The Little Red Umbrella: Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012

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

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012: Wrong

When it screened back in 2010, Quentin Dupieux's Rubber was one of the more polarizing films to ever play at After Dark. I mean, when you play a movie about a killer tire at a horror film festival, you might expect something slightly more conventional, more Maximum Overdrive-ish.

That, of course, was not what we got. Dupieux presented a film that was hilarious, deeply philosophical in the most effortless of ways, and all of this wrapped around a love letter to '70s and '80s horror. With a telepathic tire hell-bent on revenge.

I'm not entirely sure, then, what I was expecting when I walked into Dupieux's newest feature, Wrong. I can categorically say that this is not a retread (heh) of Rubber. In fact, it may well be the anti-Rubber. It's not scary, it doesn't have much to say, but goddamn is it ever funny and it is still the best thing I saw in the entirety of After Dark.

The movie centres around Dolph (Jack Plotnick), a mild-mannered regular guy whose dog, Paul, has gone missing. In his quest to find his best friend, Dolph encounters an increasingly-bizarre cast of characters and bounces from one surreal situation to the next. There's his next-door neighbor Mike (Regan Burns), who dreams of driving to the literal end of the earth, the weirdo gardener (Eric Judor), always eager to please despite a troublesome palm tree that keeps turning into a pine tree, the girl from the pizza place (Alexis Dziena) who enjoys long conversations about why a rabbit would need to ride a scooter in their restaurant's logo, a detective (Eastbound and Down's Steve Little) whose techniques include harnessing the memories of dogshit and, of course, the real star of this film, Master Chang (William Fichtner), a specialist in pet telepathy.

These characters are weird enough in and of themselves, but as they begin to intersect and interact with one another, there's a glorious madcap feeling around the whole thing, even in the world Dupieux has crafted, where such surreal phenomenon as an office where water constantly pours from the ceiling is a fact that never warrants a mention. It's a world I can't help but want to visit.

The performances here are all wonderful and come together nicely — nearly everyone seems to revel in the absurdity of this film and it all comes off as cohesively as one could expect from this sort of thing. The colour palette is much more vibrant and sunny than the muted tones of Rubber, and in general this creates a much more upbeat atmosphere all around.

After a week of torture, violence, and end-of-the-world scenarios, Wrong was exactly the kind of nutbar comedy I needed. Only Dead Sushi managed to reach this level of mindfuck hilarity, but this has more of a heart to it, in my opinion. Maybe it hit home a little more for me as a dog-owner. All I know is that if a movie like this is Wrong, I don't want to be right. (I'm here all week, folks).

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Check out 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.

Photos: Jack Plotnick's Dolph and William Fichtner's Master Chang from www.wrongthemovie.com

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012: Sushi Girl

Sushi Girl is immediately going to spawn comparisons to Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, and I think it's a comparison that, while somewhat apt, sells Tony Todd's project (he acts as executive producer as well as the lead here) a bit short. It's true that Sushi Girls basic premise bears a certain resemblance to 'the most successful independent film of all time' — a group of criminals assemble with the intent to root out the betrayal perpetrated by one of their own — but it's the characters and the 'torture porn' here that distinguishes Sushi Girl from Reservoir Dogs, and, of course, the conceit described by the film's title.

Kern Saxton's film follows Fish (Noah Hathaway) on his first night out of jail, as he attends a meeting with his criminal associates Duke (Todd) the leader, Francis (James Duval) the drug addict, Max (Andy MacKenzie) the tough enforcer, and in a show-stealing performance, Mark Hamill (!!)'s Crow, a twisted, perverted individual who evokes Heath Ledger's Joker in more ways than one. Duke's plan is to find out what has become of the diamonds from their last heist — the heist for which Fish took the fall. Throughout the film we're given bits and pieces of the heist through flashbacks revealed as they are relayed to the other guests. At the centre of it all — literally — is the stunning girl (Cortney Palm) who, in true Yakuza tradition, lies naked on the table clad only in pieces of sushi. She remains utterly nude and utterly motionless for the vast majority of the film, functioning more as a set piece than a character. However, she has a secret that drives the film to an interesting left turn.

Hamill's performance here is so good and so completely trans-formative that you almost forget that there's anyone else in the scene when he's speaking and there's certainly no Luke Skywalker to be found here. Palm goes through fearfulness, completely submissiveness, and ultimately strength as the film wears on. Duval is also a standout, bringing his LA stoner sensibility to the frenetic Francis character. Overseeing it all is Todd's Duke, who is measured and utterly menacing in the way that only the man who played Candyman can deliver.

In a fun turn, one flashback to the robbery features a scene with some of the biggest genre heavyweights assembled since The Expendables — Michael Biehn, Danny Trejo, Jeff Fahey, and Sonny Chiba. Not exactly the meatiest roles for any of them (most are little more than cameos), but it's always good to see these guys onscreen, and they definitely have enough presence to elicit some laughs from the audience.

All in all, Sushi Girl is a fun little gangster/caper film with a few neat twists and a couple of stomach-turning torture scenes. It distinguishes itself nicely from its genre predecessors and it's pretty much exactly what any After Dark filmgoer would ever want.

The trailer below (one of the few good ones from the After Dark lineup this year) is actually worth watching and doesn't give away anything important from the film, so watch away!

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We've been posting reviews of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival all week. You can find them the rest here.

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012: My Amityville Horror

Most horror fans, and probably a good chunk of people in general, only need to hear the word 'Amityville' to conjure images of floating beds, 'cold spots', and other signs of supernatural presence. It almost makes you wonder why anyone would want to live in the upstate New York burg. The phenomenon that was created after the Lutz family went public about their experiences in what was to become the quintessential haunted house produced a media frenzy, one of the most popular horror films of all time, and an intense debate over the truthfulness of their claims.

My Amityville Horror presents the original haunted house tale in the form of a documentary dealing with Daniel Lutz, the eldest son of the family that was, according to them, tormented by otherworldly phenomena in their very own home. Lutz is a tremendously compelling character, interviewed for the very first time here, and he is absolutely convinced of the veracity of his and his family's claims. I can almost guarantee that even the most skeptical viewer will be swayed, even for a brief moment, by the aggressively convincing Lutz.

Towards the beginning of the film, we follow Lutz as he sits down with a psychologist named Dr Susan Bartel. These scenes are some of the most interesting in the whole piece because we truly see the conviction behind his claims. He is immediately defensive, attempting — unsuccessfully — to turn the session around on Bartel as he describes the phenomena he and his family experienced. He demonstrates, here, some classic signifiers of delusional, sociopathic behaviour. We're also introduced to the highly-religious previous owner of the Amityville home, who carries around what she claims is a piece of the cross on which Jesus was crucified, as well as a spiritual expert who keeps a pair of 'identical twin' chickens (prompting more than one audience member to wonder how chickens can be twins — same egg?) which add to the surreal pastiche on display here.

Lutz's credibility is diminished somewhat by a particular sort of vagueness in his claims and a feeling of aggression throughout the film. When stories of child abuse and neglect are introduced, the holes in Lutz's stories are exacerbated somewhat and you can't help but doubt his bizarre assertions. Still though, there's that constant thread of Lutz's convictions running through the film which always bring you back to wondering what's real and what isn't. Eric Walter's careful handling of his subject and skillful presentation of the various interviews, and creative employment of spiritual mediums and other figures that analyze the claims of Lutz and his family prevent the film from seeming skewed towards one interpretation or another, like any good documentary does. It's this handling that makes My Amityville Horror an excellent character piece, and a study of how certain circumstances can create the necessary conditions for collective delusions. Even still, I can say with some certainty that I won't be buying property in Amityville any time soon.

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We've been posting reviews of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival all week. You can find them the rest here.

Photo: Promotional photo of Daniel Lutz from My Amityville Horror

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012: Resolution

When Resolution was described to me as 'a low-fi Cabin In The Woods', I was a bit skeptical. Joss Whedon's completely unexpected meta-horror was nothing short of a pipe bomb dropped on the genre, not unlike what Kevin Williamson's Scream accomplished back in the 90's. It has forever changed the landscape of what can be done with the traditional, often-overused elements of horror. I was pleasantly surprised, then, to find that Aaron Moorehead and Justin Benson's Resolution not only follows in the footsteps of these genre-benders, but takes several brave steps of its own.

I am going to try to avoid gushing too much about this film, but be warned that it's not an easy task when you have such genuinely likeable guys behind this project - from the producer to the directors, to the talent, you just want these guys to succeed and can't help but root for them. The love they have for the genre and for film in general shines through in every frame, in every narrative twist, and in every witty, meticulously-crafted line of dialogue.

Resolution tells the story of two close friends, Michael and Chris (Peter Cilella and Vinny Curran respectively), who have drifted apart since college — largely because of Chris's increasing addiction to crystal meth and a recent decision to hole up in an abandoned cabin to live — and do meth — as he pleases. When Michael decides to remedy this by going to the cabin and handcuffing Chris to the wall in an attempt to force him to detox for a week, the pair become entwined in a series of bizarre happenings that are teased out with creepy clues that Michael can't help but unravel.

While Resolution is primarily a horror, it contains elements of mystery, comedy, and even a treatise about the limits of friendship. The latter is owed almost entirely to the magnificent chemistry between Cilella and Curran, who might well be my favourite pair of characters on-screen this year. Curran, especially, portrays the most likeable meth-head I've ever seen (high praise when Jesse Pinkman, Skinny Pete, and Badger from Breaking Bad exist) and, even in the throes of withdrawal, maintains a sharp, biting sense of humour. Cilella's Michael has a devotion to his friend that will melt the cockles of your robotic hearts, never wavering from his mission to get Chris clean and going to extraordinary efforts to this end.

Of course, Resolution is still a horror movie first and foremost. The mysterious clues left in the vicinity of the cabin (and sometimes in the cabin itself) come in the form of old vinyl records, ancient filmstrips, photographs, and just about every other medium you can imagine. As these clues become more and more frequent, Michael becomes obsessed with unravelling the mystery and this brings in some compelling peripheral characters — including my favourite, a French professor played by Bill Oberest Jr. The — ahem — resolution of the film provides the biggest horror element of all, and also one of the biggest mysteries of the piece that will leave you thinking about it for days afterwards.

Resolution is the kind of film that demands multiple viewings, and is right up there with American Mary as one of my favourite films of Toronto After Dark. Moorehead and Benson, in one fell swoop, have proven themselves to be two of the most inventive, capable new voices to break into horror in many years. If their next project is half as riveting as Resolution is, it would be hard to rate it as anything but brilliant. My only complaint is that it can't come soon enough.

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We've been posting review of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival all week. You can find them the rest here.

Photo: The poster for Resolution, a film about friendship and meth

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012: Citadel

A burnt-out tenement block in one of the poorest, most desperate areas of London. A roving gang of hoodie-clad hooligans, equal parts zombie and meth-addict. A young father, crippled with agoraphobia. This is the world that Cieran Foy paints in Citadel, and it's one he knows all too well. Having been attacked himself when he was 18, Foy brings the fear and anxiety of being victimized to life through his lead, Tommy.

When Tommy's pregnant wife is attacked, Tommy is forced to defend himself and his newborn daughter from a group of 'hoodies', a merciless group of what may as well be zombies. We see him attend group therapy to deal with his trauma, and experience his desperation every time he leaves his house. It's about the darkest film I've seen all year.

It's frankly difficult not to be troubled by the bleakness of the message presented here. The film is telling us, in multiple ways, that these attackers are beyond help and beyond hope, which is about the scariest place one can possibly be. Foy's masterful camera work keeps things tightly on Tommy, intensifying the feeling of claustrophobia and paranoia he's also going through.

Citadel has provided me with some of the most genuine scares of the festival so far — it's a story that feels so familiar while being unfraid of going to extremely dark places. A brilliant effort for Foy and I can't wait to see what he does next.

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Stay tuned all week for more reviews from the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. You can find them all here.

Photo: A still from Cieran Foy's Citadel

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012: Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning

Ah, what to say about Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning. Should we talk about the incredibly convoluted plot? Should I even mention that this film has a plot? Should I discuss how Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren are both essentially bit players in this film, taking a major backseat to Scott Adkins and former (maybe current?) MMA fighter Andrei Arlovski?

Look, I can't even begin to describe to you what's going on with the story here. It's far, far too batshit to even begin to describe, but let's just say it involves mind control, secret militias, cloning, and Van Damme wearing inexplicable face paint at the end of the film.

Would you believe me if I told you that the one movie that aesthetically informs Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning above all else is Gaspar Noe's batshit arthouse film about the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Enter The Void? Well it's true. The first-person scenes, the 'sex hotel', and even the strobing effect that's used perhaps a bit more often than it needs to be (sorry, epileptics!) are all evocative of Noe's style. Of course, there's a lot more kicking here, and the gore effects are a little more extreme, but at its root, this is a ridiculous action film that desperately wants to be taken super seriously.

Be warned: this film is a very hard 'R' rating, with just about every kind of violence represented here in some form or another. Fingers and toes are severed, heads are separated from bodies with bats, and much more. The action sequences are surprisingly brutal and every hit feels like it has real impact, just as you'd expect from a bunch of jacked-up genetically-modified super soldiers. And the last ten minutes, oh my, what a delightful, unrelenting orgy of violence that I haven't seen the likes of since The Blind Side.

To be honest, the title alone should tell you if you're ever going to want to watch this film. It's a bunch of super soldiers wailing on each other for almost the entire running time of the movie, with a plot that you will try (and fail) to decipher stringing it all together. I guess if I had a gripe, it's that it takes a little longer than I'd prefer to get to the kicking, but it really doesn't let up once it finally begins. If you're looking for a great popcorn flick with some real edge to it, this won't disappoint.

On a final note, and in what seems to be a trend with the movies at After Dark this year, the trailer simply does not do this film justice and, in fact, it's kind of misleading. But here it is anyway.

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Stay tuned all week for more reviews from the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. You can find them all here.

Photo: Van Damme and Scott Adkins in a friendly hug

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012: Doomsday Book

Doomsday Book is a loosely-connected three-film anthology dealing with three very familiar science fiction themes; a viral outbreak, a sentient machine, and an end of the world scenario called Brave New World, Heavenly Creature, and Happy Birthday respectively.

In Brave New World, directed by Hansel and Gretel's Yim Pil-Sung, we're introduced to Yoon Seok-Woo, a nerdy military scientist who has been left home alone (aaaaaaa!) by his overbearing parents and sister. For reasons that aren't quite clear, he unwittingly causes a virulent zombie plague by failing to properly separate his recycling. The resulting chaos is tempered a bit with an undercurrent of a love story that manifests itself just as the outbreak is happening. It's a cute, funny little vignette that unfortunately attempts to elevate itself to more philosophical ground despite not being anywhere deep enough for this. Still, it hits the right notes up to that point and is generally enjoyable.

Heavenly Creature, directed by Kim Ji-Woon of I Saw The Devil fame, tells the story of a future where household robots are commonplace and accepted as part of society. We are introduced to an advanced, humanlike robot that works as a guide at a Buddhist temple that claims to have attained enlightenment and, in fact, is considered by the monks to be the Buddha himself. Of the three films in this collection, this is the only one that's played entirely straight (to its great benefit), with no twinge of humour or lightness at all. The robot, RU-4, is remarkably expressive, all things considered, and the slow, deliberate pace of this segment helps to this end. This is the segment most likely to stick with the audience, as its haunting visuals are meticulously crafted and the philosophizing never comes off as heavy-handed. A remarkable, highly introspective departure from Kim Ji-Woon's often surreal, hyperviolent films.

Happy Birthday, also by Yim Pil-Sung, rounds out the anthology, with a mix of touching, heartfelt drama, genre conventions, and dark, satirical humour that more closely mirrors Brave New World than Heavenly Creature. We're introduced to Min-Seo, panicked because she's damaged the 8-ball from her father's billiards table. She frantically orders one from the Internet, which sets in motion a bizarre end-of-the-world situation that places her family and everyone else in peril. Peppered with light humour coming from Min-Seo's family and her neighbors, all hunkered down in a homemade bomb shelter, as well as the hilarious end-of-the-world newscasts that reminded me of the best of Kent Brockman from The Simpsons, Happy Birthday ultimately satisfies with a surprising ending and a feeling, however outwardly bleak, that everything might just be okay.

Doomsday Book works better in practice than one would assume from its disjointed themes. It's not very cohesive, but that can be forgiven in a piece like this. It's easy to see why this picked up the Jury Prize at the Fantasia Festival this year — it begins and ends on very crowd-pleasing notes and slips in a well-made philosophical piece in between. If nothing else, this anthology should serve to introduce new viewers of Korean cinema to the two remarkable directors, Yim Pil-Sung and Kim Ji-Woon, on display here. Their back catalogues are more than worth exploring, as they are some of the most striking voices in cinema today.

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Stay tuned all week for more reviews from the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. You can find them all here.

Photo: A still from the film 'Heavenly Creature', one of the three films in this anthology.

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012: Crave

Crave is a film with a serious identity crisis, and is one where the filmmakers (in this case, director Charles De Lauzirika and co-writer Robert Lawton) clearly had way too many ideas and tried, largely unsuccessfully, to cram them all into one project. It goes from a straight-ahead film about vigilante justice to a bizarre comedy and back so many times that it takes the wind out of its own sails, and that's a pity because either one of these two ideas are just fine.

The first half of the film is a darker, less surreal version of James Gunn's Super and even Bobcat Goldthwaite's God Bless America. Aiden (Josh Lawson) is a crime scene photographer who is growing increasingly less tolerant of the depraved world around him, and struggles with the idea of changing things. We're given glimpses into Aiden's fantasy life, usually with a fourth-wall-breaking nod of some kind. This works fairly well for the most part, and is the source of all the gory bits that make this film an After Dark selection.

We're introduced to Aiden's love interest, Virginia (Emma Lung), who forms Aiden's motivation to start trying to act on these impulses, or 'cravings' as they were, but nothing, at least to me, suggests that she's worth the hassle. She likes objectively horrible theatre, vacillates between hot and cold like a broken space heater, and generally comes off as a bit flaky. Considering the hoops that Aidan — who to be clear is no prize himself — jumps through for her it's a bit confounding, but they do show some decent chemistry at times.

I think what really drags the film down for me is the overuse of narration. It's a bit lazy and tells you things that should probably be shown onscreen, and the film as a whole would benefit from this being used a lot more sparingly.

I don't want to give the impression that Crave is a total waste of time or anything. There's a lot here that suggests that De Lauzirika is an extremely talented director, and most of the issues with the film have to do with the screenwriting. It's just that Crave could be so much more, and seeing it fail to reach its potential is disappointing.

Oh, one other thing: I remain confounded at Edward Furlong's unwillingness to age since Terminator 2, but he has provided me with the most laugh-out-loud moment of the festival so far. Thumbs up all around.

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Stay tuned all week for more reviews from the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. You can find them all 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 for Crave. It's a movie, with talking and music and actors and everything.

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012: Inbred

Hillbilly survival is my favourite subgenre of horror, and is one of the only subsets of the genre with the consistent capacity to creep me out and scare me. It's got its roots in films like Deliverance, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Children of the Corn, and has wound up in modern incarnations in movies like Wrong Turn and Calvaire. It's even been cleverly and spectacularly turned on its head in the wonderful Tucker and Dale Versus Evil, which you should really watch at your earliest convenience.

Inbred throws a monkey wrench — albeit a small one — into the hillbilly survival formula by transplanting the setting to rural England. It's a small but significant change, but a notable one that allows writer/director Alex Chandon to introduce a few interesting elements that the other movies in this group don't have.

The basic idea is the same though — a group of people (in this case, a group of troubled teens and their mentors/teachers) end up in an unfamiliar, rural area and are terrorized by the locals. As with most of these films, the twisted nature of these locals is cranked to a very surreal '11' and, before long, their quirks begin to, um, negatively impact our heroes (sometimes literally).

The gore here, while very exaggerated, has a realistic tinge to it for the most part. This is certainly not for the faint of heart and this doesn't leave you with blue balls like certain other horrors seem to enjoy doing. No, if resolution, a violently convoluted story, and unabashed gore is what you're after, Inbred will satisfy you and then some.

I'm going to post the trailer for Inbred, but if you're planning to watch this movie anytime soon, I encourage you not to watch it as it's full of spoilers and some of the best parts of the movie. However, if you're on the fence about whether Inbred is for you (in which case, shame on me) then by all means check it out:

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Stay tuned all week for more reviews from the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. You can find them all 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: A very nice poster for the very not-nice move Inbred

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012: American Mary

You know that feeling when you see a movie where everything you want to happen, happens? Where you sit up and say to yourself, 'I wish I'd made this movie'? This, for me, is American Mary, the sophomore effort from identical twin Canadian horror prodigies The Twisted Twins, Jen and Sylvia Soska of Dead Hooker In A Trunk fame. It's like the stars aligned and made an absolutely gorgeous film that's funny, affecting, and which pushes all the right horror buttons while never seeming exploitative, despite dealing with some pretty heavy shit like rape, voluntary amputation, genital modification, and about a hundred other seemingly disparate ideas that all inexplicably fit together.

At the centre of this is the always-stunning Katharine Isabelle, whose performance in the title role is riveting, no matter what she's given to do (and in Mary, that's a lot). She's at once dryly witty, deeply vulnerable, and highly adept at her craft. Her transformation as a character from 'starving student' Mary Mason to 'Bloody Mary', one of the best horror creations (and certainly up there with May as one of the most terrifying females in the genre) never feels forced or artificial.

The camerawork here is tremendously skillful, especially for a second feature, and every scene is meticulously-composed with just the right use of shadow and an intense black-and-red colour palette — all enhanced with a brilliant score by Peter Allen. There is a dance going on here: scenes that should be beautiful are foreboding, and horrifying surgery and torture scenes have a delicateness to them that helps to balance what could easily be another Saw retread in less-capable hands. As the Soskas said of their intent in the Q&A after the film, they have certainly crafted "a horror film you don't want to look away from". To be fair, though, there is some extreme stuff in here even if it's not always very explicit. Some of the very ideas of these extreme body modifications are downright stomach-turning to this reviewer, but to each his/her own I guess.

You almost want to hate the Twins for the unfair amount of talent and knowledge they put on display here, but it's pretty much impossible when they do things like run up and down the line outside the theatre (in the pouring rain, no less) and thank everyone personally for coming to their screening. American Mary shows more growth as filmmakers than most anyone else I've seen in this or any other genre.

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Stay tuned all week for more reviews from the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. You can find them all 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: Katharine Isabelle in American Mary, which is a film you should see.

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012: Grabbers

I think you can shoot just about any sort of movie in Ireland and it'll automatically be gorgeous. I'm sure that somewhere out there, there exists an Irish porn flick that, for no reason at all, has long, expansive scenes of mossy green landscapes in between money shots.

It's no surprise, then, that Grabbers — a more or less run-of-the-mill tentacle monster film in the vein of Tremors — is so visually stunning. The acting is only okay and the story is incredibly thin and full of more holes than your average sponge, but everything to do with the look of the film is spot-on. The island setting is replete with with lush greenery and rolling hills and cliffs, the fairly well-done visual effects with less gore than one would expect, and the monsters (sorry, 'grabbers') themselves are nicely realized and show an attention to detail that more than makes up for the sometimes-clunky writing and often-forced performances. But let's be honest - this is a b-movie about giant squid, not The Blind Side*.

The story is one you've heard a million times before. Uptight female officer from the big city (in this case, Dublin) and is paired with the drunken fuckup male officer, who (perhaps all too quickly in this film) falls for her. Of course, there's also a giant squid monster that is grabbing people from various locales and inexplicably spitting their heads out, just like in The Blind Side*. There's a fun cast of peripheral characters, including a marine ecologist who practically runs away with the film, the witty and always-drunken bar patrons who are always good for a one-liner, and a bickering couple who owns the local watering hole. Everyone's very likeable and, despite being tropes for the most part, provide a fun atmosphere that never feels heavy or requires you to think much about the film.

I think my only real quibble with Grabbers is that Richard Coyle (A Good Year, Pusher) never seems to be having as much fun as everyone else is. Sure, he delivers his lines well enough and is okay with the physical comedy required for the role, but I can't shake the sense that he seems like he's being dragged through this thing by the other characters, because I've certainly seen him put in more animated performances than this. Still, it doesn't overly detract from the rest of the movie and the whole piece is perfectly worth your time to check out.

This is also going to be surprising to everyone, but — very mild spoiler alert — the plot of this Irish movie hinges on everyone getting extremely drunk. It's always nice to see a movie breaking stereotypes.

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*I have not seen The Blind Side

Stay tuned all week for more reviews from the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. You can find them all 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: Detail from the movie poster for Grabbers, which is the film that this review is about.