with his signature cluelessness. He and Fisher are fantastic foils, Fisher's outspoken, encyclopedic knowledge throwing the barely-blustering Strawn for a loop in scene after scene. Then, when they actually face danger, whether it's a mysterious backpacking couple (Michael Smiley and Morgana O'Reilly) with sinister intentions or the elements themselves, it's often Strawn's cowardice and anxiety that get them most in trouble. As a showcase for the two actors, "Bookworm" serves as a lovely, if occasionally repetitive, tale of estranged family connecting for the first time through crisis.

It's hardly perfect: The low budget takes a hit on some of the more ambitious VFX sequences, and the first act takes its sweet time to establish the stakes for the adventure we're about to embark upon. (Granted, the first shot of their journey, which stretches the boxy 4:3 aspect ratio to a glorious scope, complete with title drop, is inspired.) And the quest itself takes a rather circuitous route, which can help for character-building but often results in a loss of momentum. That said, "Bookworm" shows Timpson stretching his legs and trying out another film about fatherhood in a far different mode, going more "Goonies" than grindhouse. It's an admirable effort, even if it doesn't all coalesce.

One of the most anticipated films of the fest has been "Shelby Oaks," the directorial debut of YouTube film critic-turned-filmmaker Chris Stuckmann. Stuckmann is a known entity with a big fanbase, so it's tempting to cut him a little slack: after all, he seems a gregarious, enthusiastic dude in his videos, an enthusiastic fan of horror who wants to share his love for the genre by making his own entry. Luckily, thanks to his cachet, a successful Kickstarter campaign, and now the aid of executive producer Mike Flanagan and a recent acquisition by NEON (hot off the back of "Longlegs"' success), he has his chance to show what he's learned in over a decade of film criticism. Unfortunately, "Shelby Oaks" demonstrates his ability to regurgitate the elements of the genre he loves, but not innovate on them. 

Frustratingly, critics have been hand-tied to reveal much about the film itself, preferring to save the "surprises" for a more general audience. As such, the way I can describe the film only really encompasses a certain stretch of the work, before other filmmaking choices take over. But what I can say is that, in its opening minutes, "Shelby Oaks" establishes itself as a found-footage documentary of sorts, investigating the mysterious 2000s disappearance of one of the hosts of a then-popular YouTube ghost hunting show called "Paranormal Paranoids." Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn) is still missing more than a decade on, and her older sister Mia (Camille Sullivan) has been looking for her ever since. Eventually, a mysterious tape proves a break in her investigation, and soon she's even hotter on the case to discover her sister's whereabouts.

To its credit, "Shelby" successfully feels like a big-budget horror feature; cinematographer Andrew Scott Baird has a flair for both the grainy immediacy of YouTube and VHS footage, and the more contemporary styles of filmmaking that crop up throughout the picture. It's decently atmospheric, with Stuckmann pulling off the basic mechanics of a spooky-scary scene, whether it's building slow tension or jumping out at you to yell 'boo.' 

The problem is that none of this cinematic grammar seems to go anywhere or coalesce into something that feels satisfactory the more it progresses. The first half has a fascinating DIY investigatory feel to it -- it channels the true-crime impulse to pore over footage to zoom in on new details, or chase down leads late at night despite all warnings. But as the clues start to take shape, the central mystery starts to feel a bit too familiar, an uninspired gumbo of everything from "The Blair Witch Project" to "Rosemary's Baby," with even more obvious cues eagle-eyed horror hounds will recognize. Sullivan seems a capable actress, but the script gives her little to do but follow bread crumbs and stare trembling off in the middle distance. (There's also a queasy story thread that ties women's worth to their fertility, which Stuckmann doesn't complicate enough.) 

The film grasps at a kind of "elevated" horror (inasmuch as those terms mean anything), but doesn't feel confident in doing much more than aping the things Stuckmann has seen work in other pictures. At most, it feels like a sizzle reel for the filmmaker, a chance to prove he can at least do the job, even if the story goes through the horror motions. I'm still interested to see what lessons Stuckmann learns from this experience and if he can leverage them into a more original, cohesive vision for his second try.

Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" is no stranger to film adaptations - I'm partial to the 2000s Jim Caviezel/Guy Pearce one myself - but Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière's 2024 version is a massive, lavish, and exceedingly French take on the material. Bursting to life as a kind of novelistic superhero movie, "Le Comte de Monte-Cristo" feels of a kind with Martin Bourboulon's "Three Musketeers" duology from last year: baroque, expensive-looking, and exceedingly streamlined.