Fantasia Festival 2025: ‘Lucid,’ ‘Stinker,’ ‘Haunted Moutains: The Yellow Taboo,’ & ‘I Live Here Now’

All films played at the 2025 Fantasia Festival 2025

Lucid

Lucid exists in the same universe as Bliss, a similarly themed indie that deconstructs art and the artistic process. With Lucid, co-directors Deanna Milligan and Ramsey Fendall send the viewer into a hypnotic spiral. Mia (Caitlin Acken Taylor) struggles with finding inspiration for her latest piece. She’s thrown everything at the canvas, and her creativity refuses to spill out. Close friends suggest going to a psychic, who just might have the trick to unlock the block stopping her from reaching her full potential. She’s given a heart-shaped drug called lucid that promises to wipe the mind clean. But Mia is tossed into a fever dream of nightmarish proportions. Lucid is stylish, grungy, and punk af – a dream from which you may never wake.

Stinker

Co-writer and director Yerden Telemissov delights the audience with a sci-fi fantasy about being othered and learning to accept the things that make us different. Bakhytzhan Alpeis plays a homeless man named Sadyk, and he camps out near a small convenience store owned and operated by Nadya (Irka Abdulmanova). The two don’t get along, with Nadya frequently yelling at him to find a new place for his makeshift home. When an alien creature (Chingiz Kapin) crashes to earth, the trio rediscover personal truths and bond over their shared alienation. Stinker is a heartfelt exercise that’ll tickle the funny bone in the most honest, natural way.

Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo

Time travel and time loops are not new conceits, but we’re enjoying quite a trend over the last couple of years, from Redux Redux to Time Cut and Totally Killer. Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo throws its proverbial hat into the ring, borrowing the element of reliving the same day. Chen (Jasper Liu) and his girlfriend Song (Angela Yuen) hike into supposedly “haunted” mountains and come across a yellow raincoat ghost, which sets off a series of events that lead to Song’s death. To make matters worse, Chen begins reliving that day over and over and over again, each time having to witness Song dying. He must piece together various strange encounters to break the loop, and the journey is an emotionally grueling one. While the premise sounds good on paper, Haunted Mountains squanders any goodwill through tepid scares, a lackluster mood, and zero tension. Director Chia-Ying Tsai takes the material, written by Wan-Zhen Zou, and does his best to bring some style and sense of cinematic purpose to the screen. But ultimately, it’s an unfortunate execution that does little to actually frighten.

I Live Here Now

Julie Pacino’s directorial debut, I Live Here Now, is an immersive, surrealist wonderland. Lucy Fry plays Rose, a beleaguered actor trying to uncover her unique voice while navigating personal trauma. When she heads to a hotel to clear her head, she befriends Lillian (Madeline Brewer), a strange, demanding woman, and that’s when reality splinters. It’s methodical, at first, but it soon devolves into a psychedelic dreamscape that dares to drive Rose insane. Brewer is as magnetic as ever, with Fry offering a strong lead performance to counteract. Pacino, who also wrote the script, plops the viewer into a sugary, colorful vat of visual storytelling that completely arrests the senses. While it doesn’t completely stick the the landing, it does delight with its plush color palette and performances to die for.