Feature - Fantastic Film Festival Australia 2026 Program Launch/They Will Kill You
Images courtesy of Eli Robinson.
Fantastic Film Festival Australia is once again descending upon Melbourne and Sydney like a beautifully cinematic meteor, and honestly, what a privilege it is to stand directly in its blast radius. Every year, FFFA promises “cinema without restraint”, and every year it somehow finds new boundaries to gleefully snap in twain. 2026 is no exception. If anything, it feels like the festival this year has truly embodied this energy, stepping boldly into all facets of its identity: a delirious, genre‑bending carnival of the strange, the sublime, and the aggressively unhinged.
With screenings across festival mainstays of Hawthorn’s Lido and Randwick’s Ritz cinema (alongside recent additions of Brunswick and Thornbury Picture Houses), this year’s program is a love letter to the outer edges of film culture. We’ve got techno-influenced brainrot (www.RachelOrmont.com and Radu Jude's Dracula), resurrected cult classics (Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Near Dark, and Twilight) different flavours of horror (opening night pick Hokum, Uzumaki, Let The Right One In, and Penny Lane is Dead, just to name a few), and at least more than a few films whose synopses defy belief (Flush, New Group, and new addition to the ‘fest The Weed Eaters). FFFA has always excelled at curating a lineup that feels like it was assembled by a benevolent trickster god (and in the hands of artistic director and honorary host Hudson Sowada, alongside programming by Melbourne's most affable cinema buff Alexei Toliopoulos, maybe it was), but 2026 pushes that ethos even further - a festival where the meditative and the maniacal join forces.
At the beating heart of my personal schedule is Youtuber-turned-filmmaker Curry Barker’s Obsession, fresh off of audience buzz at the US’ Fantastic Film Fest and Overlook Film Fest. A supernatural horror about a lovelorn twenty‑something who makes a wish on a cursed novelty toy, it starts as a fantasy of wish‑fulfilment and curdles into something far more sinister. On the other end of the horror spectrum is Koji Shiraishi’s About a Place in the Kinki Region, a new twist on the docuhorror format that follows the disappearance of an occult magazine editor. Coming from Japan's honorary godfather of found footage, this one may sound simple, but knowing Shiraishi, I'm sure there's something otherworldly waiting in the fog.
If FFFA has a patron saint, though, it might be the single‑location meltdown - and not the first involving a toilet, for those who remember the 2023 program's Holy Shit. Enter Grégory Morin’s Flush, a furiously inventive French dark comedy that traps a middle‑aged cocaine addict in a nightclub bathroom, with his head wedged in a squat toilet after a drug deal goes sideways. It seems like the kind of film you end up walking out of, or walk out laughing. But with more local programming, the slate hits just as hard. David Ward’s Lenore is a distinctly Australian cyber‑horror, assembling a collage of Alexa, iPhone, DV and Hi‑8 footage. In the basement of an empty suburban house, unemployed filmmaker Max Wren obsessively assembles a tribute to missing influencer Lenore, surrounded by hard drives, monitors, and a creeping sense that something in the edit bay might be waiting to make a cut of its own. It’s exactly the kind of boundary‑pushing local work FFFA exists to champion.
Then there are the festival’s crown‑jewel oddities. Craig Denney’s The Astrologer (1975), long considered lost, before being discovered in a box of porno mags and restored by the American Genre Film Archive, is a vanity‑project fever dream. A con‑man psychic actually develops powers, with the lead role played by none other than the director himself, culminating in a film that already seems primed for a spot in the outsider-cinema pantheon. Pair that with a big‑screen outing of Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer - still one of the most notorious, gleefully transgressive yakuza splatter epics ever made - and you’ve got a festival willing to push its audience right to the edge of their seats.
But beyond the titles, Fantastic Film Fest Australia is about the ritual: the pre‑screening buzz in the foyer, the strangers you end up debriefing with on the tram home, the way a whole room recoils, laughs, or holds their breath in unison. It’s cinema as a shared hallucination - sometimes beautiful, sometimes disgusting, and always alive. If you’re ready to spend a few hours over the next few weeks (from the 23rd of April to the 16th of May) living in the liminal space of your local cineplex, FFFA 2026 has your seat waiting.
Image courtesy of Warner Bros.
Now, to discuss the film accompanying the festival program launch, Kiril Sokolov’s They Will Kill You.
They Will Kill You is a deliriously propulsive action‑horror hybrid, one that channels the anarchic spirit of Evil Dead, the cat‑and‑mouse tension of Ready or Not, and the heightened, operatic violence of Kill Bill. What distinguishes it is the director’s unmistakable sense of rhythm: with a steady build of effects-heavy setpieces, each encounter is more grotesquely inventive than the last. The story follows Asia Reaves (Zazie Beetz), an ex‑convict who takes a housekeeping job at The Virgil, a century‑old Manhattan high‑rise with a history of disappearances. Beetz is magnetic here - funny, furious, and physically committed. Her performance as an action star here remains on par with the film’s tone as it veers into supernatural absurdity, especially once the building’s Satanic underpinnings come into focus.
Sokolov stages violence with gleeful excess. One early standout sequence sees Asia ambushed in her room by a masked intruder, Bob, leading to a brutal, claustrophobic fight that escalates when more residents - Kevin (Tom Felton) and Sharon (Heather Graham) - join the botched assault. Asia’s improvised counterattack, including a moment where she bites through a lamp wire to electrocute herself and her attackers, is pure grindhouse spectacle. The choreography is tight, the editing sharp, and the effects - both practical and digital - lean into exaggeration without losing tactile impact. The film’s middle stretch embraces full video‑game logic: resurrecting enemies, sentient body parts (Sharon and her roaming eyeball is a highlight, fitting perfectly into FFFA’s visual motif), and a series of vertical‑level transitions through The Virgil’s labyrinthine floors. Patricia Arquette’s Lily Woodhouse, the building’s icy manager, brings a theatrical menace that pairs well with Paterson Joseph’s more conflicted Ray, selling their partner dynamic.
Sokolov’s musical choices amplify the chaos. The soundtrack leans heavily on licensed hip-hop, rock, and electronic, with tracks from RZA, Apashe, and Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields’ duo, Dead Man’s Bones, all lending themselves to moments where sound and image lock into a propulsive, adrenalised groove. If the film falters, it’s in its emotional beats, which struggle to breathe or hold much weight amid the carnage. Asia’s fractured relationship with her sister Maria is compelling but often overshadowed by the film’s commitment to momentum. Still, the final act - wherein the sisters confront both the cult and each other - lands with an appropriate weight.
Ultimately, They Will Kill You is a riot: stylish, savage, and unapologetically maximalist. The film wears its influences on its sleeve, and thanks to this sheer commitment to the bit, it’s an easy recommendation for anyone who enjoys their films loud, bloody, and wickedly satisfying.
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They Will Kill You screened for the 2026 Fantastic Film Festival Australia program launch. For more info on the film, click here.
Fantastic Film Festival Australia runsfrom the 23rd of April to the 15th of May. Check out the festival website for tickets and more info here.