The 2024 edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival is still going and ComicBook has some fresh reviews out of the festival’s genre and international film premieres. This time we’re reviewing campy slasher Carnage for Christmas and the transcendental horror film Kryptic.
Carnage for Christmas
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In director Alice Maio Mackay’s latest, the balance between camp, melodrama, and slasher is less a finely constructed dance and more a juggling act where sometimes one tone lingers in the air longer than expected. It will become immediately apparent to viewers of Carnage for Christmas, a queer slasher movie with an erratic editing style and quippy characters, if they’re going to vibe with its specific style of movie jazz; but even when it’s exploring one of its many faces for one scene and potentially losing you, it may very well win you back with the next.
In the film, Lola (Jeremy Moineau) returns home for the holidays having not only transitioned but having become a notable true-crime podcaster. Their small town is one haunted by urban legends and when they return, those wicked stories seem to crawl their way back. Mackay directs from a script they co-wrote with Ben Pahl Robinson, remixing gory horror movie beats with over-the-top drama; it’s a unique concoction, and not one that always works. One hilarious underlying theme is police ineptitude, though, which is not only spoken about more than once but made abundantly clear by the sloppy dress each cop wears on screen.
Carnage for Christmas does manage to do what it says on the tin and brings gore home for the holidays, but it is trapped between some procedural moments that sometimes bring down its pacing. As the credits roll, some will not be surprised to see Vera Drew of The People’s Joker credited with editing and VFX on the microbudget project, their style permeating through every wicked little cut that is found. It’s a weird one, but you’ll never see another movie like it, and the “let’s make a movie” energy at its core is admirable.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Kryptic
Directed by Kourtney Roy, Kryptic stars Chloe Pirrie (Black Mirror, The Queen’s Gambit) as Kay Hall, a woman who develops a peculiar fixation on a missing cryptozoologist and the beast she was hunting when she disappeared. It sounds straightforward in that regard, but Kryptic is far from a movie with a formal structure, instead harkening to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and Mulholland Drive, with some instances where the larger oeuvre of David Cronenberg make their influence clear (buddy, if you’re after some goop, this movie has it in spades).
In simple terms, Kryptic is a dramatic horror movie with sci-fi elements, but it feels aloof to box it down in those terms. It’s more peculiar than that and steers far from jump scares, instead lingering in a pool of existential dread. The Twin Peaks association is cemented from the very beginning of Krytpic, not only with the scenery but also in the bizarre characters that wander in and out of the narrative. As Kay moves through this world, her own self-actualization is put to the test through offbeat conversations and hostile moments. Kryptic is operating on vibes, flowing down a river of identity that’s being pelted with stones, which will no doubt turn off some viewers eager for a monster movie. On the whole, it’s a unique experience, and one that will keep you captivated, in part because you’re not entirely sure what will happen next or what just happened.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
