By: Mark Barber Andrew Cymek’s Night Cries is the product of a variety of recycled ideas and premises from other movies. Taking cues from The Matrix, Twelve Monkeys, Mad Max and dozens of other sci-fi/action films, Cymek’s film is too self-serious and rarely entertaining. Cymek (who also wrote, produced, and edited the film) plays Joseph, a man who searches for his wife in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by weird creatures and a gang of people…
By: Addison Wylie When the Unspecters – a team of bush-league paranormal investigators – are told to up their ante in order to score a television show pilot, they apprehensively set their sights on Farhope Tower. The high-rise has a history of undistinguished suicides, and its been uninhabited for years. The Unspecters are used to spelunking for spirits in caves and dark crevices, but they muster forward into their next challenge. April Mullen’s Farhope Tower is…
By: Shahbaz Khayambashi The Blood in the Snow Film Festival has returned to offer us a respite from the cold. Unfortunately, this year’s short film picks are disheartening – viewers may be better off wandering the streets and suffering from frostbite. I appreciate this festival for its attention to Canadian cinema, I really do, but this year’s batch of short films feature the sort of films that make Canadians badmouth their own cinema. The majority of these films…
By: Shannon Page Andrew Moxham’s White Raven follows four friends (Andrew Dunbar, Steve Bradley, Aaron Brooks, and Shane Twerdun) as they head out for a weekend of male-bonding in the remote wilderness. When one of the friends (Bradley) slowly begins to lose touch with reality, the others find themselves fighting for their lives. There is a lot going on beneath White Raven’s by-the-books survivalist horror surface. At its core, the film makes a serious attempt to…
By: Addison Wylie Secret Santa has been made to entertain, and entertain it does. Mikey McMurran’s horror throwback pays homage to an era where slasher films ruled exploitation cinema. There was an unlimited supply of blood, actors camped it up, and synthesizer stings sliced through any scene with a hooded figure. If you’re looking for visual and audio cues in a surface-deep tribute, you’ll be satisfied by the Cambridge native’s low budget lark. Secret Santa…
By: Shahbaz Khayambashi Once again, the sun sets on another successful edition of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. On the tenth anniversary of this local darling, I felt it necessary to shine a light on what I have consistently felt to be an important and underappreciated part of this festival: the shorts. The first time that I went to the festival, about six years ago, my first screening was the Shorts After Dark program and I…
Deathgasm (DIR. Jason Lei Howden) By: Shahbaz Khayambashi Think to yourself for one moment: what do you imagine when you think of a film entitled Deathgasm? Jason Lei Howden’s film is basically that. The plot is simple enough: four teenage New Zealand metalheads decide to form a band, after sneaking into a Varg Vikernes stand-in’s house and coming into possession of music and lyrics to a demonic song which turns the inhabitants of their small town…
A Christmas Horror Story (DIR. Grant Harvey, Steven Hoban & Brett Sullivan) By: Addison Wylie It’s easy to picture the pitch meetings around the anthology project A Christmas Horror Story. The movie, after all, is strung together by ideas that probably sounded better on paper than how they look on the big screen. However, no matter how awesome they first appear to be, A Christmas Horror Story doesn’t know how to assemble them together into a cohesive flick….
The Hexecutioners (DIR. Jesse Thomas Cook) By: Shahbaz Khayambashi If I can give one bit of advice to a first-time attendee of Toronto After Dark, it would be to avoid the festival’s world premieres. In my time of attending this festival, I have had the opportunity to see three world premieres – I’m zero for three. Now, I can say, after having viewed The Hexecutioners, I can chalk up another clunker. This film is an absolute mess…
Backtrack (DIR. Michael Petroni) By: Shahbaz Khayambashi Michael Petroni’s Backtrack contains a villain that does not often end up in horror films: guilt. Adrien Brody portrays a psychiatrist, still seeing patients as he is being torn apart inside by the death of his young daughter. It is at this juncture of his life where he realizes that he needs to come to terms with a traumatic accident that he witnessed, and inadvertently caused, as a child….