My eleventh year of attending the Toronto After Dark Film Festival has come to a close. This turned out to be a bit more of a hectic year for me and for the first time since I first became accredited media in 2012, I ended up missing one of the films, that being The Mortuary …
Toronto After Dark 2019
Here are my thoughts on the films that played as part of the Canadian Shorts After Dark showcase. Alaska (Chris Wilson, Brianna Templeton, Gwynne Phillips 13m) Tom (Chris Wilson) and Paige (Gwynne Phillips) attend a party hosted by their friends Brad (Paul Beer) and Claire (Briana Templeton), which very quickly goes off the rails. Alaska …
Here are my thoughts on the films that played as part of the International Shorts After Dark showcase. Bar Fight (Benjamin R. Moody, 4:22min, USA) As he is closing his bar, a bartender has to deal with a group of invaders. As it’s title suggests, Bar Fight is essentially an extended fight scene, filled with …
A teenage boy begins to suspect that his neighbour has been replaced by a forest-dwelling witch in The Wretched. 17-year-old Ben (John-Paul Howard) travels to stay with his father Liam (Jamison Jones) for the summer, during which he takes a job at the local marina, where he meets Mallory (Piper Curda). Meanwhile, Liam’s neighbour Abbie …
A young man has an awkward reunion with his estranged father in Come to Daddy. Norval (Elijah Wood) travels to the middle of nowhere to reunite with his long-estranged father (Stephen McHattie), from whom he has received a letter asking for help. However, things quickly fall off the rails between Norval and his father, the …
A group of humans with superhuman abilities are hunted down by the Government organization that created them in Enhanced. Captain George Sheppard (George Tchortov) is the leader of a team tasked with apprehending a group of bioengineered killers, who have escaped from the facility where they were created. One of these individuals is Anna (Alanna …
A group of children liberated from a concentration camp find themselves trapped in a mansion surrounded by vicious attack dogs in Werewolf. In February 1945, a group of Jewish children, including Wladek (Kamil Polnisiak), Kraut (Nicolas Przygoda), and Hanka (Sonia Mietielica), are liberated from a Polish concentration camp by Russian soldiers and are left in …
A young woman finds herself held against her will by an obsessive middle-aged woman desperate for a friend in Homewrecker. One day after an exercise class Michelle (Alex Essoe) begins a friendly conversation with Linda (Precious Chong), who recognizes her from the class. Learning that Michelle is an interior decorator, Linda invites her to take …
A family encounters a supernatural evil at a rural farm in 8. In 1977 South Africa, William (Garth Breytenbach) moves to his family’s old farm with his wife Sarah (Inge Beckmann) and orphaned niece Mary (Keita Luna). Soon after arriving, the family encounter Lazarus (Tshamano Sebe), a seemingly kind wanderer, who used to work for …
A single father comes to believe that his son may be possessed in The Assent. Joel (Robert Kazinsky) is a widowed man suffering from schizophrenia, who is struggling to raise his young son Mason (Caden Dragomer), while going for regular appointments to his psychiatrist Dr. Maya (Florence Faivre). Joel discovers that Mason has been seeing …
A group of assassins are hunted by one of their own in Contracts. Anthony Lo (Alex Chung) is a contract killer hired by Marc Sullivan (Jermaine Carty) to find out who has been hunting down and killing assassins. Teamed up with Heatshot (Michael Carter), Anthony targets congressman Blake Morris (Dan Sanderson), hoping to lure out …
A young woman is forced to stay at an emotional healing centre in Paradise Hills. Uma (Emma Roberts) is forced to stay for two months at a healing centre run by The Dutchess (Milla Jovovich), before partaking in an arranged marriage with Son (Arnaud Valois). Befriending fellows girls Amarna (Eiza González), Chloe (Danielle Macdonald), and …
A YouTube star and his fiance find themselves tormented by a masked psychopath in Making Monsters. Christian Brand (Tim Loden) is a popular YouTube star, who has gained 10 million follows for producing videos of him pranking his fiance Allison (Alana Elmer). While at a fertility clinic, the couple runs into their old friend Jesse, …
A group of women find themselves in a game of survival against a group of masked killers in The Furies. One night Kayla (Airlie Dodds) and her friend Maddie (Ebony Vagulans) are kidnapped in the middle of the night, with Kayla waking up sometime later in a box in the middle of the woods. While …
Failed experiments at a military complex results in a mutant-filled zombie apocalypse in Mutant Blast. After an accident at a military complex, failed super-soldier test subjects, who happen to look and act like zombies, escape into the world. 28 hours later, Pedro (Pedro Barão Dias) awakes in an apocalyptic world and joins solder Maria (Maria …
A South Korean family turns the arrival of a zombie into a financial opportunity in The Odd Family: Zombie on Sale. A lone zombie (Jung Ga-ram), the result of failed clinical tests, arrives into the town Poongsan and bites Man-duk (Park In-Hwan), the patriarch of the Park family that includes Jun-gul (Jae-yeong Jeong), his pregnant …
A time-travel obsessed scientist is visited by an older version of himself in James vs. His Future Self. James (Jonas Chernick) is a scientist who spends all day trying to figure out time travel, hoping to impress his boss Dr. Edna Rowley (Frances Conroy). Ignoring everyone in his life except his sister Meredith (Tommie-Amber Pirie) …
Two space hunters chase down an intergalactic ghost in Blood Machines. Vascan (Anders Heinrichsen) is the captain of a spaceship that also includes the mechanic Lago (Christian Erickson) and artificial intelligence Tracy. As Vascan investigates a downed spacecraft, he is stopped by the priestess Corey (Elisa Lasowski), who allows the female ghost Mima (Joëlle Berckmans) …
A group of friends get lost in the wilderness and find themselves tormented by a supernatural force in Witches in the Woods. Derek (Craig Arnold), Jill (Hannah Kasulka), Phillip (Corbin Bleu), Tod (Kyle Mac), Mattie (Alexander De Jordy), Bree (Humberly González), and Alison (Sasha Clements) are a group of friends heading out on a ski …
A lonely driving instructor with special abilities reluctantly returns to ghost hunting in Extra Ordinary. Rose Dooley (Maeve Higgins) is a driving instructor in a rural Irish town, who is plagued by guilt over the death of her paranormal investigator father Vincent (Risteard Cooper), which has resulted in Rose being unwilling to use her psychic …
We are less than two weeks away from the 14th annual Toronto After Dark Film Festival, which will be taking place from October 17-25, 2019 at the Scotiabank Theatre in downtown Toronto. With the entirety of this year’s line-up now announced on the official website, I thought I would go through the line-up and offer …