Feature - Fantastic Film Festival Australia 2025 Program Launch/Death of a Unicorn

Fantastic Film Festival Australia (FFFA) is back for its 2025 programming, and cinephiles with a taste for the experimental, esoteric, and independent, brace yourselves! From April 24 to May 16, Melbourne's Lido Cinema and Thornbury Picture House, along with Sydney's Ritz, will transform into havens for the boldest and most bizarre in cinema. This year's lineup is a fever dream of audacious storytelling, featuring 24 films, including 18 premieres that promise to challenge, delight, and utterly bewilder.

Kicking off the madness is Hell of a Summer, the directorial debut of Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk. This horror-comedy slasher throws us into the chaos of a summer camp, blending laughs with blood-curdling screams. For those craving homegrown talent, FFFA 2025 doesn't disappoint. The festival proudly showcases four new Australian features: the 16mm psychedelic roadtrip A Grand Mockery, a boy's night out in Pure Scum, how possession runs in the family in Salt Along the Tongue, and moonlit magic in Sword of Silence. Each film is sure to offer a unique lens into the landscape of Australian cinema.

In a nod to cinematic mastery, the festival presents a Lynne Ramsay retrospective, featuring her seminal works: Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin, and You Were Never Really Here. It's a rare opportunity to delve deep into the psyche of one of cinema's most uncompromising directors, the queen of movies about people having a pretty awful time. And for those seeking a truly immersive experience on the light-hearted side, FFFA’s infamous nude screening returns with Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Yes, you read that right, it's time to get cheeky with the groovy, garish spy in a way you've never imagined. Just remember: no shagging.

There's also French body-horror Else for those who like to parlez-vous vomit, along with Bertrand Mandico’s Dragon Dilatation, following up his hallucinogenic 2023 festival entry After Blue: Beyond Paradise, previously reviewed by yours truly. We have Inside Out from the eyes of spermatozoa with Spermageddon, the in-cinema-only found footage phenomenon It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This, and Umbrella-palooza, the beloved Australian distributor’s triple feature of their brand new 4K restorations of Hardware and Pulse, alongside Vincenzo Natali’s tech-noir Cypher.

Closing the festival with a bang is John Woo’s action masterpiece Hard Boiled, accompanied by a live improvisational score from Melbourne jazz ensemble The Rookies. It's a fusion of film and music that promises to be nothing short of explosive. Tickets are flying faster than the bullets from Inspector “Tequila” Yuen Ho-yan’s gun, with the Q&A screening of Melbourne crime thriller Pure Scum already sold out, so secure yours now and prepare for a cinematic journey that defies convention and embraces the extraordinary.

Image courtesy of VVS Films.

But of course, the yearly program launch would be naught without its launch film, which just so happened to be the Australian premiere of A24’s new horror-comedy, Death of a Unicorn.

Death of a Unicorn is the kind of movie that can only come from the wheelhouse of late A24: a semi-surrealist comedy wrapped in creature-feature camp, served with a wink and a generous dose of fake blood. It’s a bizarre blend, equal parts E.T. (the bonding of Jenna Ortega’s sympathetic daughter character and the titular unicorn), Jurassic Park (what happens after said unicorn uhh, “dies”), and Alien (any guesses as to how the unicorn's parents feel about this turn of events) - only instead of Spielbergian wonder, we get pharmaceutical madmen, side-winking humour, and a decent case for Paul Rudd’s post-Ant Man career. And honestly? It works… mostly.

Will Poulter is a comedic revelation here, delivering big on techbro douchery, selling the role of an entitled snob of a son that seems to believe his surname gives him equal stake in the company. Paul Rudd, ever the MVP of middle-aged charm, dials in a performance that’s equal parts exasperated dad trying to make it work with his begrudging daughter (Jenna Ortega), and dopey “yes man” corporate opportunist. His chemistry with both Poulter and Ortega keep things buoyant even when the plot threatens to gallop off the rails. Jenna Ortega, as usual, commits as much as the role will let her, both behind the camera as executive producer, and in front. She plays it much straighter than the guys, grounding the madness with a performance that’s free of winks at the camera. Her character may be surrounded by absurdity, but Ortega does the best to give the film its stakes - and a bit of soul.

Taking place in a mansion (luckily for Richard Grant's healthcare CEO, no Luigi to be found), Death of a Unicorn thrives in its absurdity. It skewers late-capitalist biotech ambitions while delivering glossy mythological mayhem, but where it stumbles is in its overreliance on middle-of-the-road CGI. For a film that’s clearly pulling from technical masterworks, its digital creature design lacks the tactile magic of its inspirations. It’s serviceable, but never quite impressive, given the creature is literally a horse with a horn on its head, and using a real horse with a not-so-real horn would've upped the visual comedy factor.

Still, the film’s not trying to reinvent the genre, as much as I'd love for a full-bore creature feature - it’s having a laugh, flipping tropes, and giving us an ecological cautionary tale with a flavouring of rainbow-tinged satire. It's twisted, funny, and totally aware of its own ridiculousness, even if this awareness might not get it over the line for some. A24 has proven that even as they veer towards a slightly more commercial path, they'll continue championing for the strange, and Death of a Unicorn gallops confidently into weirdness with blood on its hooves and a twinkle in its eyes.

Follow Eli on Letterboxd, Twitter/X and Instagram.

Follow FFFA on Letterboxd, Facebook and Instagram.

Death of a Unicorn screened for the 2025 Fantastic Film Festival Australia program launch, and is screening in cinemas now - more info here.

Fantastic Film Festival runs from the 24th of April to the 16th of May. Check out the festival website for tickets and more info here.