The 2026 Fantasia Film Festival is right around the corner, which means one thing: my watchlist is already getting out of hand.

That is kind of the fun of Fantasia, though. Every year, the festival puts together this wild mix of horror, action, animation, crime, drama, weird comedy, and films that don’t really sit cleanly in one lane. It’s exciting, but it can also be a little overwhelming. There is only so much time in the day, and unless you’ve somehow cracked the code on not sleeping, you’re going to have to make some tough choices.

So, with that in mind, these are the films I would keep an eye on.

Colony

Yeon Sang-ho is back with another zombie film, and that alone is enough to make Colony one of the big ones for me.

After Train to Busan and Seoul Station, it feels fair to say he knows exactly how to build panic, tension, and momentum without losing sight of the characters stuck in the middle of it. That’s the part that matters. A zombie movie can throw all the chaos it wants at the screen, but if you don’t care about the people running for their lives, it turns into noise pretty fast.

With the cast attached to this one, Colony feels like it should be near the top of a lot of Fantasia schedules this year.

The Samurai and the Prisoner

Kiyoshi Kurosawa will probably always be tied to J-horror because of films like Cure and Pulse. Honestly, that’s not a bad legacy to have. But he’s never been a filmmaker who stayed in one box forever, which is part of what makes The Samurai and the Prisoner so interesting.

This time, he’s taking on a Japanese period mystery based on Honobu Yonezawa’s 2021 novel. I’m always curious when a director known for atmosphere and dread moves into something a little different. A director’s sense of unease and timing can carry over in really interesting ways.

Blades of the Guardians

Yuen Woo-ping is back, baby.

That’s honestly the pitch. Blades of the Guardians is based on the comic series. With Yuen Woo-ping involved, the action is automatically the main reason to pay attention. Wuxia is his playground, and when his name is attached to something, you don’t really need a long explanation for why it belongs on the list.

Okay, maybe it’s a little bit of nostalgia talking, but I don’t care. There are certain people whose names still carry weight, and Yuen Woo-ping is one of them. If Blades of the Guardians gives us even a fraction of that classic energy, then it should be worth making time for.

The Mouths / Village of the Eight Gravestones

Takashi Shimizu returning to J-horror with not one, but two films? Come on. That’s an easy yes.

The Mouths and Village of the Eight Gravestones seem to offer two different flavors of horror, which makes this even better. The Mouths looks like the more unsettling supernatural option, the kind of movie that crawls under your skin and stays there longer than you expected. Village of the Eight Gravestones, meanwhile, brings in Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, which gives it a different kind of hook entirely.

You could pick whichever one fits your mood. Or you could do what I would probably do and just watch both.

The Specials

I have a weakness for oddball comedies, and The Specials sounds like it was built specifically to get my attention. A Yakuza enforcer has to put together a dance crew so they can enter a competition and use it as cover to take out a rival. That is ridiculous. I mean that as a compliment.

It sounds like the kind of premise that could fall apart immediately if the tone is off. Still, if it works, it could be one of those festival discoveries people keep talking about afterward. Gangster movie, dance competition, absurd comedy—yeah, I’m in.

We’re Nothing At All

Fantasia is obviously a great place for genre films. Yet, some of my favorite festival surprises tend to be the dramas hiding between all the blood, monsters, swords, and ghosts. We’re Nothing At All is the drama that caught my eye this year.

The Hong Kong film follows three people whose lives become connected after a bus explosion on Valentine’s Day. That kind of setup immediately makes me think of films like Rashomon or Vantage Point, where one event gets reframed through different people and different emotional angles. Done poorly, that structure can feel gimmicky. Done well, it can be devastating.

If handled with the right amount of care, We’re Nothing At All could end up being one of Fantasia’s heavier, more talked-about films this year.

The Leader

The other drama I keep coming back to is The Leader, which chronicles the Heaven’s Gate cult and the mass suicide that made headlines in the late ’90s.

It is a horrifying, tragic story, and strangely, not one that has been explored in narrative film as much as you might expect. That alone makes me curious, but also cautious. A film like this has to walk a very fine line. It can’t just treat the tragedy as a shocking hook. There needs to be a real point of view there.

Still, I’m intrigued to see what Michael Gallagher does with it. This feels like one of those films that could sneak up on people.

For the full 2026 Fantasia Film Festival list of programs, click here.

The 2026 Fantasia Film Festival runs from July 16th to August 2nd.