mike | 19 Oct 2011 | 904 Views | 2 Likes | 0 Dislikes

5 Flicks to Watch Out For at Toronto After Dark Starting Tomorrow!

It's near enough to Halloween, which means (thankfully, praise Dracula and sing hosannahs to the Wolfman, hairy may he be) that it's time again for the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. The highlight of the year for local lovers of gore-drenched zombie-punching cult movie mayhem, the fest promises to be Extra Spooky this year as it's moved back to late October after a couple years running in the decidedly un-spooky late summer.

It's also moved to the Underground cinema on Spadina after the Bloor's switch-over to being Hot Docs' local precipitated a change in locale. It runs from the 20th (that's tomorrow) to the 27th, and to get you amped (is that a thing? I think I heard a snowboarder say that once), here are our top 5 picks for this year's fest:

The Woman
Dir. Lucky McKee

A successful lawyer attemps to "civilize" a woman found living in the wild, with terrible, horrible, awful, scary, bad consequences. From the director of cult favourite May and horror legend writer Jack Ketchum comes The Woman, fresh off of blowing folks' heads up at Sundance. Critics & fans have been heaping praise, and that McKee's flick is drawing the weirdest handful of comparisons - to Lynch, to American Beauty and Cronenberg - while promising to be legitimately disturbing puts it right up there at the top for me.

Monster Brawl
Dir. Jesse T. Cook

Opening the fest (and screening with the short "The Legend of Beaver Dam", one of the best things from last year's TIFF Midnight Madness programme) is Monster Brawl, a Canadian mash-up of classic monsters and classic square-circle wrestling. Who will win the title of Toughest Monster? I don't care because I'm already laughing. Cook's funny-on-the-face-of it homage to childhood pleasures features the work of Dave Foley, MMA ref Herb Dean, Lance Henriksen and Jimmy Hart. Yes, that Jimmy Hart.

The Divide
Dir. Xavier Gens

Xavier Gens' Frontière(s) was a disturbing, frenetic piece of French New Horror that played here a couple of years ago at TIFF. Off of its strength Gens was hired to direct the movie version of bald-guy-killing-people video game Hitman, and while it eventually made its money back in the theatre, there were rumours that Gens was more or less fired from the project after delivering a cut that was too violent (!!) for the studio's taste. In any case, Gens is back working in lower-profile, hopefully more fruitful territory with The Divide, his Lord-of-the-Flies-esque tale of sci-fi horror set amidst a handful of post-apocalyptic survivors.

War of the Dead
Dir. Marko Makilaakso

Nazis, zombies, no irony. Just blood, biting, running, fire and screaming, how it should be.

Love
Dir. William Eubanks

Fans of smart sci-fi have long argued that beneatht he lasers and space lasers and aliens with lasers lies the genre's potential to explore grand ideas in a decidedly non-laser-oriented ways. More grist for that mill arrives in the form of Love, William Eubanks beautiful and elegiac tale of post-apocalyptic isolation and connectedness. Weirdly, the film was commissioned, produced and scored by the band Angels & Airwaves (singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge's post-Blink 182 project).

Tickets can be bought over here, at the T.A.D. website.

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