Fantasy films usually require a big investment, and understandably so. The cosmic panoramas, the astonishingly shaped spaceships and astronaut costumes, the special effects and other attributes of this genre of film serve a key purpose: to give the viewer an emotional experience that they would not have under any other circumstances.
It is therefore not easy for fantasy filmmakers to achieve such results that make the audience believe that they are seeing the real thing. And all the tools are appropriate there.
If the budget is truly fantastic, space can be filmed in a real airless space ( as has been done several times), if the budget is more modest but still Hollywood, space can be filmed in a studio pavilion (as it was done by the seven Oscar-winning cinematographer of “Gravity”, Emmanuel Lubezki).
And if the budget is not fantastic at all, the bubbling space ocean has to be filmed… in a large container, mixing paints and various chemicals, as in Tarkovsky’s “Solaris ” (1972).
So, money is definitely not everything.
So we remind you 10 great low-budget fantasy films.
10. “FINCH” (2021)
Famous actor Tom Hanks has only appeared in one previous space film, “Apollo 13” (1995, directed by Ron Howard). And it’s not easy to call it fantastic. After all, the filmmakers based it on the book “Lost Moon” by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger and tried to tell the story of the American flight to the Moon in 1970 as accurately as possible.
It had only been a year since American astronaut Neil Armstrong had stepped on the surface of the moon, so it seemed to everyone that Apollo 13 would be a success. But on that fateful 13th of April, the flight centre received a message from a crew 205,000 miles from Earth: “Houston, we have a problem”…
“Finch” (2021, dir. Miguel Sapochnik), a film on the Apple TV+ platform, is a different story, but it also projects a post-apocalyptic plot, often exploited in fictional films, into an old-fashioned, sentimental drama.
The film’s backdrop is very bleak indeed. It has been 15 years since a massive solar flare destroyed the ozone layer, turning planet Earth into an uninhabitable wasteland. The previously life-friendly atmosphere has been devastated by extreme weather events, and the sun’s ultraviolet rays have caused our planet’s surface temperature to rise to 66 °C.
Most of humanity has disappeared from the Earth. Only those who survived in time hid in underground bunkers.
One of the few survivors, robotics engineer Finch Weinberg (played by Tom Hanks), lives with his dog in an underground laboratory in St. Louis: it was owned by the company where Finch worked before the tragic cataclysm. Now he can only go outside to look for food supplies wearing a special protective suit.
Feeling his strength slipping away (sometimes we see him reading a book about radiation poisoning), Finch builds a humanoid robot called Jeff to take care of his dog when he is gone. Finch tries to fit a wealth of encyclopaedic knowledge into Jeff’s electronic brain, including instructions on dog training and care. However, Finch’s dog (his name is “Goodyear”) does not trust his new owner at first.
When Finch learns that a huge storm is approaching St. Louis and will surely destroy everything here, he sets off with the dog and Jeff towards San Francisco. Since the departure was hasty and Finch only managed to “load” two-thirds of the planned encyclopaedic content into Jeff’s electronic program, the robot’s mental capacity has to be trained.
From this point on, the traditional road movie begins, with elements of educational drama (and sometimes comedy). For Jeff turns out to be as inquisitive as a child, and his behaviour and the initiative he increasingly shows both amuse and frustrate Finch.
According to the director (this is his second major work), the team originally intended to focus more on a combination of family drama and road cinema, with a bleak finale, but when the work had to be temporarily interrupted due to pandemic isolation, it was decided to change the concept considerably and to leave hope.
Although the film was delayed for a whole year because of the covid, it was definitely worth the wait.(Gediminas Jankauskas)
9. “THE FARE”(2018)
“The Fare” is a 2018 American mystery thriller film directed by D.C. Hamilton and written by Brinna Kelly. The film stars Gino Anthony Pesi, Jason Stuart, Jon Jacobs and the screenwriter Brinna Kelly.
This film is far from being a simple science fiction thriller. The film is initially shown in black and white, and the opening is quite easy to understand: Harris, a taxi driver, goes to pick up his passenger Penny and takes her to a strange place in the middle of the countryside, where she disappears into the dark night. Harris then resets his meter and the whole thing happens again. The radio plays the same podcast about extraterrestrials, they talk about the same things, and Penny’s destination is always the same. And every time there is a storm, it disappears.
Harris sees Penny as just another passenger, while Penny seems to know things about the driver that suggest that their paths have crossed before. And it is only after the car crash that the film takes colour when Harris grabs Penny’s hand to see if she is all right. Penny excitedly tells him that this time she did not mention her name. Harris is astonished when he realises this, because it means that he knows her from somewhere.
This film shows us how lonely it can feel to be a night-time driver who listens to radio broadcasts about the supernatural just to “pass the time”. The film also makes us think about how our actions in the past affect our present and even our future. It makes us ask ourselves, what is this memory? Are we programmed to make the same mistakes and do the same things? Or are we the forgers of our own destiny and can choose how we want to spend certain moments, however painful they may be? If you like romance with a bit of paranormal flavour, be sure to watch this thriller.
And although the film is set in one place – a taxi cab – it may seem boring, but it’s not. “Pophorror’s website says that “this is such a unique story that will take you on a journey of love, confusion, loss, patience and wonder”, while praising the film’s beautiful and expressive cinematography.
8. “CARGO” (2017)
Australian cinema is always interesting because, while remaining in an English-speaking space, it is always at the crossroads of different civilisations and always faithful to the traditions, history and culture of its continent.
A co-production with the United States and the United Arab Emirates, Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke’s Cargo is a film by two directors.
The plot is far from original. Australia has been hit by some unknown virus that turns people into zombies within 48 hours of infection. With people scattered over large areas, consolidation against a common invisible enemy is impossible, so everyone must save themselves as best they can.
The authorities can help only minimally, with portable first aid kits with instructions on the symptoms of the contagion, wristwatches, plastic masks rather like mouth plugs, and a spike for the needle scattered everywhere. The purpose of the latter item is unclear, unless it is seen as a suicide tool for the totally desperate victims of the epidemic.
The main protagonists, Andy Rose (Martin Freeman), his wife Kay (Susie Porter) and their baby daughter Rosie, sail down the river in a small boat, which is less likely to be infected, as the epidemic usually starts with a bite from an infected person.
In search of food, the couple are forced to search a derelict sailboat, but on this trip, Kay is bitten by a zombie. Worst of all, before she dies, Kay infects her husband, dooming both him and their little daughter, who is too young to take care of herself.
A ruthless struggle for survival ensues, explaining the purpose of the watch in the survival kit.
For directors Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke, “Cargo” is their second collaboration. In 2013, the duo made a short film with a similar storyline under the same title, which won several awards and received almost 15 million views online.
The debut film, just seven minutes long, also featured highlights from the upcoming feature-length film. The pair did not come up with anything radically new for the new film, so the feature-length “Cargo” looks like an attempt to expand the plot with supporting lines at any cost. The most interesting of these concerns an Australian Aborigine who, in the face of imminent tragedy, decides to defy fate and return to the natural world to return to their origins. But this line, too, seems to be stuck in the air and is not developed further. And yet it was the Aborigines who, in previous Australian films, brought specific mystical motifs to any storyline.
The film is definitely worth seeing, not so much for the plot itself, but for Martin Freeman, the lead actor, who has grown as an actor since the young Bilbo Baggins who made him famous in the “Lord of the Rings” sequels and who is increasingly proving that he is ready for serious psychological lead roles.
A good example of this metamorphosis is the drama “Miller’s Girl” (2024, directed by Jade Halley Bartlett), which has recently made a brief visit to our big screens. (G.J.)
7. “BLOOD PUNCH” (2013)
This is a 2013 horror thriller directed by Madellaine Paxson and starring Milo Cawthorne, Olivia Tennet and Ari Boyland, with a screenplay written by the director’s husband, Eddie Guzelian. The film was first screened at the Austin Film Festival on 26 October 2013, where it won the Dark Matters Audience Award.
The film’s plot revolves around two young people – bad girl Skyler (Olivia Tennet) and loser chemistry whiz Milton (Milo Cawthorne) – who meet at a court-ordered rehabilitation programme. The sexy Skyler, who makes no secret of the fact that she is about to escape, hatches a plan in which Milton is to produce large quantities of methamphetamine for a large fee. Although the man initially resists, Skailer seduces him into a deal. Eventually, the pair, joined by Skyler’s psychopathic boyfriend Russell (Ari Boyland), break out of rehab and end up in an abandoned cabin in the woods, where they begin to execute their despicable plan. However, the hut sits on land that has long been polluted by a massive and blood-soaked Indian war, and Milton finds himself caught up in a terrifying and mystical love triangle.
The film has won 8 different awards at film festivals such as the Hoboken International Film Festival, the Omaha Film Festival, Dances With Films and others during 2013-2014. Critics were ambivalent about the film, with The Hollywood Reporter saying: “Given its limited budget, it’s a bold, gory, violent and darkly humorous thriller that pleasantly twists the viewer’s mind”. Meanwhile, the “Los Angeles” Times criticised the actors, saying that “they lack the nasty charm or fatalistic comedy traits needed to make this material even remotely entertaining”.
6. “TRANSIT” (2019)
This latest film by Christian Petzold, perhaps the most famous member of the so-called Berlin School, can be a strong argument in the eternal argument about how to deal with a work of literature – whether to try to reproduce the letter of the literary work as closely as possible, or whether to find a way to reveal the spirit of a book. “Transit is based on a novel by Anna Seghers, written during World War II, in which a member of the anti-fascist underground escapes from a concentration camp and carries an important letter under a false name and forged documents from Berlin to Paris, only to find himself stranded in Marseille (where the writer herself lived for a time in 1940).
“Life had turned into a never-ending race, everything had lost its meaning”, says the protagonist of the novel (called Zaidler in the book), “we didn’t know how long this state would last, whether it was for a day, or a few weeks, or a few years, or maybe until death”.
The only thing the people in Marseilles wanted was to get their exit visas as soon as possible, before the Nazis occupied the whole of France. Christian Petzold’s version of “Transit” is not faithful to the letter of the novel, but to its spirit. And the spirit, as the theologians say, goes where it will. Therefore, the director, by refusing any historical reconstruction, very easily reduces the historical context of the literary work. The action here is also set in Marseilles, but in the modern day. The threat of fascist occupation has been replaced by the equally menacing dangers of terrorism, and the fascist soldiers are replaced by modern policemen, no less well armed. With these minor (indeed, major) changes, the director was determined to reveal the universality of the literary plot, and this complex cinematic transplantation was certainly successful. The Brechtian presentation of the relationship between the present and the past, as used in classical theatre, was a very strong contributor to the creative success. The subject of political refugees is one of the most topical issues in the world today. Of course, people flee their homelands for different reasons and circumstances, but most often it is in the face of poverty or mortal danger that such an extreme decision is taken. The film’s protagonist Georg (Franz Rogowski) ends up in Marseilles with the manuscript of an unfinished book by the suicidal writer Weidel and the papers of his friend Heinz, who died on the trip. The possibility of an alien life, often explored in literature and cinema, shines through. The most famous example in literature is perhaps the novel by the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello, “The Late Matthias Pascal” (1904), and in cinema Michelangelo Antonioni’s film “Profession – Reporter” (1977). In both works, the protagonists’ attempts to appropriate the identities of the deceased ended tragically. The only way out for the persecuted refugees in Anna Seghers’ novel is to obtain a transit visa and travel from Marseille to America. Georg meets Heinz’s wife Mari (Paula Beer) during an unplanned prolonged “stay” in a strange city, but a banal melodramatic novel is not to be expected – it would be illogical in the context of the overall tragic feeling. After all, in the perspective of death, human life can be seen as a way station. Simply put, a transit. (G.J.)
5. “THE INFINITE MAN” (2014)
This is a 2014 Australian science fiction film, first shown at the South by Southwest Film Festival and quickly gaining popularity with audiences and critics. “Screen Daily said the film was “Smart, funny and strangely romantic… Well written”, while IndieWire called it “an exemplary time travel comedy”. It was directed and written by Hugh Sullivan and starred Josh McConville and Hannah Marshall.
Despite the film’s rather complex timeline, The Infinite Man manages to achieve a surprisingly minimalist storytelling style, as the story revolves around just three characters. The main one, of course, is Dean (Josh McConville), an inventive but unorthodox scientist who uses his technical expertise to impress his girlfriend Lana (Hannah Marshall). Dean takes Lana to a deserted seaside resort to celebrate the anniversary of their friendship. Once there, all plans are thwarted by the appearance of Lana’s ex-lover Terry, who appears out of nowhere and with whom she eventually elopes.
After a very bad friendship anniversary weekend, Dean spends a whole year perfecting his most remarkable achievement to date: a device that allows time travel. And from a desire to change the past and create the perfect weekend for his girlfriend, things take a turn for the worse; the time-running leads to several versions of the trio wandering around the resort, watching each other, changing locations and trying to trick each other.
What makes the film stand out is that, although it tells the story of two people – maybe even a love triangle – it is presented in a way that is unusual for films of this genre. Director Hugh Sullivan opens the film with a light comic fantasy that gradually builds into a chronologically convoluted but entertaining and strangely compelling story about the ups and downs of relationships. This romantic comedy is perfect for those who don’t like flat love stories and are looking for something more interesting and gripping.
4. “YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH” (2007)
Francis Ford Coppola’s latest work, “Megalopolis”, which took the classic director more than two decades to create, is still on our big screens.
And ” Youth Without Youth” comes ten years after his previous film, the crime drama “The Rainmaker” (1997, based on the novel by John Grisham).
“Youth Without Youth” is based on a novel by Romanian writer Mircea Eliade. Both the book and the film are set in 1938, when Dominic Matei (played by the popular Tim Roth), a 70-year-old linguistics professor in his seventies, who, unable to complete his major life’s work and disillusioned with his own existence, decides to return to his hometown of Bucharest and commit suicide. But at the decisive moment, as soon as he steps off the train, he is struck by lightning and the man… begins to grow younger at a rapid pace.
Later, he develops psychic powers, and this miracle attracts the attention of Nazi agents. When Nazi Germany invades Romania, Hitler’s own sidekick, the maniacal-looking Dr Josef Rudolf (André Hennicke), takes an interest in this phenomenon.
While still in Romania, Dominic meets the reincarnation of his former lover and is plunged into a world of philosophical conversations and erotic fantasies. Eventually, Dominic escapes to neutral Switzerland, where he is forced to seek refuge.
The director is no stranger to unbelievable fantastical plots. Just think of his 1996 moody comedy “Jack”, in which a married couple’s first-born, Jack, comes into the world when he is only… ten weeks old, and then develops four times faster than other normal children. Clearly, the man’s biological clock is ticking. This means that actor Robin Williams can fool around to his heart’s content playing a forty-year-old first-born.
“Youth Without Youth” is nothing like an American film. During the screening, it is hard to shake the idea that this is a very European work. On the other hand, Coppola’s style is always manifested by peppering the main narrative with quotations from the Buddhist sutras and Chinese philosophy, and by repeating the same symbols (such as roses, whose buds inevitably come to be associated with “Citizen Kane”) (at times obnoxiously).
A large part of the film is devoted to Dominic’s memories of the past, which are shot in a distinctly different style, in a sort of home video style.
It is clear that the director has mastered the principles of allegorical storytelling, and is therefore able to easily link the fate of one man to important historical events of the 20th century, in particular the Second World War and the post-war political confrontation between the Soviets and Americans.
One could even say that Youth Without Youth is a personal attempt by one of the most famous classics of modern cinema to sum up the 20th century. In his latest film, Megalopolis, F. F. Coppola takes on even grander generalizations. (G.J.)
3. “THE DISCOVERY” (2017)
Who can count the number of artists who have tried in books or films to imagine what awaits people after their physical death? The deepest insights are probably provided by theoretical theologians and practicing clergy.
Perhaps no other issue interests people as much as the question of whether there is life after death. Deeply religious people find the prospect of an afterlife understandable. It is much harder for materialists and scientists to grasp.
Fiction writers also try to contribute to the common intellectual heritage. For example, Carl Sagan, an American scientist and writer who has written a number of serious fictional (or rather, philosophical) books, in “Contact” (1997, directed by Robert Zemeckis), a film based on his novel, he allows the protagonist, scientist Ellie Arroway (played by Jodie Foster), to fly to the distant planet Vega. The brave one made this journey because she hoped to meet her father in the sky among the shining stars, and she did. Or was it all just a beautiful dream?
Similar thoughts come to mind when watching Charlie McDowell’s film “The Discovery”. In it, Thomas Harbor, a scientist played by veteran Hollywood actor Robert Redford, has made a real discovery: he has scientifically proven that human existence does not end with physical death, but that there is a bright infinity for the dead.
This publicised discovery has been a spiritual consolation for many, but it has also provoked a number of suicides. Believing in the bright prospect of eternal life, millions of naïve gullible people have voluntarily decided to cross the boundary between life and death. They believed that earthly life is only a temporary stopping point where there is no point in staying for long.
Tom Harbor is of course not happy about the enormous suicide statistics, but he tells the media that he feels no moral responsibility for this.
Shortly after one such admission, one of Tom’s interlocutors commits suicide in front of the audience.
This situation leads to a feud between Tom Harbor and his son Will (Jason Segel). The son blames his father, who continues his experiments, for the high suicide rate and the associated death cult. Wil intends to influence his father to publicly deny his invention and thus break the chain of mass suicides.
But Tom persists and soon demonstrates a new invention – a machine that can recreate what people see in the afterlife.
Will, his brother Toby (Jesse Plemons) and his suicidal girlfriend Isla (Rooney Mara) steal a corpse from the morgue, but their attempt to “talk” it through fails. However, one conclusion of this macabre experiment emerges: the afterlife seems to be an alternative version of the former life, maybe with some different choices.
The conclusion is admittedly modest and does not at all justify the sensational start. On the other hand, what could have been expected…? (G.J.)
2. “SOUTHLAND TALES” (2006)
We’ve all heard of cosmic “black holes”, but only scientists or science fiction writers can comment on them in a way that people who are far from science can understand. And this is clearly the majority of filmgoers. It is therefore easy for them to come up with sensational explanations. The more fantastical they sound, the better, as they will be able to show a myriad of breathtaking situations.
One of them is truly original in “Southern Tales”. It claims that “black holes” are caused by the villain Baron von Westphalen (played by the comical-looking actor Wallace Shawn) using ocean waves to create a new kind of energy source, which causes Planet Earth to rotate more slowly …
This is not a science fiction film set in an alternate 2008, when Los Angeles, known as the “Land of the South”, is on the brink of economic and natural catastrophe following a nuclear explosion in Texas. A military frenzy grips the entire country. US society lives in a climate of total surveillance and paranoia. And then there is the presidential election, under the watchful eye of Nana (Miranda Richardson), wife of Republican candidate Frost.
The two main forces vying for power are the Republican Party, which is trying to hold on to its former position, and the neo-Marxists, who want to blow up the status quo.
Against this anxiety-ridden backdrop, the fates of different characters intertwine under strange circumstances. Santaros, a schizophrenic boxer and action film actor (played by Dwayne Johnson, Hollywood’s highest-grossing action film star, now commonly referred to as “The Rock”), has become the most wanted man in the world. Because he sees the future, many people care what he has to say about the predicted end of the world.
Suddenly, Santaros is introduced to former porn star Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who is now creating her own personal TV reality show.
Another important character is Roland Taverner (Seann William Scott), a soldier, also suffering from amnesia, who tries to help the neo-Marxists and wants to find his twin brother in the general confusion.
There is certainly no shortage of confusion and even chaos in the film, and at times it is difficult to understand, as the Americans themselves say, who is who. This should not be surprising, as the film’s director Richard Kelly (creator of the cult classic “Donnie Darko”) has called “Southern Stories” “a strange hybrid of Andy Warhol and Philip K. Dick fantasies”.
Incidentally, the director had written the screenplay for this film before the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, but later changed a lot of things, because “the need now is to make a film about an important issue we face – civil liberties, homeland security and the need to preserve both” (G.J.)
1. ” THE VAST OF NIGHT” (2019)
This is director Andrews Patterson’s debut science fiction film, which won the award for Best Narrative at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival. Under the pseudonym James Montague, the director co-wrote the screenplay with Craig W. Sanger. The story is roughly based on the Kecksburg UFO event of 1965, when people from six American states reported a fireball in the sky, and the discovery of two cars from 1960-1970 with human skeletons inside, found at the bottom of Foss Lake.
The film is set in the fictional New Mexico town of Cayuga in 1950, where a high school basketball game is played. One of the main characters, Everett (Jake Horowitz), an all-knowing local DJ, broadcasts his nightly radio show during the game, but also records a commentary of the game to broadcast the next day.
His girlfriend Fay (Sierra McCormick), the other main character, is a telephone operator. One day, Fay hears very strange noises on the air, which she reports to Everett. He broadcasts the sounds Fay has recorded on his show and asks people who know the origin of the sound to contact them. In their search for information about the source of the possibly supernatural sounds, Fay and Everett discover things that put not only them, but the whole town in danger.
Director Patterson was the sole sponsor of the film. This means that he not only directed the film, wrote the script, but also paid for everything out of his own pocket. And even though the budget of this film was quite small – 700 000 dollars – the director managed to turn this into a gripping science-fiction film that perfectly reflects the era of its plot. So, if you miss a good but not too alien film about the supernatural, conspiracy theories and young people’s relationships, don’t miss out on the chance to see “The Vast of Night”.
