Aarcflick

Coyote seems downright benevolent compared to the creatures in Coyotes. This horror-comedy from Grave Encounters director Colin Minahan, which had its world premiere at the 2025 Fantastic Fest, shows us a pack of the titular animals unleashing a people-eating orgy. They're menacing, the characters are funny, and the combination of the two results in a film that makes you laugh and boo with glee at the unhinged carnage. A wildfire has swept through the Hollywood Hills, trapping comic book artist Scott (Justin Long), his wife Liv (Kate Bosworth), and their daughter Chloe (Mila Harris). The fires seem to have driven a pack of coyotes out of the woods and closer to the houses. Equally trapped are their playboy neighbor Trip (Norbert Leo Butz) and Julie (Brittany Allen), the sex worker he's hired for the night. At first, no one realizes the danger they're in. Everything quickly becomes clear, and the gang has to figure out how to force the beasts to retreat. Director: Colin Mini...

This film evokes a haunting and unhealthy spell; it's a fairy tale of death-longing and erotic submission. It ingeniously merges the real and the fictional into a trance-like state, a state that has sometimes struck me as somewhat static in Lucile Hadzihalilovic's previous films, but not here. As strange as it may be (and indeed, at first glance, utterly absurd), this film captivated me with its two outstanding lead performances—from Marion Cotillard and newcomer Clara Pacini—and a strident soundtrack. Cotillard plays a diva-like film actress named Cristina, the protagonist of a new adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, filmed in a studio in a remote, snowy location in late 1960s France. She wears a magnificent outfit, a glittering, slinky white gown and crown, a look she carries off with great haughtiness and seriousness. Pacini plays Jeanne, a teenager in a nearby foster home, haunted by memories of her mother's death, whose beaded necklace she keeps...

Vivieno Caldinelli's hilarious "Scared Shitless" is a horror-comedy with a giant monster and plenty of scatological humor. Actual scatological humor. There are more plumbing jokes than poop jokes! And who are you going to call when an unstoppable, human-eating creature crawls out of the toilet to devour your loved ones in one bite? This isn't a job for an exorcist. The Ghostbusters can't help you. For something this twisted, your only recourse is to call those intrepid experts who make the world go round. Those working-class heroes who fearlessly charge into battle: The Plumbers. With slimy creatures designed and created by Steven Kostanski, director of Psycho Gorman (who has a new film of his own at Fantasia this year), "Scared Shitless" is a gory special effects romp. The monster, an otherworldly worm creature created in a secret lab by legendary Canadian comedian Mark McKinney (Kids in the Hall), travels through a building's pipes to emerge and de...