Month: July 2025

Fantasia 2025: ‘Burning’ is a Surprisingly Feminist Rashomon Thriller
Fantasia Film Festival

It’s only a matter of coincidence that I recently made my way through Little Fires Everywhere which also started in media res with characters reacting to a home burning down leaving the audience to wonder what led to it. The similarities between these stories mostly ends there, but Burning does have that in common with the limited series.

Burning (or Ot), out of Kyrgyzstan, is somewhat of a black box for those unfamiliar with the film culture of the area or who know director Radik Eshimov from his work in television production (where he focuses on comedy). Though there are few laughs to be found in this haunting tale of subjective truth that ends in a pile of ash and a conversation lit by flashing lights.

As I mentioned, the movie begins after the fire as townspeople gather around the local convenience store (or “depanneur” for the Montreal festival audience) to swap stories of the days leading up to the events. The movie is then broken into three parts, each being from the second-hand perspective of someone who was in the house: the husband, the wife, the mother-in-law. It becomes a spooky tale that cleverly uses shifting perspectives and repeated moments and lines to change the views of the happenings without changing the ultimate truth. Eagle-eye watchers who prefer to examine scenes for what isn’t being shown directly will have fun here, but beyond that, audiences are slowly forced to face truth, subjectivity, and perspective as the movie rails on.

At the risk of saying too much, what’s special is how this movie discusses subjective truth and the perspectives of women, especially how they are squashed in larger conversations. “Maybe it’s all just a lie,” and “what if it’s the truth?” mark the final scene and were left seared into my field of vision as the finale pressed on. Burning’s Rashomon style tale so well examines the idea in a way that will ring relevant for most anyone on any side of any border.

But it does so without ever forgetting that it’s a horror movie. In ways reminiscent of Rear Window or Attachment in how it lets the horrors exist while characters might be unreliable or misinterpreting what’s in front of them. There are hard to watch gross-out scenes, djinn focused and other religious frights, and the scares one might associate with Rosemary’s Baby. Everyone has a turn at playing the monster, even those just recounting the tales as told to them.

Burning is the festival movie that utterly surprised me, showing up unsuspectingly as a haunt about a witchy mother-in-law and her immature charges as told through the eyes of gossips. As its story pressed on and the horror escalated, my expectations were delightfully subverted and I was left well-fed by such a rich horror story.

Burning played at the Fantasia Film Festival

Fantasia 2025: ‘Hellcat’ Leaves You Wondering Who is Infected
Hellcat Movie Still
Blue Finch Films

You awake to find yourself jostling around in a trailer. A disembodied voice emanating from a disembodied canine head informs you that you’ve been infected, and you’re on a clock to get to the only doctor who can help you. Stay calm lest you make it worse.

Lena (Dakota Gorman), a no-nonsense resourceful woman, does what we probably hope we’d all do and struggles to find her way out of the moving trailer using her wits and the random items tossed about her new cage. Lena concedes she is struggling physically, but it’s because of her pregnancy and not due to the mysterious infection the voice of the driver insists she has. The clock is ticking as Lena moves farther away from any civilization in which she belongs, and without her phone or a clear view to the outside, she is running out of time and completely at the whim of a ruthless driver who insists what he is doing is to keep her safe.

The chamber piece, or single location horror, becomes a battle of wits on the open road that leaves Lena struggling for a way out while also struggling with what is happening to her body. While the idea of a trapped person trying desperately to figure out what is happening while using limited items available to them feels much like Oxygen or Buried, Hellcat has even more in common with 10 Cloverfield Lane as the audience and lead struggle to decipher if their captor is helping them, trapping them, or a bit of both. Clive (the driver played by Todd Terry) is balanced but desperate and reads sometimes like a paternal character doing his best, but his best comes by way of threats, drugs, and off-screen violence.

Hellcat is mostly simple which can feel stretched in for a feature film runtime, but the powerhouse performance by Gorman makes the excursion an event. Almost all of the movie’s emotional weight comes from the lead’s stellar performance, one that’s peppered with extreme physicality.

Writer and director Brock Bodell has made a movie, like the aforementioned Cloverfield installment, which intentionally leaves the audience guessing. As Lena makes her way around the trailer while at the behest of Clive’s small cues, the audience is meant to attempt to decipher what caused Lena’s bite and why Clive is so insistent on his actions. The movie only gives the audience the information it wants them to have, and does so with breadcrumbs and in waves, then asks them whether they would subscribe to the same conclusions as Clive. It’s a fun game that makes it worth looking through the leads and into the background.

Hellcat is a stripped-down horror tale meant not to be slotted into a category until its larger reveals become broadly known in the zeitgeist. Its horror comes from toggling the true imminent threats and having its lead struggle along with the audience to decipher the real enemy.

Hellcat screened at the Fantasia Film Festival