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Amazing Fantasy Fest 2024 Review Round-Up: Black Eyed Susan, They Call Her Death, More
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Amazing Fantasy Fest 2024 Report: Part 1
Amazing Fantasy Fest is a genre specific film festival that recently completed its first year of operation. The event was held for seven days at the majestic Dipson Amherst Theatre in Buffalo, New York, from September 13th, 2024, to September 19th, 2024. The festival screened 21 feature films and 62 short films, 83 movies total. I attended three of the festival’s seven days (days I, 2, and 7), managing to see eighteen films total (ten short films, eight feature films). This report is going to be split into two parts, with part 1 reviewing the movies that I saw on days 1 and 2, and with part 2 reviewing everything that I saw on day 7. Each movie, regardless of length, will get a number rating (1 to 10). Short film reviews will appear first, followed by feature film reviews.
And so, without any further what have you, what exactly did I see at the first ever Amazing Fantasy Fest?
Amazing Fantasy Fest 2024 Report: Part 1
Short Films
Eccentrip: Co-directed by Taylor Martin and Chad Ridgely, Eccentrip is about a couple that attend some sort of rave like party where a pseudo tech bro grifter type (played by Ridgely with the sleaze factor turned up to eleven) gives them a weird drug that, I guess, is supposed to make the party better and more memorable. As you would expect, the drug is actually a super bad thing and induces a series of relentless nightmares that co-director and star Taylor Martin has to navigate and try to survive. Running around 15 minutes. Eccentrippacks in quite a bit of creepiness and nastiness and it will freak you out by the end, or at least make you feel uneasy (that’s what happened with me). The short’s final image should be a poster or a T-shirt design. Eccentrip also has a top notch soundtrack, with a killer end credits song. Definitely worth tracking down and checking out.
Rating: 9/10
Just Another Day in Paradise: I’m not entirely sure I fully understand this super goofy short, but it did make me smile. As far as I can tell, it’s about two people on an expedition into the jungle, and they encounter some incredibly weird things, like multiple people banging on wood logs in order to communicate. Why is this happening? Damned if I know. It’s all funny, which is what matters. I just wish I understood what the heck is going on. I’m going to assume that the people behind the short are fans of Airplane! (1980), because that’s the vibe I got from it.
Rating: 7.5/10
Forward: Written and directed by Paul McGinnis in his full on directorial debut and starring Jessica Zwolak, this fantasy short tells the story of an abused woman (Zwolak) contemplating suicide, only to be saved by her best friend (Amanda Woomer) via a phone conversation that leads to a comeuppance of sorts for Zwolak’s abuser, who shows up at the very end of the movie. While this short is generally well-made and acted (Zwolak is phenomenal), I’m not entirely sure that people are going to “get” the ending. I know I didn’t. It makes a kind of sense now that I know “what’s really going on,” but I think the short would be helped by having a moment at the beginning that lets on that what you’re watching is meant to be sort of “supernatural.” It could be done with a music cue of some sort, or a very, very brief opening titles moment where the movie lets on that what you’re about to see is “fantastical” in some way. As the short exists now, it’s maybe a bit too opaque. Other than that, Forward is moving and disturbing and, at least at the end, sort of weirdly funny. I liked it.
Rating: 8.5/10
Jane & the Brain: Written and directed by Hope Muehlbauer, Jane & the Brain tells the story of Jane (Gabrielle Nunzio), a young widow that can’t accept that her husband (Donovan Gale) is dead, and to deal with her grief she basically carries around her dead husband’s brain in a jar. When the short begins, watching Jane try to have a “normal” life with her dead husband’s brain is absurd and kind of funny. I mean, she goes on a picnic date to the park with a brain in a jar. How are you not going to laugh at that? As a visual, it’s ridiculous. As the short goes on, though, you see just how deep Jane’s grief truly is, and what started out as almost whimsical and kind of romantic starts to get darker and darker and more disturbing. And when Jane’s friend Carly (Alyssa Grace Adams) shows up and sees for herself, by accident, what the heck is going on with Jane, Carly tries to get Jane to confront her grief. You will not see the ending coming.
Jane & the Brain is easily the best short that I saw at Amazing Fantasy Fest. Acting directing, writing, the way it cuts together, the music, it’s nothing short of sensational from start to finish (Nunzio is pitch perfect as Jane, and Adams is terrific as Jane’s friend Carly). It’s also the only short that I’ve ever seen at any film festival that I’ve attended where I had to stifle wanting to bawl my goddamn eyes out at the end. Because I wanted to bawl my goddamn eyes out at the end. The ending is, in many ways, gross as hell, but it’s also perfect and beautiful. Considering what Jane goes through and the devastating emotions she’s experiencing, what she does makes a kind of sense. It’s nasty, yes, but you won’t question what happens. Again, it makes sense.
I wasn’t expecting Jane & the Brain to be as emotionally intense as it turned out to be. I wasn’t expecting one of the best movies I’ve ever seen about grief and how it can affect someone. I knew it was likely going to be good, as Muehlbauer directed the brilliant I Dare You to Open Your Eyes (check out my review of that flick here), but I wasn’t expecting Jane & the Brain to be the extraordinary movie that it turned out to be. Just amazing work. If it’s playing at a film festival near you, make a supreme effort to check it out. It will be worth it.
Rating: 10/10
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Feature Films
Nickel City Tinseltown: The History of Buffalo, NY Filmmaking: Co-directed by Adrian Esposito and Curt Markham and narrated by Markham, Nickel City Tinseltown is a feature length documentary that explores the modern indie film scene in Buffalo and Western New York and how it got started. The documentary starts with the general filmmaking history of Buffalo, which apparently goes back to the very beginnings of film (Buffalo is also the home of the first real movie theater in America). We see mention of movies like John Wayne’s Flying Tigers (1942), Marilyn Monroe’s Niagara (1953), some movie Jimmy Caan made in the 1970’s that I can’t remember the name of and didn’t write down, the horror flicks Fear No Evil and The Burning (both 1981), the Robert Redford baseball movie The Natural (1984), the Burt Reynolds/Goldie Hawn romantic comedy Best Friends (1982), and Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo 66 (1998). The indie movie scene doesn’t become a thing until Troma’s Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006).
I really didn’t know anything about Buffalo’s early movie history, and the overview of it is fascinating. Once the story gets to Poultrygeist and we get an interview with Troma co-founder Lloyd Kaufman (Kaufman is wearing a red polo alligator shirt in this interview, a piece of clothing I haven’t seen in decades. I have no idea why that’s important but it’s something I noticed and it stuck with me), the movie is a literal who’s who of indie movie talent. There are interviews with Gregory Lamberson, Debbie Rochon, John Renna, Sam Qualiana, Bob Bozek, Adam Steigert, Jason John Beebee, Richard Satterwhite, Paul McGinnis, Lynn Lowry, Rhonda Parker, Kim Piazza, and tons more, while we get clips from movies like Slime City Massacre (2010), The Legend of Six Fingers (2013), A Grim Becoming (2014), Killer Rack (2015), Model Hunger (2016), Message in a Bottle (2017), Johnny Gruesome (2018), Widow’s Point (2019), and Guns of Eden (2022) (there are other movies, too, but I missed their titles). The indie movie talent pool is deep in Buffalo and Western New York. The movie also shows the general film festival scene in Buffalo, with looks at the Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival (the precursor festival to Amazing Fantasy Fest), and the Buffalo International Film Festival, and then a brief look at the soundstage infrastructure that has been created for the area.
The assembled interviews are short and cut together well with the various movie clips, and the sort of “advertising” element of the story is well done and doesn’t come off as advertising. And at almost two hours, it feels like the exact right length for such an expansive story (you also get the sense that, if they wanted to, Esposito and Markham could have included even more stuff because there is likely more to the overall story). The documentary is also just incredibly entertaining, as the assembled talent are all interesting and have fun stories to tell.
If you’re interested in the history of the modern indie Buffalo/Western New York movie scene, you’re not going to find a better movie than Nickel City Tinseltown. And, most importantly, it makes me want to track down and check out everything that I haven’t seen. That may end up being the documentary’s most enduring legacy.
Rating: 9/10
Slasher Days of Summer:
Check out my full review of this horror-comedy here.
Ragdoll Assassin: Ragdoll Assassin is a brilliantly strange comedy about a young female criminal, Ashley the Ragdoll Assassin (Amelia Favata), who is attacked and gravely injured by her boss, mastermind Dino Infantino (writer and director Curt Markham), and as a result of the attack Ashley’s ragdoll is brought to life by a smattering of Ashley’s brain. Pissed that Ashley isn’t dead, Infantino sends other criminals under his employ to try to finish the job. They don’t succeed. While that is happening, Ashley strikes up a relationship with her somewhat disgruntled hospital doctor Timothy Kendall (Mark Bogumil). Dr. Kendall eventually helps Ashley evade further attempts on her life, while Infantino tries to complete his big criminal scheme. There’s also a whole thing involving a sort of supervillain called the Doom Wraith. That’s essentially the plot of Ragdoll Assassin, but the truth is you don’t end up liking a movie like Ragdoll Assassin because of its plot. You’re going to have a much better time listening to the movie’s superb and intricate dialogue, catch as many jokes as you can, and marvel at the various absurd characters on display.
And, man, Ragdoll Assassin has a bevy of terrific, and terrifically weird, characters. Ashley the Ragdoll Assassin is bizarre, yes, but among the assorted villains that are a part of Infantino’s gang she’s probably the most normal of the bunch. John Slade (a brilliantly unhinged Sean C. Sanders) is a Special Forces war veteran that’s a walking parody of John Rambo. Danielle Smith is a Bobbie Skidoo, a woman that acts like it’s still the 1920’s. Ivory Tower (Lauren Kaylor) is an uber leftist/feminist college student parody that will make you question whether or not you’ve met someone exactly like her in real life (I have). There’s X-Treme (Andy Rich), a guy that’s best described as happily incompetent. And there’s the perpetual hippie doper Roach (Mark Parker), someone who seems to live in a forever haze of dope smoke. How the heck are all of these misfits supposed to work together? Why would anyone put this team together? Could it be that Infantino just isn’t that good of a crime boss?
Maybe. Infantino seems like a smart guy (you know, for a criminal), but he doesn’t seem to have what it takes to be successful. He does try, though, so you have to give him that.
As for the sentient Ragdoll, you’ve never seen anything as adorable in an indie comedy before. The Ragdoll will make your heart melt.
There are just so many jokes in Ragdoll Assassin, so many moments that will make you laugh out loud. The movie does lose a bit of steam in the middle, but it regains its momentum and finishes with a damn near heartwarming ending.
I loved Ragdoll Assassin. A goofy riot from start to finish. Definitely something you should seek out once it’s officially unleashed into the rest of the world.
Rating: 8.5/10
Rich Interior Lives: I didn’t like Rich Interior Lives at all. I mean, it isn’t a bad movie, nor is it a bad concept. The acting is generally good, and there is a sense of dread throughout most of its running time, as the various plot points begin to merge. The issue I have with the movie is that it takes way too long to get to where it wants to go, and when it ends it feels like the ending is the start of a better and more interesting movie that we’re never going to see. So, when it’s over, it feels like what we just watched and experienced was a big waste of time.
Basically, Rich Interior Lives is about four people coming together for a celebratory dinner party of sorts. There’s the couple of Colt and Mary (Parker Shook and Teresa Byrne), people who have “couples issues” that may have something to do with Colt’s religious fanaticism (he’s a pastor or part of a mega church or some bullshit). Then there’s the party host Dana (Kei’la Ryan), who has the hots for Colt and tries to seduce him (something that Mary notices immediately). And then there’s Logan (Gregory Shelby), who is, I think, Dana’s brother and someone who has the hots for Mary. Once they’re all together, we see seemingly endless dialogue scenes where you can’t trust anyone, you don’t really like anyone, and you don’t know what the heck is going on. Some of what we see is kind of interesting, and some of it seems like it’s just using up time. Why couldn’t this part of the movie go by faster? That is the movie’s biggest problem. Why can’t all of this go by faster? Why is this movie 100 minutes?
This movie needs to be shorter. Faster. It needs to get where it wants to go sooner. The big payoff at the end, where we find out what the heck is really going on (I won’t spoil the end beyond saying we find out what Colt’s deal is), should come sooner. And the payoff should feel like more of a payoff, a bigger deal. Right now, the ultimate payoff is the start of a potentially better, and more interesting, movie.
I don’t know, maybe if I see it again my opinion will change. It’s possible that I missed something. But right now? I don’t like Rich Interior Lives at all.
Rating: 5.5/10
They Call Her Death: Written and directed by Austin Snell, They Call Her Death is a loving homage to low budget Italian/Euro westerns, with a dash of Euro horror and Blaxploitation, and a brutal as hell pro wrestling brawl featuring a real deal indie pro wrestler named Moonshine Mantel. And it was all shot on film. Featuring a cast of top notch theater actors from, I believe, somewhere in Kansas (Snell is from Kansas), and an absolutely phenomenal soundtrack, there isn’t a dull moment in the movie’s 92 minute runtime.
The movie is about a woman, Mrs. Pray, who goes on a revenge quest after her husband is brutally killed by a bounty hunter. Armed to the teeth and ready to kick goddamn ass, Mrs. Pray tracks down every single person that she can find that had something to do with her husband’s death and she dispenses violent justice on them. Bad guys get gutted, some get fed to pigs, some get their asses handed to them, and one of them gets his testicles smashed in one of the most ruthless testicle smashings in cinema history. And that’s really just the beginning of Mrs. Pray’s revenge quest.
And then there’s the Grim Reaper that pops up every so often. This apparition will scare the crap out of you. Its face is gnarly as hell. This ghost also appears in one of the movie’s best sequences, where we see Mrs. Pray feed the remains of two rat bastard bad guys to her pigs on her farm. The way the scene is edited, with the soundtrack and everything else, it’s a moment that will make you stand up and cheer (I didn’t do this in the theater but, man, I wanted to).
They Call Her Death is a movie that you absolutely need to see. Check out the movie’s Facebook page here and keep track of its festival run and then whatever happens after that (some other sort of theatrical release schedule? A physical release? A streaming release?). That’s what I plan on doing. This movie needs to be seen and spread far and wide. I absolutely loved They Call Her Death. Just an amazing movie.
Rating: 10 /10
Black Eyed Susan: Black Eyed Susan is one of the most fucked up movies that I’ve ever seen. Ever. It’s a brilliant piece of social science fiction that, when it’s over, will make your goddamn skin crawl. Written and directed by Scooter McCrae and shot on film, Black Eyed Susan is a movie about a guy named Derek (Damien Maffei) who, in the midst of a major life crisis (he doesn’t have steady work and is living out of his car), reluctantly takes a job at a tech firm testing out a state of the art sex doll named Susan (Yvonne Emilie Thalker in a super brave film acting debut). Susan’s creator, Gilbert (Marc Romeo), needs his old friend Derek (that’s how Derek got the job) to see if Susan’s new programming works. And what does Susan’s new programming involve?
Physical assault. Gilbert developed Susan to be hit and beaten and basically abused and show that abuse on her body. If she can bruise in the right way, if she can “take damage” without falling apart or malfunctioning, then she can go on the market. Participating in this scheme greatly disturbs Derek, as Susan is incredibly lifelike and he’s not into hitting women. But Derek is broke and he needs the money and he doesn’t see any other way out of his current predicament. So he goes through the Susan testing procedure. It’s all so goddamn messed up.
I don’t want to say any more about what happens because it’s best to see Black Eyed Susan as fresh as possible and experience the ultimate depravity that comes out at the end of the movie. You don’t think it can’t get any worse than a guy living with a sex doll that’s always naked, can’t walk (Gilbert and his technicians have been unable to find a way to have Susan walk sexily), and tries to get him to hit her. I mean, she’s a robot. She isn’t a real human being. She’s synthetic. And yet she looks and smells and acts and sounds like a real woman, a real person. And she wants to have sex with him and get smacked around and beaten. How more fucked up can it get?
And then it does. It really, really does.
There’s also the whole thing where Susan keeps referring to her “cunt” over and over again. She never uses the word “vagina” or any sort of playful euphemism when talking about her lady parts. It’s always “my cunt.” You get the sense that the customer base for this sex doll is so misogynistic that Susan’s programmers deliberately set her language parameters up to say “cunt” all of the time, because that’s what the “real men” using Susan would say all of the time. For Susan’s eventual owners, that’s all she would be. A cunt. That word isn’t an accident.
What’s also great about Black Eyed Susan is that, on some level, you just know that there’s likely some tech bro asshole developing something like Susan the sex robot that you beat the shit out of right now in real life. It’s science fiction that’s happening right now, or it’s about to happen because, hey, we live in a sick world, why wouldn’t it happen? How many modern science fiction movies can you say that about?
Damian Maffei does an amazing job as Derek, as does Thalker as Susan. And Romeo and Kate Kiddo, who appears as the voice of Amanda, one of Gilbert’s technicians, do a great job as some of the worst people who have ever lived. That’s all I will say about them.
It sounds like Black Eyed Susan is having issues getting selected for various film festivals, both here in the United States and abroad (during the movie’s Q and A, McCrae said that the movie hasn’t been picked for any of the major European festivals). Hopefully that all changes and the movie’s positive word of mouth gets the movie into more festivals. It deserves to be seen and celebrated before it eventually hits home video (and if the whole festival issue doesn’t get resolved, the movie’s eventual home video release may be the only way anyone ever gets to see it. It doesn’t sound like many streamers are interested in it, either, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Yes, the movie is harsh and disturbing, but it’s also top notch moviemaking and a fantastic movie. That should count for something).
So if Black Eyed Susan is playing at a festival near you, find a way to get to that festival and see it. Black Eyed Susan is a movie that you don’t want to miss.
Rating: 10/10
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Up Next: Part 2!
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