Fantastic Fest 2007

Brace yourselves, folks, I'm about to reveal to you my favorite film of Fantastic Fest 2007 thus far... Here is the official synopsis of AACHI AND SSIPAK, a ruthlessly unhinged animated feature from Korea that was my absolute favorite film at this year's Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival. "An animated film from director Joe Beom-jin about a futuristic world powered entirely by human feces. With the government anxious to control this sole, important source of energy, they install special sensors on its citizens' anuses to monitor production, while controlling the populace by distributing addictive popsicles." As wild as that sounds, it does not even do justice to the insanity that slaps you across the face in this frenetic, non-stop assault on the senses. Cross-dressing, break-dancing, repeated rectal surgery and abuse, decapitations, mind-altering popsicles, mutant smurf-like drone armies, sexual deviation of every variety and lots and lots of poo. Believe it or not, AACHI AND SIPAK not only presses all of the right "weird-o" buttons, but it totally delivers on all-cylinders as a straight ahead action film. Check out the links and embedded clips and trailers below and tell me I'm lying. Man, I love this movie. The world would be a better place if Dreamworks and Pixar would start delivering animated content on this level. A boy can dream, can't he? No matter what else is playing opposite this film, do yourself a favor and make the right choice. AACHI AND SIPAK will singe your eyebrows with it's pure smoldering cinematic heat. (Tim) First 5 minutes of the movie. The first of many incredible action sequences. Theatrical Trailer Teaser Trailer Twitch Film review from the 2007 Rotterdam Festival

Ain't It Cool News presents a Fantastic Fest secret screening. Everyone loves a surprise, so this year we are unveiling four titles during the festival that will not be announced until immediately before the lights dim. Past performance is never an indication of future delights, but suffice it to say, we have a few treats for you in this year's lineup.

Ain't It Cool News presents a Fantastic Fest secret screening. Everyone loves a surprise, so this year we are unveiling four titles during the festival that will not be announced until immediately before the lights dim. Past performance is never an indication of future delights, but suffice it to say, we have a few treats for you in this year's lineup.

Ain't It Cool News presents a Fantastic Fest secret screening. Everyone loves a surprise, so this year we are unveiling four titles during the festival that will not be announced until immediately before the lights dim. Past performance is never an indication of future delights, but suffice it to say, we have a few treats for you in this year's lineup.

"Expectations have been running high for new Thai horror film ALONE. Not only is it the latest from the directing duo behind SHUTTER – a film that I consider a minor classic of the Asian horror boom and the film that sparked the current wave of Thai horror – but the pair actually shut down production on a pair of solo projects they had in development so that they could reunite on this picture. Those solo projects sounded quite interesting and I hope they get back to them eventually but they definitely made the right decision. ALONE is quite likely the best pure horror film to come from Thailand since SHUTTER. We begin with a stellar premise. Pim is a young Thai woman living in Korea with her husband Wee. At her birthday a friend reads her fortune with a deck of cards and informs her that there is happy news! Something she has lost will soon return to her! But some lost things are better off staying lost. You see, Pim moved to Korea partially to escape the guilt of being the surviving half of a pair of conjoined twins. Her sister Ploy died after separation, a separation that Pim insisted on largely because she was in love with Wee and the guilt of choosing her husband over her sister and her sister’s resulting death has plagued her ever since. Much as she would prefer to avoid it, however, Pim soon has no choice but to return to her childhood home when her mother is felled by a stroke and – sure enough – it isn’t long before the spirit of her dead sister begins to angrily intrude upon her life. SHUTTER was as successful as it was for two primary reasons. The men at the helm know a good story when they see it and they are masters at manipulating tension, so much so that they can playfully telegraph what’s coming in certain scenes and still make you jump when they deliver the goods. ALONE has both of these strengths in spades. Thanks to their previous success they know have a decent budget to work with and the film looks fantastic as a result. Beautifully shot largely in a grand old mansion slowly going to seed, ALONE has an environment designed perfectly to bolster the story. And the story is very strong, the first half playing as a series of straight up, very effective jump scares before it moves into the real meat of the story on the back stretch. Once again the directors succeed in taking some of the basic tropes of the Asian ghost story, already well familiar to audiences, and then subverting them into something slightly different, something new and fresh. Thematically ALONE shows, once again, that the duo understand that the best horror is built upon universally recognizable emotional ground, this time drawing on themes of sibling rivalry, family guilt and romantic jealousy. A very, very strong sophomore effort." - Todd Brown, Twitchfilm.com Visit the film's OFFICIAL WEBSITE here .

A patient's failed anesthetic agent leaves her fully conscious during open-heart surgery, but paralyzed and unable to communicate with her doctors. Based on the real-life phenomenon of "anesthesia awareness", in which a patient becomes conscious during surgery - probably the most terrifying thing you can imagine, and this short film exploits that fear to the max!

One evening, Octave, a doll repairman of about 30, is at a country fair and discovers ANGE (Angel), a girl born without a spine and thus condemned to spend her life in a steel scaffolding. This chance meeting is destined to upset the young man's life and force him to confront the voices that haunt him day and night... "List takes a very Cronenberg approach to body horror. Cerebral yet shockingly visceral he builds tension through pacing, lighting, tone and - most particularly - sound, taking time to tell his story almost entirely without dialogue before hitting you with a nasty gut shot. The film is the story of a doll repairman who develops an obsession with a circus freak - a young woman with a broken spine who spends her days rigged into a metal scaffolding, billed as an angel fallen from the skies." (Todd Brown, Twitchfilm.net)

A photographer tries to catch an embarrassing moment in the life of a person in the public eye. He doesn't realize that time is working against him...

Director Koldo Serra live in person! Powerful survival thriller THE BACKWOODS is a definite last-but-not-least addition to Fantastic Fest 2007. Gary Oldman takes a break from Hollywood to delve deep into the European underbrush, emerging with a terrifying tale of civilized mankind out of its element. "...this survival-in-the-forest saga owes more to the likes of DELIVERANCE and STRAW DOGS than to its more explicitly horrific forebears. Gary Oldman, giving one of his least eccentric - and most powerful - performances, plays an Englishman who’s first seen driving his wife (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon) and another couple (Paddy Considine and Virginie Ledoyen) into the Spanish mountains for a stay at a remote vacation house. First, they make a stop at a nearby pub, where the inhabitants regard them with disdain and potential menace. Things don’t really become threatening, however, until the two men set off on a hunting excursion and come upon an apparently abandoned house, where they find a terrified young girl with deformed hands locked in a back room. Their decision to bring the child back to their place spurs a series of increasingly intense confrontations as the townsmen, armed with shotguns, come looking for her. Serra, who scripted with Jon Sagala, wrings plenty of drama out of the couples’ attempts to determine what to do next before their decisions result in brutal violence. The four leads are all terrific, and while their characters have flaws of their own, they maintain consistent sympathy as they try to survive in hostile foreign terrain." - Fangoria Visit the film's OFFICIAL WEBSITE here .