Fantasia 2024 Review Roundup: Parvulos, Dead Dead Full Dead

We’re into the second week of Fantasia International Film Festival 2024, and it’s been another strong year for the festival. The 28th year came in guns blazing, with several films that are sure to be favorites of genre fans once they make their way beyond the festival circuit.

I’ve been busy over the past week-plus getting my eyeballs on some of the films out of Fantasia, and you can see some of my coverage here. That includes the holiday horror slasher Carnage For Christmas from Alice Maio Mackay, Julien Maury & Alexandre Bustillo’s culty serial killer thriller The Soul Eater, Dale Dickey kicking ass in The G, and Blu Hunt in Elric Kane’s supernatural horror flick The Dead Thing. I still have a number of reviews on the way to look forward to but in the meantime, here are a couple of capsule reviews for films that had their chance to shine over the weekend.

Dead Dead Full Dead

Image Credit: Fantasia IFF

A good murder mystery film should always be able to keep people guessing as to who the culprit is. And if it has to obscure the truth behind supernaturally transformed goats, interactive flashbacks, and victims getting involved in their own murder investigations, so be it. And that’s the hand writer-director Pratul Gaikwad deals his characters in Dead Dead Full Dead, which brings an absurdist touch to both its comedy and mystery.

The Indian whodunit centers its investigation on a couple (romantically and otherwise) of junior police detectives who are called to investigate the murder of an astrology influencer named Era (Swastika Mukherjee). The detectives, Zubi (Monica Chaudhary) and Balraam (Yug Italiya) are deeply in over their head as they have to deal not only with a group of suspects including Era’s umpire husband Rahul (Ashwin Mushran) and their shifty servant Chotu (Sachin Vidrohi), but also the fact that, for reasons potentially related to an eclipse, Era is still walking around and is being extremely unhelpful in their investigation.

Gaikwad’s surrealist approach to the whole story certainly won’t work for everyone. Some things just happen, and we’re expected to go along with it. Other parts of the comedy are played extremely broad, which may be off-putting but allows Gaikwad to play into the themes about the importance of making the most of the time you have. The cast is all very game here, with Mukherjee the standout as the bitchy Era. It gets to be a bit too much by the end and the mystery has a rather anticlimactic resolution, but it’s never not entertaining even when it trips over its own two feet or introduces one strange plot element too many.

Rating: 6.5

Parvulos

Image Credit: Fantasia IFF

I’m not usually one to complain that that a subgenre of horror has been played out. All any of them need is one film that figures out a new and fresh approach, and things are right back in business. But even I’m starting to think that we need a long, extended break from the zombie film.

Parvulos is a good example of why. Isaac Ezban delivers gory thrills, solid performances from his young cast and technical proficiency, but it still feels a bit rote. Ezban, who co-wrote the film with Ricardo Aguado-Fentanes, combines the zombie genre with the coming-of-age story as three brothers must fend for themselves after a pandemic resulted in a post-apocalyptic world. The oldest is Salvador (Farid Escalante Correa), who is missing a portion of his left leg but has adapted well, setting down rules that youngest brother Benjamin (Mateo Ortega Casillas) chafes against while middle sibling Oliver (Leonardo Cervantes) hopes that a cure is out there.

Things get rougher for the kids as things go on, in part because of the secret that they keep in the basement. But they also have to deal with their dwindling food supplies, rumors of a religious zealot group called Trumpets (as in the Book of Revelations) and their own internal struggles. The more Salvador tries to keep everyone safe, the clearer it is that they’re in way over their heads.

On a purely visceral level, Parvulos is brutal in the right ways. We get the violence, both physical and emotional, as these three brothers try to survive an impossible situation. And Ezban knows how to make the film look good, shooting everything in black and white but letting the red of blood and organs seep through the frame. But there’s nothing thematically here that hasn’t been done before, and it feels like old hat material. We more or less know what’s going to happen, with one single exception that provides the only thing that’s truly original here.

Ezban mines familiar images (bodies hanging from trees, people getting torn open from the middle), but none of it quite as memorable as it wants to be and a few weird touches of sophomoric humor don’t work at all. The performances from the three leads are quite solid; this is far from a total loss, and those who just want another zombie film but this time with kid protagonists will enjoy it. But ultimately, it’s just too preoccupied with the zombie genre’s more familiar steps to stand out on its own.

Rating: 5.5

The Fantasia International Film Festival takes place in Montreal from July 18th through August 4th.