The Deep Dark just doesn’t quite dig deep enough, uncovering a hole that's barely big enough to bury itself in.

If decapitated heads, Tumblr-edit-worthy quotations about the human condition, traditional Slavic folklore, and harrowing cinematography are your thing, then look no further than Le Vourdoulak.

While Metal Skin may be uncomfortable or even unenjoyable viewing, it is a compelling, edge of your seat story of Australia’s male-dominated, rev-head culture, where burnt rubber and women who love fast cars are drivers of the male fantasy.

In Divinity, writer-director Eddie Alcazar seems to have crafted a readymade cult object. A film completely furnished with textual references, grotesque violence, hyper-stylised visuals, and mixed media experimentation, seemingly destined to attract a small coterie of like-minded fans and repeat viewers. The only issue is that I can’t imagine anyone sitting through this twice.

Mami Wata truly has the ability to spellbind, yet keeps its feet rooted in a deeply nuanced point of interest: an ever-changing reckoning with modernity.

Galluppi’s mindfulness in crafting The Last Stop in Yuma County truly shows what outstanding stories can come from taking a leap in the dark.

Behind the flashing neon lights, Mars Express’ messy and complicated core is a delight to unpack and crucially, is without the comfort of easy answers. While it’s not exactly reinventing the wheel, its entangled approach to familiar concepts positions it uniquely, and is well worth the price of admission.

Hood Witch is redolent of self-importance, so deeply invested in its own world that it barely pauses to consider the viewer’s ability not to care about its mediocre characters and plot delivery.

Fans of bizarre, esoteric and extreme films, who live around Melbourne and Sydney can rejoice, because it's that time of year - Fantastic Film Festival Australia is back once again.

With gut-wrenching violence and disruptive themes, and its critique of gender roles and cultural norms in Japan, cinephiles and fans of the more gruesome side of life ought to catch this slow-burning, thought-provoking thriller.

Where weirdness can often lose out in action films, the chaos, vibrancy, and fast-pace of Polite Society breathes new life into the genre, and serves as an excellent tone setter for what the rest of FFFA 2023 has to offer.

Beaten to Death is an uncompromising and particularly nasty slice of Ozploitation that mostly delivers on the bluntness of its title, with a few neat cinematic tricks up its sleeve.

The Outwaters is a found-footage horror film that takes the genre to new extremes of experimentation.

Zillion tells the story of the exhilarating rise and fall of visionary entrepreneur Frank Verstraeten, the man responsible for creating and owning – for a time – Belgium’s most chaotically electric nightclub.

Quantum Cowboys is a bold expedition into the Wild West, the mind-boggling multiverse, and the very capacity and parameters of the cinematic form itself.

Fantastic Film Festival Australia is back in town, promising cinema without restraints.

Set against the harsh backdrop of the Berlin Wall, Andrzej Żuławski's 1981 cult classic Possession is a genre-defying chronicle of marriage in decay.

All in all, After Blue (Dirty Paradise) is a wild and weird dreamscape of a film, complete with glowing crystals, high fashion accessories, and no less than 25 mentions of the words “Kate Bush”

Like a well thought out stage performance, Dreams on Fire aims not just to thrill, but also to move. Pulsing through its veins is a rich marriage of emotion and style, resulting in a film experience that commands attention, intoxicating the audience with an audio-visual assault on the senses.

One of the defining contentions of the film is who is justified in this situation, or rather who is the true captor and who is the true victim? Is it David, an obsessive programmer who didn’t think of the consequences of his actions? Or is it Al, a supercomputer who didn’t ask to be made but will stop at nothing to be free?