The Fantasist

...in that both are surprising takes on their respective subgenres, but whereas The Wicker Man is a pleasure The Fantasist is largely a dud. Despite a shorter running time, it feels like the longer of the two. Nonetheless, a somewhat interesting attempt.

The men whom the lead Patricia meets in Dublin, while spending an experimental year teaching away from her uncle's farm that she's been picked to inherit, are all exceptionally childishly perverse in their own ways. It's unclear why she would give any of them a minute of her time, except that she herself might be "The Fantasist" of the title - not the killer, but out of touch with reality in her own right.

She enjoys making up stories to tell men in bars. Her story delivered to her virgin prospective roommate of having had a single sexual relationship with a man in college that was unsatisfying could likewise be complete invention. Patricia also says she wants a man who is an "imaginative rock," who is "inscrutable." That, at least, might be more on the mark.

The freeze-frame ending leaves some questions. One wonders if Patrick McGinley's novel Goosefoot is as open.