By: Addison Wylie Fed-up filmmaker Crystal, her procedural producer Dawn, and her colourful actresses travel to different theatres to screen their new film in Ryan M. Andrews’ Save Yourself. Any festival goer will familiarize with the film’s first act taking place in a packed theatre as drama unfolds behind-the-scenes. Those same patrons will also start eagerly guessing where Save Yourself is headed once the characters hit the road.
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: 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: Addison Wylie Adam Massey’s broiling small-scale thriller Man Vs. follows reality television show host Doug Woods (a Les Stroud clone played by The Three Stooges’ Chris Diamantopoulos) on his latest survival adventure. Woods gears up for a five-day retreat in Northern Ontario while his production crew camps out far enough away for Doug to fully seclude himself in nature. As these wilderness shows often hammer in, fire and shelter is critical – Doug builds both using the…
By: Shahbaz Khayambashi The Winnipeg-based Astron-6 film collective has made a career out of churning out 1980s-inspired pastiches, so it was only a matter of time before they gave giallo – the Italian horror subgenre that is equal parts noir and splatter – their treatment with The Editor. Here, the hero is a film editor with a tragic past who makes a living editing exploitation films. As he edits the film-within-a-film, life imitates art and several of…
By: Addison Wylie Around the time Patrick Brice’s sex comedy The Overnight hit theatres, movie goers were also presented with the filmmaker’s take on the horror behind obsession and abandonment in his seedy DIY flick called Creep. Creep is told from the perspective of Aaron, a videographer who is rolling lots of tape because he’s been told to. Aaron has answered a Craigslist ad posted by someone who was in need of a cameraman to document a personal…
By: Addison Wylie I remember describing Paranormal Activity 3 as an innovative horror film. I remember excitingly telling friends, family, and co-workers about its cunning use of a camera propped on an oscillating fan engine. The thought of this fearsome manoeuvre making everyone in my packed theatre squirm with anticipation was a memory for the books. With this “final” chapter in the Paranormal Activity series, I sat in a theatre full of unimpressed fans, and…
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….