Attending Fantastic Fest 2024 was an electrifying dive into the strange, the macabre, and the beautifully cinematic. Hosted at the legendary Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, this 19th edition of the festival (September 19–26, 2024) celebrated genre filmmaking in its most vibrant form, reaffirming why Austin remains a nexus for horror, thrillers, and imaginative cinema.
The magic of Fantastic Fest
Known as the largest genre film festival in the U.S., Fantastic Fest is a gathering where horror aficionados, filmmakers, and curious cinephiles share one screen—and one endless conversation. It’s not just about premieres and programming; it’s about late-night debates in the lobby, meetups with international directors, and spontaneous creative exchanges that can only happen in a place where cinema’s wildest dreams are welcome.
The rule of Jenny Pen
Opening night featured James Ashcroft’s The Rule of Jenny Pen, one of the most unnerving psychological horror films of the year. John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush delivered powerhouse performances—Lithgow as a tyrannical nursing home resident and Rush as a paralyzed judge caught in a power struggle between reality and derangement. The film’s visual palette—sickly greens, deep reds, and desaturated yellows—made the claustrophobic atmosphere tactile, while its dissonant score heightened every paranoid breath and unsettling silence. Ashcroft’s framing, keeping characters literally pushed to the edges of the frame, was a haunting metaphor for social isolation.
Animale: A French fever dream
Among the festival’s hidden gems, the French film Animale stood out for its strange elegance. Set between nightlife excess and surreal wilderness, it told the story of a club kid descending into a bestial metamorphosis—both sensual and unsettling. With its fluid camera work, pulsating rhythms, and a synth-driven score reminiscent of early Gaspar Noé collaborations, Animale blurred the lines between horror and liberation, leaving audiences speechless by its end.
Why the festival matters
Fantastic Fest remains vital because it gives genre films the stage they deserve—where avant-garde artistry, low-budget experimentation, and cultural horror meet as equals. It curates a space where filmmakers from Japan, France, New Zealand, and Texas share kinship through the language of dread and imagination. For attendees like myself, that sense of community is the heartbeat of the festival: talking craft with a sound designer at the Highball, swapping notes with a composer who scored an indie creature feature, and leaving inspired by every eerie frame.
By the final night, as conversations spilled from the closing party back into the warm Austin air, one truth was clear: Fantastic Fest isn’t just about watching films—it’s about belonging to a world that worships the weird, cherishes risk, and keeps the glow of cinema’s most feral corners alive.