Fantastic Fest, in addition to being the largest genre film festival in the country, has also been a place where queer horror and genre fare can find a place to shine. The restoration of Gregg Araki’s Nowhere and The People’s Joker both screened at the festival in 2023, and that’s just one example of how the fest’s programming gives voice to queer films. This year’s selection of queer films was exciting, campy, and above all, unapologetic. From possessed vacuum cleaners to dreamy ruminations on redemption to electric chemistry, there was something for everyone in the queer films showcased at Fantastic Fest this year.

Here’s a rundown of them all:

Body Blow (dir. Dean Francis)

What would you get if you took a neo-noir and made it 10 times sleazier and sexier than anything made in the last 10 years, and gayer too? You’d probably get Body Blow, the balls-to-the-wall erotic action thriller from Director Dean Francis. Aiden (Tim Pocock) is a dirty cop who’s trying to rein in his insatiable sexual appetites, which proves tough when he’s tasked with undercover patrol in Sydney’s gay district. Soon enough, he’s blackmailed into working for a drag queen mob boss, in the throes of an electric connection with a down-on-his-luck twink, and he might just be in over his head. Soaked in neon and blood, Body Blow is a must-see for anyone looking for a distinctly queer take on sleazy neo-noirs.

CAMP (dir. Avalon Fast)

Director Avalon Fast has crafted something unlike anything else this writer saw at Fantastic Fest with her sophomore feature, CAMP. After enduring several deeply traumatic events in her life, Emily (Zola Grimmer) is hoping to find solace no matter where it comes from. This is how she finds herself as a counselor at a camp for “troubled kids,” and meets a group of girls who will help her find this peace. CAMP uses a beautiful, haunting atmosphere and gentle hand to guide audiences through Emily’s journey as she seeks out redemption, and finds something trickier and more cyclical in its place.

There are images from this film that will stick with me forever: an angel carrying a torch through the woods, girls floating and sealing their reckless freedom with a kiss. It happens to be quite funny at times, too, which only adds to the unique spirit of Fast’s film.

The Holy Boy (dir. Paolo Strippoli)

If you could erase the pain of an emotional memory with a simple hug, would you? The Holy Boy, from director Paolo Strippoli, poses this question and then probes the horrors of a world where we forget that pain can serve us and not just cause us harm.

Former Judo champion Sergio (Michele Riondino) moves to the small town of Remis to get a fresh start and to try to outrun the memory of his deceased son. There, he starts a job as a PE teacher and then discovers Remis’s greatest secret: Matteo (Giulio Fetri), a high schooler, has the gift of alleviating people’s emotional pain through an embrace. This healing embrace has a cost, however, and the people of Remis will discover it as Matteo reckons with balancing his gift and the trials of teenage life, like having a crush on a bully and an overprotective father. What starts as an understated drama turns into a proper horror show that reminds us that the absence of pain can be even more dangerous than its onset.

Night Stage (dir. Marcio Reolon and Filipe Matzembacher)

Matias (Gabriel Faryas) and Fabio (Henrique Barreira) are frenemies. The pair are roommates and part of the same acting troupe, even competing for a chance at a bigger kind of fame on television. When Matias starts hooking up with closeted politician Rafael (Cirillo Luna), the couple discovers their electric chemistry as well as their fetish for public sex. Marcio Reolon and Filipe Matzembacher’s erotic thriller plays like an explicitly gay De Palma film, with suspense and tension building up with every public tryst, with both men finding themselves forced deeper into the closet the closer they get to what they want. With an ending that was one of the most shocking this writer has seen in years, Night Stage ultimately laughs in the face of respectability, offering an ecstatic, reckless alternative.

The Restoration at Grayson Manor (dir. Glenn McQuaid)

A tongue-in-cheek dark comedy from director Glenn McQuaid, The Restoration at Grayson Manor examines the complicated relationships queer people can have with their families.

In this case, Boyd Grayson (Chris Colfer) is a chaotic bisexual man who has more than a few mommy issues—namely that she’s been persistent in her crusade to get Boyd to carry on the family line, even if he doesn’t want to. After an accident leaves Boyd without hands, his mother takes him in and uses her excessive wealth to have a doctor try a radical new treatment: giving him new prosthetic hands controlled by Boyd’s subconscious. However, this seemingly selfless act might just be a cover for his mother’s own intentions.

At its best, Grayson Manor leans into its campy tendencies before it goes off the rails. All in all, it makes for an unhinged, if sometimes uneven ride.

Silencio (dir. Eduardo Casanova)

Horror has always been a genre interested in the real horrors of our world, and has always been a home for misunderstood monsters. In Eduardo Casanova’s Silencio, vampires are used as a parallel to queer people enduring the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. This might sound like a heavy-handed allegory, but in Casanova’s hands, it is a gorgeous and bold vision realized in dreamy hues and bloody joy. It is fearless in some respects but admirable for its full-speed-ahead sensibility. Spanning centuries, Silencio is beautifully made and felt, finding poignancy and humor in equal measure despite its heavy subject matter. Originally released as a mini-series, the episodes were edited together to create a feature-length cut for the festival that flies by and leaves the viewer thirsty for more.

A Useful Ghost (dir. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke)

The debut feature film from Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, A Useful Ghost, is a surreal, whimsical ghost story that asks, “What happens when a ghost has convictions so strong, they come back to their loved ones?”

Framed as a story told between a self-described “Academic Ladyboy” (Wisarut Homhuan) and repairman Krong (Wanlop Rungkumjad), A Useful Ghost starts as a romantic love story between a ghost who returns to the living world as a possessed vacuum cleaner and her former husband. By the time the second half of the film comes around, it turns into something completely different: a rumination on the nature of memory, resistance, and what happens when the State tries to quell unrest in supernatural ways. There are shades of Charlie Kaufman in Boonbunchachoke’s film, but he makes it his own charming, poignant, and ultimately bonkers film where treatises on loss and sequences of vacuum sex can co-exist without disrupting the flow of the story. 

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