FOREIGNER Review - Fantasia Fest 2025

Gerald Morris
Aug 10
1 min read

Fantasia Fest always delivers its fair share of oddities, but every so often a film sneaks in that feels like a perfectly preserved time capsule. Foreigner, from director Ava Maria Safai, nails 2004 with such precision you’d swear you’d stumbled onto a lost teen comedy from the early aughts.

Our lead, Yazi, is an Iranian immigrant navigating a new Canadian high school armed only with a love for Friends reruns and an aching need to fit in. When she links up with a pastel-clad trio straight out of Mean Girls or Clueless, her quest for acceptance leads her to bleach-blonde hair and — unexpectedly — a demonic presence. Because, of course, high school wasn’t terrifying enough.

Safai blends teen comedy tropes with a creeping horror undercurrent that doesn’t fully pounce until the final act. That last stretch goes all-in on supernatural menace, tying Yazi’s physical transformation to something much darker. It’s sharp, stylish, and more layered than its bubblegum aesthetic suggests.

If I had one note, it’s that the pacing in the first half leans a little too heavily on the sitcom references, which sometimes slows the forward momentum. But once the horror element fully kicks in, it becomes clear that the early scenes were a slow-burn setup to make the final descent hit harder. It’s a stylish, slyly unsettling reminder that sometimes the scariest thing you can be is yourself — and sometimes that’s not scary enough.