Fantasia Film Festival’s varied programme is strengthened by an addition of a film created by and featuring indigenous voices exploring their heritage. Created by a son of a survivor of Sixties Scoop, Tim Riedel’s Ancestral Beasts consists entirely of expositions and metaphors of familial trauma entangled through an indigenous family from a small Canadian town. Elyse (Morgan Holstrom) is struggling to process her mother’s death, which results in her life nearly falling apart. In order to regain control, she moves into an old house owned by her late aunt, where strange phenomena lead her to discover a hole in her bedroom floor. From then on, she is engrossed into a series of challenges of endurance, fueled by her antagonising sister, her overbearing cousin, an unpredictable neighbour, and a strange centipede-like creature which resides in her basement and lurks in the shadows.
Akin to the horrors of The Babadook (2014) and Possession (1981), Ancestral Beasts deals with a materialisation of trauma as an inhuman creature haunting the main character. Whereas the Babadook is an image of the main character’s inner turmoil as a mother, the centipedes of Ancestral Beasts are not contained to only Elyse, and instead they are an attribute of the entire family’s trauma. Nevertheless, familial trauma and its physical manifestations have seen a boost in popularity in the horror genre in recent years, and films such as Ancestral Beasts ultimately share a glimpse into the traumatic history of indigenous communities.
Outside of the literal horror in the form of a clawed vermin, Elyse deals with bodily reactions to intense situations, the toxic behaviour of her sister, and various challenges posed by the members of the small town community. The setup and Elyse’s slow exploration of her inner demons take up a good portion of the film, putting its status as a horror movie under question, until a (literally) explosive scene involving the protagonist’s neighbour sets the record straight and accelerates the bloody action.
Tim Riedel’s Ancestral Beasts features many inventive shots which play with shadows and colour, but which are contrasted by awkward framing and weak acting. The film primarily deals with the generational trauma haunting the indigenous characters, but the devices used to portray the struggles are inferior to those of Toa Stappard’s Mārama (2025) or Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey (2022), where the climax and resolution are authentic and exhilarating instead of preachy.
