Fantasy doesn't always have to be a billion-dollar business.
When audiences are so inundated with billboards, trailers, and Comic-Con panels, it's easy
to forget that there's an entire world of original and creative cinema out there.
Well, we're here to help with a look at the best fantasy movies of 2019 that nobody else
is talking about.
In an updated take on the King Arthur legend, The Kid Who Would Be King follows a young
boy named Alex, who stumbles upon the famed sword Excalibur and discovers he's destined
to lead a teenage army against the evil sorceress Morgana and her undead minions.
A little like Percy Jackson meets Hellboy, the film is written and directed by Joe Cornish,
the guy responsible for 2011's Attack the Block.
The Kid Who Would Be King may be a reboot of sorts, but it's funny, charming, and engaging
for everyone in the family.
Plus, it also co-stars Patrick Stewart as old Merlin, and how awesome is that?
The premise of The Head Hunter is simple: a man who hunts monsters and takes their heads
as trophies sets out to kill the one that took his daughter's life.
The Head Hunter has all the typical elements required of a fantasy film - there's a great
quest on horseback in medieval armor, plenty of orc-like monsters, and some great visuals.
But it also packs a serious horror wallop as well.
Hold on to your halberd, because this hunter takes no prisoners.
Half-horror, half-fantasy, The Changeover tells the story of Laura Chant, a young woman
trying to save her four-year-old brother from an evil spirit in the guise of a friendly
neighborhood man.
Of course, since that man is played by the great Timothy Spall, best known as Wormtail
in the Harry Potter films, you know he's not nearly as friendly as he seems.
A coming of age tale with dark witchy overtones, The Changeover is creepy in all the best ways.
"I can smell your fear.”
Director Danny Boyle's Yesterday takes place in an alternate reality, where after a global
blackout, a struggling musician named Jack wakes up to discover that The Beatles never
existed.
He still knows their whole songbook by heart, but no one else remembers a single tune.
His immediate course of action?
Make their music his own.
Yesterday is something of a departure for Boyle - it's a little more polished than the
rest of his often-gritty filmography, with a situation that isn't quite so dire as, say,
Trainspotting.
But it's a charming change of pace, and one thing is for sure: the film has a killer soundtrack.
Aniara tells the story of a group of passengers aboard a giant spaceship on a three-week voyage
from Earth to Mars.
After colliding with space debris, it's knocked off course, and hope for reaching its destination
dwindles.
Based on Harry Martinson's science fiction poem from 1956, Aniara's main focus is less
on humanity's survival, and more on humanity's ability to destroy everything around it.
The film's co-writer/director, Pella Kågerman, told Inverse,
"I believe that this is actually what the Apocalypse looks like.
We are risking Earth to become uninhabitable for us and lots of other species."
Fast Color is not your typical superhero film - it's a family drama that's focused on women
of color.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Ruth, a woman who has spent much of her life running from her abilities.
"Our abilities can't fix things.
If something is broken, it stays broken."
Now she must try to fix the most important thing - her relationship with her mother and
daughter.
Mbatha-Raw told Slash Film,
"It takes the layers of what it means to be a woman and doesn't simplify any of that.
I thought it was really grounded and I responded to this authenticity of the world; it's a
recognizable world - no one is wearing a cape or a suit."
There have been plenty of films that have explored the relationship between human and
machine throughout the years.
But none quite like I Am Mother.
Clara Rugaard plays a girl who has spent her entire life in the care of a robot name Mother,
which was designed to help repopulate the Earth after a war has wiped out humanity.
Unexpectedly, she comes into contact with an outsider who claims to know sinister secrets
about both the war and Mother.
The film's director, Grant Sputore, told Bloody Disgusting
"If you were examining the DNA of this film, I think you'd find strands of Alien, Terminator,
and Moon, for sure.
Some of that is conscious, some of it isn't."
Like Aniara and I Am Mother, High Life is an exploration of a post-Earth era and the
people tasked with surviving it.
It centers on Monte and his infant daughter, the only two left aboard a prison ship once
used to conduct human reproduction experiments.
Yes, reproduction experiments.
High Life co-writer and director, Claire Denis, told The Playlist that the erotic thriller
is as much about, quote, "horny people" as it is about prison, saying,
"Sexuality, when we're in prison, is an immensely important thing."
Starfish takes the end of the world and sets it to music.
Aubrey Parker is left alone, in her dead best friend's apartment, with nothing but a mix
tape that might save her.
Part horror, part science fiction/fantasy, and part drama, Starfish's many elements come
together to create something truly beautiful and wholly unexpected.
Oh, and Starfish writer and director A.T.
White is donating 100% of his profits from the film to cancer research, giving you yet
another great reason to check it out.
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