Anthony Cousins and John Karsko’s cryptid sequel, Frogman Returns, trades DIY roughness for polish, with a Lovecraft twist and a rival cryptid hunter in Ghostbusters gear. It’s camp, it’s creepy, and it might be the perfect Halloween watch.
Screened at Toronto After Dark, Sun, Oct 18th Cineplex Scotiabank Theatre
* Spoiler Alert
Anthony Cousins and John Karsko’s sequel, Frogman Returns, raises the bar for campy parody while delivering a love letter to all things cryptid. What makes this film such a solid sell is how the story captures why we love cryptids more than ghosts. With Halloween approaching, there’s all the more reason to seek this film out!
Although familiarity with the original helps, this sequel works reasonably well as a standalone film. Still, I didn’t think it was fair to review it until I’d tracked down a copy of the original to watch, too, allowing me to make comparisons. Hence the delay to this review. The first film tries to be serious, with very strong The Blair Witch Project influences.
Three broadcast journalists turned directors revisit the December 2024 night South Korea’s lawmakers raced to lift martial law. In The Seoul Guardians, here’s how the footage holds up as a thriller, and why it brings Tiananmen Square to mind.
Unless viewers are already in the know, what The Seoul Guardians does is look back at a crisis that took place in South Korea on December 3, 2024, when then-President Yoon Suk Yeol declared emergency martial law and attempted a self-coup. He accused the political opposition of collaborating with North Korea, and in order to prevent lawmakers from entering and voting to lift martial law, he ordered police and military forces to seal off the National Assembly.
To an outsider, this was a moment that changed how the world looked at this nation. Whether outsiders reacted with xenophobia or something much worse, there are insights to be had. Broadcast journalists turned directors Kim Jong-woo, Kim Shin-wan, and Cho Chul-young documented everything, cinéma vérité style, and what’s presented is bold. The people with the power to lift martial law were scaling walls and roofs. A quorum must be made in order to get anywhere, and when push comes to shove, that’s when this work starts to earn its wings.
Finding tenants is easy when you welcome the dead. Getting them to pay rent is another matter, and Welcome to Ghost Mansion turns that predicament into a spooky, surprisingly sweet comedy.
If Welcome to Ghost Mansion (訳アリ心霊マンション, Wakeari Shinrei Manshon) ever happens to get an animated adaptation, I can imagine it being something like Maison Ikkoku. Although the setups differ, there are some amusing parallels: the building is a worn-down apartment complex whose residents are hardly conventional. They are spirits! The resident manager, Kaoru Shinonome, is hardly fazed by that, and rather than try to convince the living to share the space with the undead, her advertising welcomes spirits who need a place to stay. No, this story isn’t Hotel Transylvania. There’s no young daughter coming of age here, but there is a family gradually coming together.
There’s no big threat yet, but across the three volumes released so far in English, I’m finding that this supernatural comedy has room to grow. In fact, the original Japanese edition is still ongoing as of October 2026, with six volumes, and the English publisher is moving quickly to get the first four volumes out this year. The other two may well be planned for later in 2027 to keep pace.
When a strange brew gives Ricardo superpowers, and he doesn’t know what to do with them, what’s presented in Matapanki turns his frustration about life’s smelly roses into a gloriously scrappy rebellion, fuelled by punk rock and punches that send heads flying.
Played at Toronto After Dark Festival Thu, Oct 15th, CineCycle
If there’s ever a crazy, primal, rage-fuelled desire to punch someone out and you know it’s best not to, may I suggest watching Diego Fuentes’ Matapanki (2026) do the work instead? It’s so punk rock, some viewers may well wonder why this film hasn’t arrived in theatres before. After a huge debate with a certain telecom company, I’m with Ricardo (Ramon Galvez) in wanting to get that frustration out, stick it to the man, and not worry about the ramifications. With a wonderful soundtrack from the anti-monarchist punk-rocker Brits of Idles, I can scream “oh yes” and hope the corporations get what’s coming to them.
Here, our young hero lives with his grandmother, and he loves her dearly. After meeting up with Claudia (Antonia McCarthy) and Mella (Diego Bravo) and having a good time out, he finds a strange brew that changes his life around! It turns out the bottle was planted, and after being made a guinea pig, he’s ready to hand out his own brand of justice!
From Disney ballrooms to vampire masquerades, Nocturne Gala founder Anna Stankevich discusses the magic of formal dances and bringing the Vampire Ball to Victoria, BC.
Get your passes for the upcoming Blood Moon Ball in Victoria here.
Formal balls may seem like a thing of the past, something only seen in cinema, but that’s not the case! Based in the Greater Vancouver region, Nocturne Gala is an operation that wants to change that perception. Founder Anna Stankevich (pictured right) is a ball enthusiast and she says they are still ongoing. When she and her husband immigrated to Canada in 2022 and didn’t find anything similar, she started up this business. Balls still happen across Europe and as for why they never took off here, not even historians have an answer.
This organizer said, “A good number of guests attending Nocturne Gala events have a European background and recognize the format immediately, while others are discovering it for the first time. What I particularly enjoy is that these dances can be accessible and easy to learn.”
Depending on the generation, some will fondly recall either Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera and others Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. But other films, like Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard predate both, and this is regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. For anyone who knows the song, “The Music of the Night,” the following lyrics say it all:
Slowly, gently
Night unfurls its splendor
Grasp it, sense it
Tremulous and tender
Turn your face away
From the garish light of day
Turn your thoughts away from cold unfeeling light
And listen to the music of the night
In the animated front, it began with a certain Disney princess, Cinderella, and that movie set a precedent future films from this studio must follow. Anna believes it’s about how the feeling, the music, the costume, and the magic come together. She also believes it’s essential not to go over the top.
When asked about the animated, theatrical, and live-action versions of Beauty and the Beast, Anna noted a difference. She said, “Compared with the polished, formal balls in earlier Disney films like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, the 1991 Beauty and the Beast ball scene feels warmer and more inviting and real due to more realistic ballroom layout, sweeping camera movement, and the use of 3D. The 2017 live-action version is different. It’s at the end of the movie, and feels more like a theatrical vision of a royal court, perhaps something you could imagine at Versailles, not polished, sometimes even a bit quirky.”
The man behind The Secret of Nimh is a legend! In Don Bluth Somewhere Out There, we will soon see how this mind works and more!
Coming to Amazon Prime: Nov 20, 2026 Other Platforms: Dec 4, 2026
The filmmakers behind the acclaimed documentary I Am Big Bird (movie review), has a new documentary, and this time, they are focusing on a man ahead of his time. In Don Bluth: Somewhere Out There, Dave LaMattina and Chad Walker will be looking at the life and times of one of animation’s most influential and uncompromising artists. Some may only know him for the groundbreaking interactive animated video game Dragon’s Lair, but others, he’s the creative mind behind fond favourites like The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, The Land Before Time and Anastasia. His distinctive story telling approach and animation style says it all.
From the Press Release:
An early animation prodigy, Bluth dreamed of working for Disney and achieved that goal at just 18 years old when he was hired to work on Sleeping Beauty during his freshman year at BYU. Following the death of Walt Disney, however, Bluth became increasingly concerned about the direction of the studio. Along with fellow animators Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy, he ultimately left Disney and set out to build an independent alternative to the animation giant.
Unless viewers are already in the know, what The Seoul Guardians does is look back at a crisis that took place in 
Coming to Amazon Prime: Nov 20, 2026