Fantasia Film Festival - one of North America’s biggest and boldest genre festivals - is well under way, and as usual, there’s no shortage of fun, unique, bold cinema screening at the festival. Some films are fast-paced, some downright hilarious, and some are filled to the brim with worms (actually, more than you’d expect). Whatever your drug of choice, Fantasia has you covered.

While there’s still plenty of amazing films to come, here are a few selections that got me through the first weekend of the festival:

Swallowed 

Carter Smith, one of horror’s loudest advocates for the inclusion of LGBTQ+ stories to the genre, has returned to the festival circuit with Swallowed: a story of two men - one gay, one curious - who agree to smuggle drugs across the Canadian border for some quick cash. Except when things go wrong, as they so often do, Benjamin and Dom find out that what they’ve swallowed aren’t bags of heroin, but rather psychedelic worms that leave their consumers paralyzed, drugged up, and well… erect.

The film boasts an all-star cast of performances from Jose Colon, Cooper Koch, Mark Patton, and Jena Malone. While Swallowed is a showcase of the four actor’s immense talent, the rest of the film pales in comparison. The writing is choppy, the storyline a complete mess, and the resolution felt a tad too rushed. The suspense is certainly there in the first half, but as the film goes on, it’s clear that Swallowed can’t get over its, admittedly fantastic, premise. 

All Jacked Up and Full of Worms

Yet another film overloaded with our wriggly friends of the dirt, All Jacked Up and Full of Worms is definitively a micro-budget, underground horror film. Alex Phillip’s debut has a bit of everything: the wandering eye of early John Cassavetes through urban sprawl, the body horror as social commentary of David Cronenberg, even the lunacy-filled-world building of 1970s George A. Romero. What starts out as two guys struggling to find sexual and spiritual happiness quickly devolves into a worm-fueled escapade, filled with hotel brothels, knock-off Insane Clown Posse members, and one very creepy sex doll.

I’d be going a tad too far to say that All Jacked Up and Full of Worms is necessarily a “good film,” but it certainly gets its point across. Despite it being a first film filled with so many newcomers, I was particularly drawn in by the lead performances by Phillip Andre Botello and Trevor Dawkins, as well as the killer soundtrack. All Jacked Up and Full of Worms demands your full attention, even as it tries desperately to avert your eyes. Don’t be surprised when a contingency of hardcore fans come for the film’s detractors with claims that “they just don’t get it.” With underground horror this explicit, that is all but an inevitability.

Next Door

One of three titles playing at Fantasia beginning with the word “next,” Next Door is a comedy-thriller out of South Korea. The debut by filmmaker Yeom Ji-ho is essentially a single location trainwreck. When Chan-woo, a young man who’s been studying to get into a police academy for five years, wakes up hungover in his next door neighbor’s apartment with a body laying in a pool of blood on the floor, he has to use all of his booksmarts to try to get away with a crime he doesn’t remember committing. While Chan-woo is hypothetically well-versed in crime scene etiquette, however, everything that could possibly go wrong does. What ensues is a tense, and often hilarious, struggle for one man to detach himself from a crime with his name written all over it.

Like many feature film debuts, Next Door can be overwrought and overwritten at times, but it never fails to entertain. The small cast is helmed by a superb performance from Oh Dong-min, who plays nervous, cocky, and scared with the best of them. Such an inspired performance commands you to let your guard down, turn a blind eye towards some glaring plot holes, and enjoy the ride. So, that’s exactly what I did.

Special Delivery

Already released in its home country, Special Delivery is another thrill ride out of South Korea making its North American debut at this year’s Fantasia Fest. This purebred action film lies squarely in the vein of Baby Driver, Drive, even Speilberg’s Duel. Balancing tense chase sequences with ear-to-ear comedy, Special Delivery tells the story of one extraordinary driver (played by Parasite’s Park So-dam) who delivers not-so-legal packages, when suddenly the care of a wanted man’s young son is thrust upon her. In stereotypical fashion, this action movie comes down to two things: save the kid, beat the bad guys.

That makes it sound like just another Fast and Furious movie, right? Well, I hate to betray my honorary status as one of Dominic Toretto’s family members, but Special Delivery is a quarter-mile better than almost any entry in that American franchise. The action is excellent, the script sharp, and the performances hilarious. It may be a run-of-the-mill story, moving a mile a minute, but it’s done at a level not often seen for “knock-off” blockbusters. It’s one of the highlights of Fantasia, one I’d happily buckle up for again. I hope Vin Diesel forgives me.