KRYPTIC (2024)

Sheltered and socially awkward Kay Hall decides to shake things up in her life by going hiking with the women’s walking club. Her destination is Krypto Peak, infamous for three things: fine Canadian pine trees, a local legendary monster called the Sooka, and veteran cryptozoologist, Barb Valentine, who mysteriously vanished while out in the woods looking for this infamous, mole-shaped faced monster. As if possessed by a strange force, Kay finds herself drawn deep into the forest, leaving the group behind, where she encounters the legendary Sooka herself. Now with no memory of who she is, Kay returns home to research what happened to missing monster hunter Barb, only to discover that she’s her spitting image. When an intruder breaks into her house, she runs, with no idea where she’s going; but she knows her only chance to reconnect with herself is to shed more light onto Barb’s mysterious disappearance. Random encounters seem to point her in the right direction, but what was hoped to be a journey of self-discovery gradually becomes a hunt for the monster itself.

Kourtney Roy’s bold, visually striking debut feature is only for those brave enough to follow her along this dark and twisting path that leads into ever stranger, almost Lynchian psycho-sexual territory with hallucinatory flashes of Cronenbergian body horror. We’re no cryptozoologists, but KRYPTIC is definitely a beast of its own, a bewildering, savagely original and endlessly fascinating beast. And it exists! We’ve got the proof!