The Carpenter-esque, Canadian-made, Ditched is available for streaming from the Toronto After Dark film festival today. I think I enjoyed the idea of it more than the actual movie itself. Melina (Marika Sila), a paramedic, wakes up in her overturned ambulance, and has to brace herself for a long violent night of the soul, as…
Tag: 2021
TAD 2021: Nightshooters dir. Marc Price
Nightshooters is a kinetic, frenetic, UK actioner laced with humour, cold tea, and explosive gore, and it’s enjoying its Canadian premiere on today’s line up of Toronto After Dark titles, as the virtual format of the film festival continues! Falling squarely into the wrong place wrong time of action films, the film follows a group…
TAD 2021: Post Mortem dir. Peter Bergendy
Toronto After Dark delivers it’s first spectral tale of the festival, with the beautifully crafted Hungarian film, Post Mortem from director Peter Bergendy. This one, has all the trappings of a classic ghost story, and does it right, well, and without going overboard on the visual effects. Tomas (Viktor Klem) is recovering from a near…
TAD 2021: Alien On Stage dir. Lucy Harvey & Danielle Kummer
The right idea, at the right time, can be magic. It happened in 1979 when Ridley Scott delivered the first true science fiction horror film. It also happened again in 2013, in Dorset, when a group of amatuer actors, and professional bus drivers decided to bring the film to the stage instead of their usual…
TAD 2021: Canadian Shorts
Canada delivers its own Shorts programme for Toronto After Dark, with 9 selections, that like the International Shorts features a variety of styles, sensibilities, and genre mashing. There’s some great work in here, and despite the fact that none of the films were as laugh out loud as the highly enjoyable Shiny New World, there…
TAD 2021: Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It dir. Yernar Nurgaliyev
Kazakhstan delivers Toronto After Dark’s Opening Night Gala Film, Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It, and it sets up perfectly what to expect from TAD if this is your first time. There is going to be blood, wild on-screen deaths, laugh out loud moments, uncomfortable humour, and a lot of cross genre entertainment. Datsan (Daniar Alshinov)…
Alien 3: The Unproduced First-Draft Screenplay by William Gibson (2021) – Pat Cadigan
Author Pat Cadigan takes William Gibson’s original script for Alien 3 and transforms it into a white knuckle thriller ride of a novel that gives us a glimpse at what could have been in the Alien film series. Fans know the convoluted story of how Alien 3 came to the screen, and that were countless…
The Day She Died (2021)- S.M. Freedman
Dundurn Press delivers S.M. Freedman’s thriller, The Day She Died, to my summer reading pile, and it is a gut punch of a book, exploring dark secrets, while exploring the concept of forgiveness of oneself. It’s a captivating read that pulls you in, and drags you along at full-throttle on a white knuckle ride that…
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) – 4K Review
The third film in The Conjuring series, The Devil Made Me Do It, is available now on 4K from Warner Brothers, and once again plunges into the lives of Ed and Lorraine Warren, played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, who give a real sense of humanity and emotional investment in their roles. This time,…
Lake Crescent: A Creature X Mystery (2021) – J.J. Dupuis
Lake Crescent, J.J. Dupuis’ follow up to his first Creature X Mystery, Roanoke Ridge, feels leaps and bounds beyond his first novel. Leaving behind Oregon, and the hunt for Bigfoot, his protaganist, Laura Reagan, who now hosts a cryptid hunting show that she is determined to infuse with science moves to Robert’s Arm, Newfoundland, hoping…
The Mind Reels 