Closing out the Toronto After dark film festival tonight at Scotibank Theater is the latest film from the Pierce Brothers as they have the Toronto Premiere of The Wretched. With overtones of 80s classics, like The Evil Dead and Fright Night (and going a little further back to the 70s with Jaws – I may…
Category: Film Festivals
Toronto After Dark 2019 – Werewolf (2018) – Adrian Panek
A unique entry in Toronto After Dark’s film festival has its Canadian premiere at Scotiabank Theater this evening, the Polish film Werewolf. Filled with shades of Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Werewolf shows the horror of war, the deconstruction of our humanity by the most brutal cruelty man has ever known, the Nazis and their…
Toronto After Dark 2019: The Assent (2019) – Pearry Teo
There’s a Barker/Lovecraftian feel to the gritty dirtiness of this entry in the Toronto After Dark film festival. Couched in a house covered in unnerving art, and filled with troubling apparitions and visions there is an aggressive edge to The Assent in the way it is shot, and the way the story unfolds. Mostly. Halfway…
Toronto After Dark 2019: Homewrecker (2019) – Zach Gayne
Toronto After Dark brings another Canadian film into their Film Festival with Zach Gayne’s Homewrecker, starring Precious Chong and Alex Essoe, and pairing these two actors on screen brings this somewhat familiar premise to an electric conclusion. Essoe is Michelle, a young millenial in a marriage she’s unsure of with the hopes of building a…
Toronto After Dark 2019: 8 (2019) – Harold Holscher
Toronto After Dark brings us a tale out of South Africa tonight with 8. Marrying the feel of a haunted house tale with the legends and myths of the tribes of South Africa this film plays almost as a gentle tale, and while light on real scares, there are some character moments that resonate and…
Toronto After Dark 2019: Contracts (2019) – Alex Chung
Tonight’s entry in the Toronto After Dark film festival is the one film in this year’s lineup that I find a little dubious. I love that the festival embraces genre films from all over the world, and that they showcase some fantastic films, but Contracts seems like a bit of misstep. In a post-John Wick…
Toronto After Dark 2019: Making Monsters (2019) – Justin Harding & Rob Brunner
Having its Canadian premiere at the Scotiabank theater, the Toronto After Dark film festival unveils Making Monsters which proves itself to be a fun and occasionally creepy spin on familiar horror motifs, both classic and modern. There are nods to the tropes of Final Girl, Torture Porn, and the horrors of the modern world, all…
Toronto After Dark 2019: The Furies (2019) – Tony D’Aquino
Australia brings their horror game to the Toronto After Dark film festival tonight with their bloody and violent The Furies. A riff on the Final Girl trope as well as a mash-up of Battle Royale and Halloween the film is deliciously gory and excitingly paced. When Kayla (Airlie Dodds) is abducted and wakes up in…
Toronto After Dark 2019: Mutant Blast (2018) – Fernando Alle
The second feature of Zombie Night for the Toronto After Dark film festival is this entry from Portugal, which, when coupled with iconic cult production company Troma feels like a VHS throwback to science fiction horror that is so bad that it comes around to good, and is threatening to go bad again. Filled with…
Toronto After Dark 2019: The Odd Family – Zombie On Sale (2019) – Lee Min-jae
After the brilliant Train to Busan, how can Toronto After Dark possibly follow up? With another South Korean zombie film, which kicks off Zombie Night tonight at the Scotibank Theater, but this time infuse the blood, the undead, and the gore with a lot of humor in The Odd Family: Zombie On Sale. Wonderfully goofy,…
Toronto After Dark 2019: James vs. His Future Self (2019) – Jeremy LaLonde
Friend of the blog, Jeremy LaLonde brings his first genre film entry to the Toronto After Dark film festival tonight with his latest film, James vs. His Future Self. Filled with great actors the film plays with time travel as a way to show us to take the time we need to be in the…
Toronto After Dark 2019: Blood Machines (2019) – Raphael Hernandez & Savitri Joly-Gonfard
With a Carpenter-esque score by Carpenter Brut no less, and a heavy influence of the classic Heavy Metal magazine, the English language French entry into the Toronto After Dark film festival has one real flaw. It’s too short. We are introduced into a very-lived in world, with a fantastic seamless blend of practical and computer…
