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….
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….
Tales of Halloween (DIR. Darren Lynn Bousman, Axelle Carolyn, Adam Gierasch, Andrew Kasch, Neil Marshall, Lucky McKee, Mike Mendez, Dave Parker, Ryan Schifrin, John Skipp, Paul Solet) By: Shahbaz Khayambashi Let me get two simple facts out of the way: I love horror anthology films and, even with this love, I can easily admit that there are very few truly good ones out there. They do exist, but for the most part, horror anthology films…
By: Addison Wylie Shut In’s leading damsel Anna (played by Beth Riesgraf) and filmmaker Adam Schindler have something in common: both have the ability to surprise and disarm. Schindler’s thriller begins as one of Toronto After Dark’s tamer offerings, and then socks us upside the head with brutal consequences and intense confrontations. Anna is reserved in mourning, and her agoraphobia keeps her hushed inside a rickety house. When she’s threatened by thieves interested in her stashed wealth, Anna reveals…
By: Shannon Page Known for directing video games such as Gotham City Impostors and Alien vs. Predator 2, Nathan Hendrickson makes his feature film debut with The Hollow One, a horror about an unstable young woman (Rachel played by Kate Alden) struggling with her memory of a tragic event. Rachel and her sister Anna (Chelsea Farthing) return to the small farming town of their childhood and reunite with Racheal’s ex-boyfriend (played by Jesse James of Jumper and TMI…
By: Trevor Jeffery James (Patrick McFadden) is a typical 20-something living in Toronto facing a quarter-life crisis: he’s got a job he hates along with a boss he hates, a girlfriend towards whom he is apathetic, and he is tired of the city’s drone. The final straw is a devastating diagnosis, after which he packs up and leaves everything behind for the dense woods of British Columbia. Camping out and surviving with only packed sundries…
By: Addison Wylie The Hallow is made up of great parts that build towards a fleeting good time. The adult audience gets as much satisfaction out of it as a toddler does with a mall’s mechanical horse. Within the film’s undistinguished Irish town, the community unanimously agrees that the woods are not necessarily a great place to idle. Their distain is brought out when a family of out-of-towners move to a secluded millhouse that happens…