Small Gauge Trauma Shorts 2019 Block [Fantasia Festival 2019]

As with every year, Fantasia Film Festival is also a place to showcase the talents of filmmakers that specialize in making short films of all genres. This year I tackled the “Small Gauge Trauma” block and thankfully didn’t find a single bad apple in the whole bunch. These shorts aren’t just creative, but they’re incredibly original and delivered in the realm of horror big time.

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The Incredible Shrinking Wknd (El incredible finde menguante) (2019) [Fantasia Festival 2019]

Alba, her boyfriend, and their friends head out to a country cabin of her childhood to party and hang out, as the weekend advances, Alba finds herself in a shrinking time loop where she must figure out why this is happening and how to stop it.

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Charlie Says (2018) [Blu-Ray]

Attempted peeks behind the curtain of the Manson Family and what led to the murders of Sharon Tate and her friends is a rocky road. It’s a narrative that can be exploitative, cheap, disrespectful, and either glorifies Charles Manson or worse, paints Manson’s cult as victims that were manipulated in to becoming murderous monsters. “Charlie Says” dabbles in the latter material where Mary Harron’s film boils down to a bunch of women being conned by a failed musician who would have sold them out at the snap of a finger.

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Harpoon (2019) [Fantasia Festival 2019]

Munro Chambers is one of the most underrated actors working in film today. He’s been a man mostly working in the corners of film with unsuspecting genre fare and every time he’s managed to turn in stellar performances. In “Harpoon” he manages to deliver a very layered and impressive turn as Jonah, a perpetually cursed protagonist who is revealed to be something and someone completely different every time Rob Grant’s twisted dark comedy reaches a new turning point. “Harpoon” is a fantastic addition to Fantasia this year, putting to film a morbid and weird amalgam of comedy, relationship drama, survival thriller, and horror.

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The Lion King (2019)

Jon Favreau’s “The Lion King” is very much like Gus Van Sant’s “Psycho.” It’s a glossy, new setting, with a bold new cast, but when you cut right through the nostalgia lenses, it’s basically the same movie all over again. “The Lion King” doesn’t leave a lot of room to surprise its audience, as it basically plays it safe and copies the original film almost verbatim. Why watch a remake of “The Lion King” when you can simply stay home and watch the 1994 original? I can’t think of much of a reason, save for the all star cast.

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