Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012: The Award Winners!

Toronto After Dark has released their list of award-winning films in a dizzying array of categories for this year's festival. It's really great to see Resolution and American Mary, my two favourite selections, pick up some of the more prestigious honours. Here's their press release (with links to my reviews added in):

NOVEMBER 2, 2012: Toronto After Dark Film Festival is thrilled to announce the Award Winners of its 7th Annual Edition! As is tradition at Toronto After Dark, the Jury were the fans themselves with over 4,000 votes cast this year by festival-goers to determine the best new horror, sci-fi, action and cult movies from the around the world! Genre comedies won audiences over at Toronto After Dark 2012 with the crowd-pleasing British gangsters meets zombies action comedy COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES winning the festival’s Top Prize, the AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARD FOR BEST FEATURE FILM, GOLD. Close behind, DEAD SUSHI the latest splatter comedy from Japanese cult director Noboru Iguchi gobbled up the SILVER, while A FANTASTIC FEAR OF EVERYTHING a wildly eccentric British fantasy comedy starring fan favourite Simon Pegg snuck away with the BRONZE. In the Specialty Categories, the big winners were the stylish surgical horror thriller AMERICAN MARY from the Soska Twins which won 6 Awards including Best Director, Best Actress and Best Canadian Feature, the subversive cabin in the woods horror movie RESOLUTION which won 4 Awards including Best Screenplay and Most Innovative Film, and the terrifying tower block horror thriller CITADEL which snagged 3 wins including Best Horror Film and Scariest Film. In the short-format category, the Best Canadian Short GOLD went to splatterific action comedy BIO COP from fan favourite group Astron-6’s Steven Kostanski, while the GOLD for International Short went to the stunningly animated sci-fi film HENRI.  And the inaugural winner of a new award category, Best Independent Video Game: GOLD was the ultraviolent retro-throwbrack HOTLINE MIAMI.

AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS, BEST FEATURE FILM

  1. GOLD: COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES

  2. SILVER: DEAD SUSHI

  3. BRONZE: A FANTASTIC FEAR OF EVERYTHING

AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS, BEST CANADIAN SHORT FILM

  1. GOLD: BIO-COP

  2. SILVER: A PRETTY FUNNY STORY

  3. BRONZE: FROST

AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS, BEST INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM

  1. GOLD:  HENRI

  2. SILVER: VICKI

  3. BRONZE: NUMBERS

AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS, BEST INDEPENDENT VIDEO GAME

1. GOLD: HOTLINE MIAMI 

2. SILVER: TALES FROM SPACE: MUTANT BLOB ATTACKS  

3. BRONZE: MCPIXEL

GENRE & TECHNICAL CATEGORIES

BEST HORROR FILM 

CITADEL

BEST SCI-FI FILM:  

DOOMSDAY BOOK

BEST ACTION FILM

UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING

BEST COMEDY

COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES

BEST DIRECTOR

AMERICAN MARY (Jen & Sylvia Soska)

BEST SCREENPLAY

RESOLUTION (Justin Benson)

BEST CANADIAN FEATURE FILM

AMERICAN MARY

BEST LEADING ACTOR

A FANTASTIC FEAR OF EVERYTHING (Simon Pegg)

BEST LEADING ACTRESS

AMERICAN MARY (Katherine Isabelle)

BEST ENSEMBLE CAST

COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES

BEST MAKE-UP

[REC] 3: GENESIS

BEST SPECIAL EFFECTS

DEAD SUSHI

BEST SOUNDTRACK

SUSHI GIRL

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

AMERICAN MARY

BEST EDITING

CRAVE

BEST TRAILER

DEAD SUSHI

BEST POSTER

[REC] 3: GENESIS

BEST TITLE SEQUENCE 

CRAVE (Closing Credits)

FUN CATEGORIES

BEST FILM TO WATCH WITH A CROWD 

DEAD SUSHI

FILM MOST LIKE TO SEE A SEQUEL TO

COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES

BEST VILLAIN

LLOYD THE CONQUEROR (Derek the Unholy, played by Mike Smith)

BEST HERO 

[REC] 3: GENESIS (Clara the Bride, played by Leticia Dolera)

BEST ANTIHERO

AMERICAN MARY  (Mary Mason, played by Katherine Isabelle)

BEST KILL 

INBRED (Shotgun to the head)

BEST FIGHT 

UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (Sports store fight featuring Scott Adkins and Andrei Arlovski)

GORIEST FILM

INBRED

SCARIEST FILM

CITADEL

MOST INNOVATIVE FILM

RESOLUTION

MOST DISTURBING FILM 

AMERICAN MARY

MOST THRILLING FILM 

CITADEL

BEST FILM INTRO 

RESOLUTION

BEST AUDIENCE Q&A

RESOLUTION

Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to all the fans that voted!

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You can read all of our coverage of the 2012 Toronto After Dark Film Festival right here.

This review was written by Sachin Hingoo, a freelance writer when he is not working at an office job that is purpose-built for paying the bills while he works as a freelance writer.  His writing has appeared on Mcsweeneys.net, the CBC Street Level Blog, Ohmpage.ca, and The Midnight Madness Blog for the Toronto International Film Festival. He has also been featured at Toronto lecture series Trampoline Hall (which is rumored to be excellent). His mutant power is 'feigning interest'. You can read all of his posts here.

Photo: The poster from Toronto After Dark Best Film of 2012, Cockneys vs. Zombies