Each year, Fantasia International Film Festival offers one of the world’s greatest curated collections of horror cinema. But, between the high-profile zombie, vampire, or camp-slasher films, some of the more muted introspective stories can slip through the cracks. If you want a taste of the chillingly uncanny with a quieter touch, may we suggest this double-bill of films that had their world premieres at Fantasia: a feature film that delves into werewolf lore with a feminist Japanese twist, and a short film based on one of the short stories that inspired the novel Frankenstein.
When You Open the Door – dir Eriko Katagiri
Rating: 3/5
Those of us outside Japan – the majority of the audience for this film’s global premiere at Fantasia, a Canadian film festival – learn at the beginning of director Eriko Katagiri’s When You Open the Door that wolves are considered extinct in Japan.
No wonder Japanese werewolf films like this one are few and far between – leaving an opportunity to underline even further the outsider experience of such wolf-bitten characters, almost foreigners in their own land, in Japanese lore.
This is the story of a woman named Miki (Serena Motola), bitten by a mysterious wild wolf in a land where one should not exist. She is then called to a coven of disappearing aunties who feed and serenade her, encouraging her to unleash the unconventional chambers of her own heart – though she is warned it may lead her to crave the hearts of others.
As the film unfolds, we witness Miki gradually embracing her wildness within, which puts her at odds with her traditional (potentially abusive) boyfriend and the literally rigidly drawn lines of her graphic-design and drafting work.
The film opens slowly, with almost glacial pacing, as it plunges you into the daily mundanity of this quiet, seemingly insecure woman. Miki sleepwalks through her day, her sex life. Only a compliment from the boss seems to bring her a moment of joy. Some interesting editing of interstitial shots (courtesy of editor Inoue Yasu) suggest there is more depth to these still waters, though.
All of that changes, of course, as Miki starts to investigate the mysterious wolf bite that no one else believes, save this gaggle of crone figures – a stand-in for the prior generations of wise women’s wisdom – who encourage Miki to follow her instincts to their wildest and most surreal conclusions. It’s an insidiously feminist story, the subtle horrors sneaking up on you as the message unfolds over 86 minutes.
This directorial debut wears its low budget and relatively non-experienced actors well. A meditative watch leaves a reflective aftertaste with dangling questions to dig into, ranging from the meaning of a prominent pet bird and her mysteriously morphing eggs, the question of what drives a wolfish heart to childish candy cravings, and the cost of a woman following said heart to freedom in a culture that celebrates normalcy – a cost that is paid by both that woman herself and the people around her.
The Fated Hour – dir Peter Hengl
Rating: 3/5
The story of the creation of the novel Frankenstein is noteworthy enough that it has itself been adapted into several feature films. (Ken Russell’s Gothic from 1986 is the most fun, and perhaps the truest in tone.) Part of that lore is the Byron-Shelley party’s reading of a collection of French-translated German-language short stories in a tome named Fantasmagoriana – ghost stories all, but clear inspirations for the Gothic tales born of this wild writers’ retreat in 1816 Switzerland. (Most of these stories, including the one discussed here, can be read in English in the 1813 collection Tales of the Dead, by translator Sarah Elizabeth Utterson.)
Written and directed by Peter Hengl (Family Dinner, 2022), the 35-minute short film The Fated Hour is a surprisingly faithful adaptation of one of those stories: “Die Verwandtschaft mit der Geisterwelt” (“The Connection with the Spirit-World,” 1810) by Friedrich August Schulze. The short film is itself an Austrian and American co-production, set in Austria in 1810, but filmed in English.
It tells the tale of a woman named Florentine (Alina Schaller) who must make a terrible and tragic confession to her fiancé (Daniel Holzberg) as the eve of their wedding nears. (A welcome update to the short story, where the tale is told to friends, the fiancé himself perhaps never learning the full truth.) The story, it turns out, is actually about her already deceased sister Seraphine (Fanny Altenburger), who had an uncanny connection with the spirit world, and the strange experiences that led the girls’ father (Cornelius Obonya) to swear them to secrecy…until this moment.
What follows is a love story, if not a romance, brought to life in lavish period costumes. The cinematography feels dusted in a misty haze, both blanketing the production in forgiving soft light and emphasizing the presence of the spirit world enveloping the film’s every frame.
When You Open the Door and The Fated Hour were screened at the 2026 Fantasia Festival. Thank you to the festival for the screeners.
