reviews

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

‘Bad Shabbos’ is a Gas
Menemsha Films

There’s enough reason to be tense about a meeting of future in laws, or machatunim if we’re being precise, without manslaughter but what’s a dead body between family? Bad Shabbos, a black comedy from Zack Weiner and Daniel Robbins, ups the ante on a religious standoff over family dinner by adding an accidental death that might look like a murder if it was revealed. Nervous guests and family dynamics are pushed to their anxious brink as they individually, then as a group, decide how to handle a stinky corpse hanging out in the powder room.

David (Jon Bass) and Meg (Meghan Leathers) are planning to get married, which requires Meg to begin the process of conversion in order to satisfy Jon and his modern religious family. In order to smooth the transition, they’ve invited Meg’s parents to Friday night dinner at David’s parents’ place so everyone can meet and her parents can get a sense of the tradition. Tensions are already high with Jon’s mother (Kyra Sedgwick) being less than accepting of Meg, Jon’s brother, Adam (Theo Taplitz), being a medicated foil to social situations, and Jon’s sister, Abby (Milana Vayntrub), sparring with her partner, Ben (Ashley Zukerman) who doesn’t seem to get along with anyone. After Ben clashes with Adam, Adam cooks up a scheme to dose him with his prescription laxative. But Adam somehow doesn’t know about Ben’s congenital digestive issues, and the cocktail of medication and dairy products knocks Ben off his balance and into the bathroom fixtures. Discovering his dead body, the siblings decide to protect Adam by covering it up and then are forced to do so during a hectic dinner where dynamics and relationships are already being tested.

The sprawling apartment, the countdown until Meg’s parents’ door knock, and a helpful doorman (Method Man), will all keep the bickering family on their toes as they navigate how to handle the tell-tale heart no longer beating in their powder room. That’s what creates the tension and allows for the comedy to spill over and into the New York City high rise.

Bad Shabbos wants us to laugh until we maybe toot and it’s mostly successful. Panicking family members and the comedic chops of people like Vayntrub and Method Man make for the tense kinds of laughs you want in this single location bruhaha. It’s not quite Clue or an Agatha Christie story, but it doesn’t seem to be trying to be more than a good old cluster of calamities where everyone is in on information at different times. It’s a less bloody version of a movie like Happy Times (2019), which sits closer to “comedy” on the “black comedy” spectrum making it easier to recommend to your extended family.

While there are certainly laughs to be had, much of Bad Shabbos relies on some outdated Jewish jokes and tropes about Jewish mothers it might be time to move on from. Jokes about the banks, the media, and unaccepting mothers are tired, but perhaps Bad Shabbos is taking ownership of them or exploring a personal experience that I can’t invalidate.

Bad Shabbos is an imperfect single location black comedy but one I am so happy exists. Clashing cultures, relationship and family dynamics, and tight dinner quarters are always ripe for solid explorations and gags, but chucking in a dead guy and an implicated murderer ups every version of that ante. For those looking for a harmless laugh, especially one about their own culture or similar experience with one, Bad Shabbos is a little delight, and a bit of a love note to the Jews of NY.

Bad Shabbos opens in NYC May 23, 2025 and LA and select cities on June 6, 2025

‘It Feeds’ is the Off-Season Sport for Fans of Jump Scare Greats
Black Fawn Distribution

The opening of It Feeds sometimes seems at a hint to the ending, but that’s only because it’s so reminiscent of another story about a supernaturally gifted cleanser of evil spirits. The cold open has its gifted psychic therapist working her way through a darkened world on another plane and witnessing a beast seemingly trapping a young child. It’s a lot like the finale of Insidious. This original Canadian horror feature has a lot in common with the great modern horror franchise, but it doesn’t seem to want to compete with it so much as stand proudly beside it.

Ashley Greene leads as Cynthia, a psychically gifted therapist who performs supernatural cleanses on her clients under the guise of offering traditional mental health care. As a way of protecting herself and her daughter (Ellie O-Brien) from prying eyes or those experiencing difficult demons, she has a set of rules to prevent letting their secrets out or bringing too much supernatural hazard in. When they meet a frightened young girl covered in burns who begs for Cynthia’s help and her garish father (Shawn Ashmore) who refuses it, they face an ethical dilemma where they have to decide if they should help her and potentially expose themselves to danger, and whether they should heed the warnings of the sharp patriarch.

 The rules of Cynthia’s practice are quickly established, but so are the rules of the movie’s in-world villains. It’s smart and makes for consistent storytelling where the stakes and dangers are always clear to the audience. Of course, it all comes down to cheering on Cynthia to slowly make the decision to assist, which requires the film to bring the danger closer to her. Cynthia has reasons to be reluctant and her daughter has reasons to push her, so they’ll each have to face or avoid the dangers on their own until Cynthia has to metaphorically suit up.

Writer/ director Chad Archibald knows his audience and knows his genre and either pays a lot of homage to it or borrows heavily from it. While the comparison to Insidious is apt and worn on the film’s face, it also has some plot elements that feel like Let the Right One In or even The Omen. The girl’s father’s motivations are difficult to track which makes for a clever secondary villain when different characters have different ideas about how to best a dark entity. It’s in these “disagreements” that It Feeds becomes more than another in the canon of demon jump scare movies.

Canadian horror fans will rejoice not only at another on our list of horror successes, but at the gaggle of Canadian genre icons like Ashmore, Julian Richings, and Juno Rinaldi (probably more of a comedy icon but I still cheered at her appearance). It’s still a good time to be a Canadian horror fan, and It Feeds is here to remind us.

It Feeds has a lot of unique elements that make it a worthy twist on familiar skulking-dark-entity horror, but in a lot of ways is a truncated version of those movies. It holds its own on plotting and scares, but much of it will feel familiar to fans of the canon of James Wan. Though I don’t expect it to spark its own long-running franchise of spinoffs and sequels, I do expect to see more from Archibald who could submit It Feeds as quite the impressive reel in a campaign to direct more like it.

It Feeds hit select theaters in April of 2025

‘Novocaine’ Wants to Remind You of When Action Movies Were Fun
Jack Quaid as “Nate” in Novocaine from Paramount Pictures.

That’s not to say that directors, Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, are the only ones out here trying to thrust movie watchers back into the action movies of yore. Michael Bay and Doug Liman have been trying the same with films like AmbuLAnce and Road House. So with a surprising twist on the action comedy toned with splatstick comes Novocaine, a blood-soaked action comedy that breaks through the chains of midnighters.

Jack Quaid and his overflowing charm lead as Nathan Caine, the mild-mannered bank assistant manager living his life within the confines created by his condition. Caine can’t feel pain, so to avoid any life-threatening accidents, he lives life in a box made of smoothies (he could bite his tongue if he chews!), watered down coffee, and tennis balls acting as metaphorical and literal guardrails. Caine’s life finally gets tastier when he meets Sherry (Amber Midthunder), a colleague with a forkful of cherry pie and a whole other experience with self-inflicted pain. When their bank is robbed and Sherry is taken hostage, Caine uses his condition as his superpower and takes every kick, punch, bullet, and burn with ease and valour so he can rescue his dame.

The simple set up sends the every-man into the underworld fray, but Novocaine is more than just an average Joe taking on unreal baddies. It takes that premise and mixes in some gnarly gore (with this and The Monkey, those of us who laugh at good gore are having a great year), and a host of tropes that feel ripped from 80s action films. Its early reveal is massively forecast but simultaneously difficult to see until you clue into the sort of film you’re watching. Its gory midsection is sometimes tiresome but does its best to stay fresh, then the third act barrels into throwback action that’ll leave a queasy audience ready to cheer.

Novocaine almost never asks you to take it seriously which is to its own detriment. Dancing a little bit too close to parody, it stuffs the film with a comedy version of a cliched cop partnered with a serious version of one who still seems completely inept at police work. Pit them against the world’s dumbest and most brash bank robbers (seriously, they could learn restraint from the robbers in Point Break), and I guess you can see why the skinny bank manager would take this battle on his own.  It makes the lore of the cops and robbers difficult to buy into and sucks some of the comedy out of Caine’s splatter parade by being a bit too dumb. It’s perhaps worth it to see Ray Nicholson go full Bodhi but he is not given room to be Sonny Wortzick.

While it’s tempting to compare Novocaine to the other average Joe movies that succeeded John Wick, it’s much more on a plane with Baby Driver and Boy Kills World where a guy with a particularly special skill takes on larger than life villains with a specific motivation, the whole affair being brightly lit with saturated colours (that really make that red blood pop). Novocaine isn’t the next in line of average Joe shot-em-ups, it’s a reminder of a time where the best movies had action stars dangling off the sides of a city bus.

Novocaine hits theaters March 14, 2025.

‘Stranger Sings! The Parody Musical’ is a Balm for the Binge-Watcher

If you’re in Toronto and twiddling your thumbs to pass the time between now and the fifth season of Stranger Things, then you might want to pop by the Randolph Theatre. On the heels of parody musical shows like ‘Evil Dead: The Musical’ (which graced the same Toronto stage), comes this campy sing-songy riff on one of the most watched Netflix series.

Per their release, the stage production is hot off… Off-Broadway and ready to play to a converted church full of Torontonians:

After its successful Off-Broadway run, where it won seven Broadway World Awards (including Best Musical), this hilarious ‘80s-infused parody of Stranger Things is making its Toronto debut with an all-Canadian cast (after previously performing at Oshawa’s Regent Theatre this summer). The timing couldn’t be better, with Season 5 of Stranger Things on the horizon too.

Mostly covering only the show’s first season (save for some nods to a hunky lifeguard, a brooding red head, and a member of the Hellfire Club), this musical is very accessible and doesn’t require a learned or studied level of fandom to feel in on the jokes. That said, there are plenty of easter eggs for eagle eyed fans who come ready to engage with the winking version of the show.

The Canadian cast seems to have a blast performing each track, with standouts like the opening number and Barb’s (Sydney Gauvin) epic solo. While the whole cast brings the comedy-musical noise, cast standouts are the “boys” (Jean Bladon, Charlie Clements, and Alekzander Rosolowski as Dustin, Lucas, and Mike respectively). They toggle so well between delivering lines like twenty-somethings pretending to be teens pretending to be kids and belting genre-bending tunes, you’ll be surprised they can continue to impress with their dance moves.

‘Stranger Sings! The Parody Musical’ is a gut busting love letter to your favourite Demagorgan-laden show which is what makes it a successful parody. Winking at something you love as a means to take the piss out of it is the kind of gag fans can get in on without ever isolating casual viewers. If you like live theater, having a laugh, and watching people frantically change wigs between beats, then this stage play is one of the better ways you can spend an evening in YYZ.

For more details, showtimes, etc. head to their official page.