I got to see 35 movies at Fantastic Fest 2017, and it was a very strong year of film programming. There were only a few films that I actively disliked, and some of those come with asterisks. I wanted to provide a rough ranking of the movies but thought that it might be hard to create a definitive ranking that shows exactly where each movie should go. So instead, I’ll just break the movies up into four groups: great, good, fair, and bad. Within each group, the films will be listed alphabetically by name. Those rankings are as follows:

The Great Films

• 78/52 — A documentary about the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.
• Cold Hell — A taxi driver witnesses a murder and now the killer’s after her.
• Gilbert — A documentary about comedian Gilbert Gottfried.
• Letterkenny — A Canadian TV show about farmers versus hockey players, drug users, Christians, and more.
• Mom and Dad — Parents have an uncontrollable urge to kill their children.
• Radius — People die if they get too close to an amnesiac man unless an amnesiac woman is also nearby.
• The Square — A museum curator must find a way to market a new exhibit.
• Super Dark Times — Kids playing with a sword turns deadly and really bums them out.

The Good Films

• 3 Foot Ball & Souls — Four people trying to commit suicide must repeatedly experience the attempts.
• Anna and the Apocalypse — A musical featuring a Christmastime zombie outbreak.
• Applecart — A family getaway is interrupted by an uninvited guest.
• Before We Vanish — Aliens are stealing ideas from humans in preparation for an invasion.
• Gemini — When an actress is killed, her personal assistant is the prime suspect.
• Gerald’s Game — A woman is left helplessly chained to a bed after her husband has a heart attack.
• Jailbreak — Police need to protect an important witness during a prison riot.
• King Cohen — A documentary about prolific filmmaker Larry Cohen.
• The Prince of Nothingwood — A documentary about prolific filmmaker Salim Shaheen.
• Rabbit — A woman sees visions of her identical twin’s captors and looks to rescue her.
• Revenge — A woman seeks revenge after she’s treated poorly and left for dead.
• Salyut-7 — A Soviet space station needs rescuing after it’s hit by space debris.
• Thoroughbreds — A girl brings a friend in on a plot to murder her father.
• Under the Tree — Neighbors feud over a tree and a couple feuds over a sex tape.
• V.I.P. — A serial killer is on the loose, and South Korean police are trying to nail him.
• Vidar the Vampire — Jesus is a vampire, and he turns Vidar into a vampire as well.
• Wheelman — A getaway driver finds himself in the middle of a gang war.
• Wizard — A couple of small-time South African drug dealers want to step up to the big time.

The Fair Films

• All You Can Eat Buddha — A man goes to a tropical resort to eat and die.
• Anyab — An Egyptian ripoff of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
• Bad Genius — A group of friends creates a service to help students cheat on exams.
• My Friend Dahmer — A dramatization of Jeffrey Dahmer as a high school student.
• Vampire Clay — Mysterious modeling clay attacks the artists trying to sculpt with it.

The Bad Films

• Dan Dream — A group of Danish underdogs try to build the world’s first electric car.
• Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse — A woman accused of being a witch tries to raise her daughter.
• Haunters: The Art of the Scare — A documentary about extreme haunts that try to terrify and torture their guests.
• Ron Goossens: Low-Budget Stuntman — A man’s wife will leave him unless he can seduce a famous actress.