Toronto After Dark 2008 - International Shorts

Short films were represented in two different ways at this year's Toronto After Dark festival: the Canadian Shorts that preceded each feature film and a series of International ones strung together in a single screening. Looking back, the Canadian Shorts seemed to be far and away the class of the field. There was an extraordinary amount of creativity and laugh out loud humour in most of the submissions we were treated to.

The International set didn't fare quite as well, but it really had some tough competition (my understanding was that the amount of Canadian submissions to the festival FAR outstripped the international ones, so there was a greater herd from which to cull).

A few long overdue notes on the International crop:



The Attack of the Robots from Nebula-5 (Chema Garcia Ibarra - 6 minutes)

A very well done account of loneliness and a terrific start to the program. A young man is convinced that the Earth and all its inhabitants are about to be wiped out by aliens - except for whoever is in a very specific location at a certain time of day. The problem is, he doesn't actually know which day...Funny and sad.


Doxology (Michael Langan - 5 minutes)

The After Dark web sites lists this film as "Experimental". Yeah, no kidding...I haven't a clue what it was about, but it certainly showed a great deal of creativity in each skit-like moment with loads of spiffy visuals (a guy doing the Tango with a car; a bunch of guys standing with tennis rackets whacking tennis balls miles into the air; etc.).




The Goblin Man of Norway (Jay Cheel - 24 minutes)

No mere mockumentary, this is a remarkable film about the discovery of the "Goblin Man". Cheel (one of the folks behind The Documentary Blog) builds his entire mythology through well put together back story and talking heads. His interview subjects are actual real life experts in their fields, but there's not a hint of acting throughout. His technique of gaining the footage is a master stroke in making the film feel true to life. I assume the film was a bit too long to be included as one of the Canadian Shorts, so it was included in this program - simply because it was too good to be left out. Part 1 of the film follows below (Parts 2 and 3 should be easily found from Part 1):




Transrexia (Aurelio Voltaire - 1 minute)




The Queen (Walter Krudop - 1 minute)

Short portion of film here.


Both films had such interesting and striking visuals that I didn't have time to actually focus on what they were about before they were finished. Each sure had me curious though...In particular, I'd love to see something longer from Krudop as the world he created in "The Queen" was very intriguing.


Notes from the Acrid Plain (Jonathan Ashley - 15 minutes)

A very dry attempt to recreate an old style nature film but with a look at the odd habits and customs of creatures living on the "acrid plain". An interesting concept, but it just seemed to drag on and on. Hmmm, maybe it did capture those old nature films pretty well after all...


Martians Go Home: The Revenge of Sara Clockwork (Dani Moreno - 20 minutes)

More 80s cheesy goodness with green goo and home made effects. And anything with a theremin in it has got to be pretty entertaining.


Shut-Eye Hotel (Bill Plympton - 7 minutes)

The creator of this year's animated feature "Idiots and Angels" contributes a short film to the mix as well. This is a highly entertaining and creative take on a noir tale of mysterious killings at the Shut-Eye Hotel. Great use of the genre conventions and inspired humour. My favourite film of the session.




Kingz (Benjamin Diez and Marinko Spahic - 20 minutes)

An overlong murky ugly looking film with a decent idea - martial arts skilled aliens who suck out people's brains are under cover as drug lords. The protagonists aren't exactly likeable and the stunts and action scenes cheated far too much with effects to have any excitement about them.




I Live In The Woods (Max Winston - 3 minutes)

What a fantastic way to finish off the screening. A frenzied purple bearded guy wreaks havoc in the woods before doing the same above the clouds. There's a brilliant transition from silly/goofy to all out frenzy and the crowd ate it up.

Toronto After Dark 2008 - Award Winners

Awards were announced on Friday for this year's Toronto After Dark Film Festival. A record 3,500 votes were cast by attendees for the Audience Award Winners:


Best Feature Film















1. Let The Right One In

2. Repo! The Genetic Opera

3. 4BIA (Phobia)


Best Canadian Short Film
















1. Treevenge

2. The Facts In The Case Of Mister Hollow

3. The Flower



Best International Short Film
















1. I Live In The Woods

2. Kingz

3. Martians Go Home: The Revenge Of Sara Clockwork



Best Independent Feature Film


















1. I Sell The Dead

2. Home Movie

3. South Of Heaven



Though I'm frankly pretty stunned that "Repo" snuck in for second prize in the Audience awards, I guess I shouldn't be...It had the built-in audience and there was certainly some good crowd reaction. It was still a mess though. I think "MirageMan" deserved that spot.

Otherwise the rest of the picks are fine. All three of the Canadian shorts were among the best. My favourite is still "Lazer Ghosts 2: Return To Laser Cove", but I can understand why the ones chosen made it. They are all superb.

I'm hoping to talk about some of the International Shorts in the next few days. A mixed bag to be sure, but some fascinating stuff as well. Especially if you are interested in Goblin Men from Norway...

Toronto After Dark 2008 - "I Sell The Dead"

The closing film of the 2008 Toronto After Dark Film Festival was also a North American premiere and the 4th sellout of the week. In only its second public showing, Glenn McQuaid's "I Sell the Dead" was a fun way to close down the festival - particularly due to having not only McQuaid himself present for the Q&A, but also some of the stars of the film: Brenda Cooney, the very enthusiastic Larry Fessenden and Angus Scrimm (best known as The Tall Man from the Phantasm films).

To be honest, I wasn't overly looking forward to it initially...The trailer didn't really grab me and it felt as if it might be somewhat bland. But we've seen trailers bely the film's real content before and this was a good example. A pair of grave robbers (Fessenden and Dominic Monaghan) are captured and sentenced to death. While spending his last night in his cell before his pending morning execution, Arthur (Monaghan) is visited by a priest (Ron Perlman) who wants him to confess all of his dirty deeds. In flashback we retrace Arthur's life of grave robbing - from his first outing with Willie Grimes (Fessenden) through some rather odd encounters with members of the undead (vampires, zombies, etc.). The flashbacks are good fun especially when they come in contact with these beasts who have risen from their graves. They discover that there are quite a few customers who will pay much higher prices for the undead then for the actual dead. You can even do fun parlour tricks with the undead as Grimes shows to Arthur by repeatedly pulling out a wooden stake to allow the beast to come back to life and then pushing it back in to silence it again.




McQuaid mentioned afterwards that one of his influences were classic old Amicus horror anthologies like "Asylum", "Tales From The Crypt" and "The Vault Of Horror". Definitely fine influences in my book and the film certainly has a bit of that episodic feel as it keeps coming back to the wrap around story in the cell with the priest and Arthur. Unfortunately it spends a bit too much time with long stretches of dialogue between the two of them during these scenes - it's not that those sections are bad, but they tend to drag the energy out of the film. It just slows the film down when most of the audience is itching to get to the next story.

So if that's a bit of criticism directed at the film, it's only because those flashback scenes are so well done and quite funny. Between alien corpses getting beamed up and beach zombies being terrified of vampires, the film really brings in several new angles on well-trod territory. But the biggest reason is likely the characters themselves - the duo of Willie Grimes and Arthur make an interesting pair whose continuing adventures might be fun to follow. More than one person after the film mentioned how they would love to see a TV series built around the two characters. I'd have to agree - there's a great deal of potential here.

The only other drawback was that the copy of the film we saw was very dark and lost a great deal of contrast. I'd love to see this again from a real print, especially if they could tighten up the scenes in between the different adventures (though the conclusion to the priest and Arthur story is a dandy one). With luck, this might find decent distribution.





"Treevenge" How great was this short? Dubbed the first ever Christmas Tree exploitation film, it follows through on its promise in spades, spills blood all over the streets of the suburbs, tosses in all sorts of funny business in the background and makes you believe trees can communicate with each other ("You're scaring the saplings!"). Oh, and one of the best final "kill" scenes ever.

Toronto After Dark 2008 - "Lazer Ghosts 2: Return To Laser Cove" (short film)

"Come with me, if you don't want to be dead".

One of the very best things I saw all week was the short film "Lazer Ghosts 2: Return To Laser Cove". Made to seem like a trailer for the film of the same name (there isn't actually a Lazer Ghosts 1 - but dammit there should be), it's really a love letter of sorts to late 70s and early 80s cheesy horror and sci-fi. The goofy green laser effects mix in perfect doses with the cornball script and purposely off-kilter acting.

Made by a team of filmmakers from Canada under the name Astron-6 Video, they have several other videos under their belts with titles like "No Matter What...You're Dead!" and "The Sweatlodge On Skull Rock". Their titles alone scream brilliance. And apparently they are going to release some of this stuff including their only full length feature film "Goreblade: Warrior King Of The Universe" (See? Brilliance!) on DVD sometime soon.

In the case of Lazer Ghosts 2, a pack of evil laser-equipped ghosts led by the even evil-er spirit of Einstein fight against a geeky guy, a cop who follows his own rules and a sexy scientist. Gold.

Here's the whole thing below. It's actually probably longer than any trailer you've ever seen (with like the last half being the actual end of the film that the first half was hyping), but by the end you really wish there was an entire feature film by this name. It's even better when you see it with a crowd on a big screen and just laugh until it hurts.





This short played before "Mutant Chronicles" and put it to shame. In 9 minutes it packed in more entertainment than the feature did in 111.

Update: As James pointed out in a comment below, I forgot to include the name of the director. His name is Steven Kostanski and he has a bunch more stuff available at his web site.

Toronto After Dark 2008 - "Home Movie"

The honour of creepiest film of Toronto After Dark this year definitely goes to Christopher Denham's "Home Movie". Under the guise of found footage, the entire film is shot from the point of view of one of the members of a family (whoever happens to be filming with the family camera at a given time) - Dad (a pastor), Mom (a child psychologist) or one of the kids. Via moments taken mostly from holidays or special events when you would want to preserve some memories, we slowly see the children become more and more evil. A very cold-blooded evil. They crush a frog in vice grips. They crucify their cat. Then they set their sights on their parents. And the atmosphere becomes stifling.

Because of their jobs, it seems that the parents don't spend a lot of simple "quality" time with their kids. Adrian Pasdar nails the annoying "I'm such a comedian" father (a little too well - he was starting to bug the hell out of me) who likely is so busy with his congregation that the only time he spends with the kids is when he's videotaping them - so he's gotta make it look great for the camera. Mom deliberates about what to do with other kids and sometimes uses the camera to record her own case files. It's only really after the family has moved to a secluded house do the kids start to act bizarrely. Because of the nature of the behaviour, Dad wants to perform an exorcism, while Mom wants to treat with medication. Their approaches towards their children seem to follow along with how they would treat a patient or a parishoner. They seem to have forgotten how to actually "parent".




The danger with these types of films is that you have to be willing to believe that what is caught on film is all by accident - that someone with a camera would be willing to continue filming even with horrendous things happening around them. In this case it works and it works very well. Several of the disturbing moments are actually cut off as the parent filming suddenly jerks the camera or turns it off at the realization of what they are seeing through their viewfinder. There's likely some moments later in the film where you could probably question why the taping continues, but it doesn't matter - by then you've bought into the concept and you're waiting for what will happen next. Some of the most effective moments are the quick pans to one side of the room followed by a quick pan back to something new in the frame - perhaps both children standing there when moments ago they were lying down.

A walk through a few rooms late at night can be enormously tense and whether it pays off in a sudden fright or not, it keeps you right on the edge. Partially, that's due to the early slowness of the film that takes its time building the behavioural patterns of the children. It's also due to some terrific camerawork which very naturally pulls in the elements required into the frame. The concept's conventions get toyed with even more as the video you are watching will suddenly reverse itself or fast forward to later in a scene. There's even a few sections where another scene is edited in while the initial audio continues. It's a great trick especially when you understand why it's taking place.

But it's all about the atmosphere. The creepy, dread-filled atmosphere.





A reversal of sorts was the theme for tonight's opening short film "Auburn Hills Breakdown". Instead of the fish-out-of-water experience of urbanites being stranded in the back country woods, the film shows a hillbilly-esque family with car troubles in an upscale neighbourhood. They stumble upon a huge suburban style house and are invited in by the typical, if kinda disturbing, man and woman of the house. There's some nice touches that indicate there may be more behind the facades of the homeowners while the humour comes in both expected and unexpected ways as the back woods folks try to understand the environment they are in.

Toronto After Dark 2008 - "Tokyo Gore Police"

A few things you might find in "Tokyo Gore Police": 1) Fountains of blood, 2) Rivers of blood, 3) Cascading rapids of blood, 4) Torrents of blood.

And Snail girls, Crocodile women and a guy with a really, really big...uh...appendage that...uh...well, it's used as a weapon anyway. Oh, and a gun that shoots fists! Almost forgot that one...That was cool.

Though this film is at times a sharply honed social satire, I just can't quite bring myself to review it in any normal fashion. It's incredibly absurd and over the top just about anyway you slice it (ouch) - whether you peel away the layers (ow ow ow), chop it up into tiny sections (yipe) or grind it all up into a big stew (aaarrrgggghhh), it's all about the human body getting mutilated and reconfigured while the scenery gets red.

Don't take that as being necessarily bad though. It's actually quite, well, almost beautiful at times. Take the screencap below...It occurs just after Ruka (played by Eihi Shiina of Audition fame) has just completely severed both hands from this one guy and he can do nothing but stand there and spray blood from both open wounds. She slowly walks towards the camera (with her umbrella wide open of course) while the screen is bathed in reds, pinks and magentas. It's almost hypnotizing...




Ruka, by the way, is a cop who hunts and kills engineers (mutant humans who grow weapons from wounds or severed appendages and can only be killed by removing key-shaped tumours from them). There's a bit more to the plot than that, but it's really all you need to set up most of the action. And that's fine since director Yoshihiro Nishimura is best known as the top special effects man in Japan, so it provides a great canvas on which he can work. Taken like that, it can be gloriously fun to watch at times. You just don't know what kind of weird beastly creature is going to show up next and how the next battle will progress. Whose face will get ripped off this time? Eye sockets gouged out? No problem - replaced by guns!

That's a bit of its problem too though...Somewhere about an hour in, it gets kind of repetitive and frankly tiring. After yet more limbs and blood have been left behind by Ruka, you feel like you've seen it before. If there was one film during the festival I would have bet would have kept me awake it was this one, but I have to say I felt a bit weary around this point in the movie. Another healthy dose of jaw-dropping scenes cleared the cobwebs though...

Beyond the head-shaking moments, my favourite parts were the fake commercials running on TVs and the many big screens dotted around the futuristic city. They all focused either on police recruitment or the selling of suicide. The police have been privatized and bring violence to just about every aspect of their work - something the ads play up. As for the culture of suicide mocked in the other commercials, "Wrist Cutter G - It's cute!" pretty much says it all (young girls and their small fashionable pocket knives - in designer colours).

So overall, beyond it being 15-20 minutes too long and a bit repetitive, the creatures, the satire, the gorgeous saturated colours and the excellent pounding musical score all add up to a pretty freakishly interesting time at the movies.

Oh, and the blood. There's a bit of blood.





The evening kicked off with a funny short film called "BumRush". Each of three friends has had a run in with a local bum who, for no reason at all, has attacked them in some way. Since he's faster, smarter and crazier than all three of the guys, they decide that each of them is to take one of those aspects and focus on it so that together, they can defeat him. The film was the winner of the Toronto Film Challenge this past Spring to make a complete film in 24 hours. That makes the result even more impressive.

Toronto After Dark 2008 - "Netherbeast Incorporated"

One of the recurring themes of this year's After Dark festival (ie. it came up in several After Dark Pub conversations) was a lack of effective trailers. A case in point would be the one for "Netherbeast Incorporated" which, as I mentioned in my initial pre-fest thoughts, didn't inspire a great deal of laughter or do a great job in selling the film. But it turns out the film is not only a smart and funny take on shows like The Office (both content and style wise), but also kinda sweet.

It opens with what is apparently pretty much a direct reshoot of the original short film "The Netherbeast Of Berm-Tech Industries, Inc.":



The two main characters in that short are replaced by Darryl Hammond as the manager and Steve Burns as the employee. Hammond plays the role pretty closely to his Clinton impersonation on Saturday Night Live and it's an effective and funny performance - though best in small stretches. I was racking my brains during the film trying to think where I had seen Steve Burns before and had to resort to an online search later at home. As it turns out, I knew him from his old appearances as the host of the kids show "Blue's Clues". I always found him quite engaging there with a friendly way about him and a good sense of comedic timing. And he's managed to keep all those qualities even as a netherbeast. The rest of the expanded cast does a fine job too - Jason Mewes is almost unrecognizable, Dave Foley plays it straight but still has some subtle timing and Amy Davidson is charming as the sole "real-lifer".




While the initial short film ends showing that the co-workers are actually vampires, the film takes that a step further to show that the manager and the entire company are also vampires. Hammond's character is losing some of his faculties and is forgetful about the fact that he and the staff actually live in the building and rarely go outside (except for a rotating schedule of evenings out that are allowed). A rather complicated back story regarding the history of Berm-Tech Industries and its staff (which includes President Garfield and Alexander Graham Bell) is told throughout the film along with some help by a few animated sequences. It's all rather silly, but it works. The complications further set in for the undead employees with two events - the arrival of a Corporate guy (played by Judd Nelson) and the hiring of the first and only actual human employee (during a period when Hammond's manager character forgets himself).

One of the keys to the film is its ability to weave in little snippets of Corporate speak into the dialogue. If you've ever been told "I'm looking for you to take some ownership here", you'll appreciate a great deal of the humour and situations the film tackles. It's pretty well-covered ground by "The Office" as well as "Office Space", but when it's done well, why argue? It's not gut-busting humour, but I rarely didn't have at least a smile on my face during most of the film (though the middle section is a bit slow). The burgeoning relationship between Burns and Dickinson is handled very nicely and is surprisingly sweet.

It looks like a DVD is being released in the next few months (early rumours are a commentary as well the original short film will be included). Though it's not an unqualified success, it sure beat all my expectations going in and I'll likely pick up the disc.





"Ending The Eternal", the opening short of the evening, had a great premise - a vampire is tired of his eternal existence, so he hires several people to kill him. He provides all the necessary elements and steps to do it, but they bumble the job and then pay the price. Neat idea, but it's done on such a shoestring budget with awful line readings from most of the actors that it didn't really come across for me very well. Apparently it did to others though, as it was enough to secure some funding for a feature film based on the lead eternal character. If they can get a deeper set of actors and a bit more polish, I'll be curious to see the result.

Toronto After Dark 2008 - "4bia"

As much as I love watching my DVDs at home (avoiding commercials, being able to pause, no electronic devices!, etc.), there's nothing like watching a movie with an audience who is onboard with a film's concept and ready to go wherever it takes them. As I mentioned in a previous post about the Spanish film [rec], this goes double for horror films. It adds so much to the experience when everyone around you is tensing up, giggling in anticipation, jumping out of their seats and then laughing in release at the same moments. And so it went for Thailand's newest horror film "4bia" - an anthology film of four separate stories.

Though the individual stories really have nothing to do with each other, there are actually a few strands that tie them together - a newspaper article that is only glimpsed in one story describes an event that happens in a later segment; a character's death has an effect in a different story; etc. Each story purports to be about a certain type of fear (or phobia), but that's really kind of irrelevant. These roughly 25 minute long stories are perfectly fine stand alone films as they are.

The first is a classic slow build...A young woman is essentially confined to her apartment due to a broken leg from a car accident. Bored, she spends most of her time on the Internet or text-ing on her cell phone. She receives a message from a stranger and decides to respond. It quickly develops into an amusing game that intrigues her, until her new friend gets a bit demanding and tells her he is on his way over. As she becomes ever more fearful and creepy noises start occurring and lights go out, the tension is layered on thicker and thicker. You kinda know what's going to happen, but it doesn't diminish things when it does. And the audience loved it.

The second story wasn't quite as successful, but still contained interesting elements. Its main problem is the absolutely frenetic camerawork, but the choppy editing and overabundance of CGI towards the end certainly don't help either. Similar to some recent North American style action films, it's all too much. But it still provided some scares that earned their seat jumping moments, especially the death scene involving the air conditioner. When you see it, you'll understand...The story itself focuses around a group of teenagers who bully another student. After a particularly nasty incident that severely injures the young victim, he retaliates via witchcraft. His weapon ends up being a picture that will kill you if you look at it. The story even raises a good question - if you don't participate in bullying but still let it happen, are you just as guilty?




The third story is the kicker though...If the crowd wasn't already bought into the film by this point (and the vast majority were), this one sealed the deal. Four young men are on a rafting trip and settling down to go to sleep in their tent. Urban legends and ghostly stories are told and they start freaking each other out a bit. When they have an accident on the water the following day, they begin to wonder how many of the stories are actually true. Though certainly spooky in spots, this one had the audience laughing loud and long. The interaction between all four of the guys was very natural and appealing while they purposely poked fun at each other and dropped movie references all over the place ("how come the ghosts always have long black hair?", "damn Thai movies..."). Their shirts were spectacular statements of devotion to U.S. culture ("I heart E.T.") and the guys were just spot on perfect in their reactions to each other's comments and jibes. The last story which followed this could have been about price fluctuations of soybean futures and the crowd still would've been perfectly happy walking out of the theatre...

Fortunately, the last story wasn't about soybean futures. It was an effective, if relatively straightforward telling of one woman being cooped up with a dead body. The interesting angle is that the woman is a stewardess and the body is that of a foreign princess being flown back for a state funeral. There's some additional background to the story that I won't give away, but the majority of it is the stewardess convinced that the body is still alive somehow and out to get her. Being a princess, they can't simply put the body in a coffin, so the wrapped up corpse is placed in a seat and strapped in. Of course, it doesn't just stay there...The story goes exactly where you think it will, but it's still pretty satisfying and ends a tremendously entertaining ride.

Undoubtedly one of the favourites of the festival given the reactions and buzzing discussion that followed the crowds outside afterwards. This could be a strong domestic release with very good word of mouth if someone would just take a chance and put it out in theatres. Don't remake it - it's just fine as it is.





"Lucky 10" was tonight's short and though not one of the stronger submissions of the festival (hey, it's a tough field!), I probably enjoyed it more than many others. Mostly because I like films that subtly repeat patterns or numbers - in this case the number 10 pops up just about everywhere. We discover some of the reasons for that as we delve into the story of a mysterious silent old man who has been a regular customer of a bar for many years. Through the eyes of a new bartender, we get the details of a curse...

Toronto After Dark 2008 - "Red"

Of all the trailers I watched for films at this year's festival, the one for Lucky McKee and Trygve Allister Diesen's revenge thriller "Red" looked to be the most by the numbers and one of the least interesting. Nothing overly wrong with it, but it looked a bit like a cable movie with a straight line through the standard stops of a revenge plot. I'm sure several people wondered why this was even playing at the festival. I suppose one could still quibble about whether it fit into the lineup or not, but it's a surprisingly solid little film boosted by a tremendous simmering performance by Bryan Cox and I'm extremely glad I saw it.

While fishing one day, old-timer Avery encounters three teenagers who've been hunting in the woods. Their leader Danny is poking fun at the old man until Avery gets a return dig into him. Danny's uncontrollable anger builds up and he shoots and kills the old man's long time companion - his 14 year old dog named Red. Avery tries to get the boys to admit what they have done, but gets blocked down each and every avenue by Danny's powerful and rich father. Desperate for some kind of justice, Avery can't let go and keeps pushing the stakes higher.




Tension is built up and sustained quite well by the directing duo through all the expected scenes. Little touches like the colour red popping up in the background every so often gives us further indication of Avery's state of mind. He's unable to see the damage that might occur if he keeps pressing and gets to the point where he loses sight of any actual justice. Cox shines as his character - even though he can barely control his anger, he still manages to garner a great deal of empathy and even had many audience members applauding when he chalked up a few small wins by getting under Danny's skin. Of course it helps when the rest of the cast are excellent as well: Noel Fisher captures the obviously emotionally disturbed Danny; Tom Sizemore is the power hungry father; Kyle Gallner is the younger brother Harold who wants to do the right thing and come clean about the incident. The one instance of a less than bright light would probably be Kim Dickens as reporter Carrie Donnel - not necessarily because she performs badly, but simply because her character feels like a plot device to allow Avery to explain his actions via the telling of his family's history (however there's one particular single long take of Cox relating his tale that should be right up there with the better acting moments of the year).

It's actually quite remarkable that the film doesn't feel that it has that many slow sections. If some of the situations, in particular the final confrontation, tumble out of control perhaps a bit too quickly, it's all in service of the character moments. And there are plenty of them and they are very much worth it.





The programmers of the Canada After Dark series (which precedes each film) have been very sharp in slating shorts that complement their features. In this case, they chose the amusing "Vengeance", a tale of the disservice done to a young woman by a magical crab and her chance meeting with it again. It's worth seeing if only for the little magical wand held by the crab...

Toronto After Dark 2008 - "Trailer Park Of Terror"

Steven Goldmann's "Trailer Park Of Terror" (released on DVD just days after our screening) was a good complement as the second movie of Zombie Day at this year's Toronto After Dark. The zombies in the audience stayed for a second helping of blood and guts, the film provided them what they needed and, like the previous film "Kevin Tenney's Brain Dead", my opinion of it slowly changed as the film progressed. Unfortunately in this case, instead of warming to it, I slowly became less and less enamoured of it.

Based on a series of comics, the film begins with a bit of back story about the trailer park and Norma - a pretty blonde looking to get away from the park and its residents. Things go terribly wrong for her and with a suggestion by a mysterious roadside stranger, she returns to seek vengeance on the entire trailer park while taking her own life too. Cut to years later when a bus load of problem teenagers get stranded during a storm and seek shelter at the park with their pastor. The park is mostly abandoned, but they encounter a sexy, older woman who puts them all up for the night. Her name? Norma. There seems to be something amiss about this older and wiser Norma and when the first kill comes we see why that is - she's a zombie underneath.




These early scenes are actually quite well done and settle the audience in for what might be a fun ride. Nothing overly original, but it seemed to be a solid environment for an entertaining genre workout. The acting is far superior than what you might expect and Nichole Hiltz (as Norma) is exceptionally strong. The effects appear to be professionally done and look great, the teenage fodder is relatively interesting and Norma looks to be an amusing villain. But it all starts to turn in a different direction...It does this in two different ways:

1) A flashback scene to Norma and her Mom shows a nasty side to the old trailer park. The local Sheriff has been using her Mom for sexual favours and the scene we get ends in what can only be described as a very distasteful way. Yeah, I know...I'm watching a zombie movie where a boatload of people are going to die and get eaten - what did I expect? It's just that this scene is completely removed from the silly aspects of the zombies and placed directly into the real world. It's also a harbinger of things to come - several of the later death scenes involve torturing the victims a bit before their demise. Purely for the enjoyment of the zombies doing it. It killed the fun aspect of the movie for me.

2) The sense of humour Norma brought to the film as she met her new guests seems to evaporate as they shift towards a different type of comedy. Many of the same people Norma sought vengeance upon have also become zombies and remain in the park as well (Norma seems to be the boss of the place). However, they've retained their old ugly trailer-park-trash stereotypical personalities and that's where the film starts milking most of its humour. It gets tired pretty quick.

I know others will enjoy the film better in the latter stages where the "kills" become more graphic and creative, but by then all of the humour and fun had been sucked away for me.





Staying in the zombie realm was the opening short entitled "The Laundromat" that depicts a couple's attempt to hide out from the rampaging zombies out in the streets. He's been bitten already, so she tries to save him and also figure out how to save herself from the hordes. Solid entry and points for creative use of an iron.

Toronto After Dark 2008 - "Kevin Tenney's Brain Dead"

"Brains! Brains!" The first of two zombie films following last Sunday's annual Zombie Walk hadn't even started when the crowd started chanting the well-worn refrain. Not that they needed any real reason to do so, but there was a short delay because of a minor technical problem so the crowd simply decided to amuse itself (as there was some fiddling with the aspect ratio settings, some savvy zombie in the crowd yelled out - in best zombie-like fashion - "Wider!").

That's the kind of environment that makes the Toronto After Dark festival so much fun. These genre films (especially the zombie ones) already have a built-in sense of goofiness about them and the After Dark staff, Bloor Cinema staff, volunteers and fest director Adam Lopez all chip in to keep that same atmosphere in the theatre, in line outside and at the many gatherings during the fest. So that allows the crowd to keep smiling through small glitches and, more importantly, through less than perfect moments in the films themselves. Though that's not meant to be a preface for a complete tear-down of the film in question, there certainly was more than one moment during the early going of "Kevin Tenney's Brain Dead" that I was relying on that early built up good will.




Director Tenney himself touched on the main issue in the introduction to the film: "Horror Comedy is hard to do". And though the film did eventually settle into a better rhythm, aside from an early big zombie kill the movie initially laboured through some rough dialogue, uneven timing and not so funny smart-ass quips. Perhaps it was the admitted small budget of the film that led to some additional padding out of the script since there were some longish stretches of not very funny things happening. The plot was set up fairly straightforwardly - a meteorite from out of space crashes to Earth, the ooze it carries infects its first victim by turning him into a zombie who either kills or infects others, three separate small groups of people end up meeting in a cabin in the woods. Cue zombie attacks.

And that's when the film started to work much better. As a matter of fact the longer it went, the more I began to like it. Two main reasons: 1) the old school makeup and special effects were a great deal of fun and 2) once the attacks began to happen, the film began to play with the conventions of the genre a bit. There were still some clunky lines, but funny ones began to pop up here and there and you could settle in for the ride. The cast of characters include a pair of handcuffed escaped criminals (one unjustly sent to jail while the other is vicious), a pair of female hikers and a minister and his young buxom secretary. Though I guess in a film like this, saying 'buxom' when it comes to the female characters is rather redundant. Four separate women shed their tops for no better reason than to shed their tops. It's juvenile for sure, but the movie knows that, shrugs and keeps going. And it even managed to have the smart-ass quipping main character grow on me a bit...

So maybe it's that After Dark atmosphere that is still lingering with me, but in the end I found that the film had grown on me a bit and had even succeeded in entertaining me.





The opening Short "Deadspiel" got the crowd psyched. It's the easiest and shortest elevator pitch ever: "Zombie curling". And the comedy plays out pretty much perfectly with bloody good timing. Whether it was the zombies struggling to handle sweeping the stones or the zombie fans up in the bar watching their squad, the film brought out some solid laughs from the crowd. And with all that nice gleaming pristine white ice around, you know it's going to be sullied at some point...

Toronto After Dark 2008 - "Repo! The Genetic Opera"

Oh man...

I honestly really wanted to like this film. Composer Terrance Zdunich stated after the screening that he believes there is an audience for a 21st century Rock Opera and I absolutely agree. With a great premise (which this film has), it could find a solid fan base and creep into the mainstream. But that's not this film. This film is quite the mess.

The back story tells us that sometime in the future, an epidemic of organ failures takes place. Financing for organ replacement is common and provided by the corporate behemoth GeneCo, but those who cannot make their payments are subjected to repossession of the most intrusive kind. As well, addictions to surgery and black market painkillers (extracted from the dead) are becoming rampant. It's fertile ground for all sorts of interesting characters and situations. But the repossession premise is, if not entirely abandoned, simply not exploited to any depth. And when it does pop up (like when one of the repo men sings about his career while he graphically slices up an unknown victim) it's almost tangential and inconsequential to the story.

But at worst, it's just frustrating that they didn't follow through with the strong concept. What really hurts the film are the choices of what gets focused on instead - specifically the sections dealing with Rotti Largo (founder of GeneCo) and his family. Largo (Paul Sorvino) has a big problem: he's dying but refuses to bequeath the company to any of his three children because he can't stand them. And neither could I since all three of them are almost unwatchable. Of course, the characters are supposed to be too stupid and crazy for their father to trust, but it kills any of the enjoyment of watching them argue and sing. Played by Bill Moseley, Paris Hilton and ex-Skinny Puppy vocalist Nivek Ogre, the characters lack any subtlety, are downright annoying and have forgettable songs.




And speaking of the music, it never felt totally integrated into the story. As a matter of fact, I didn't find that it ever really drove the narrative. Most of the story was done through exposition between songs or via individual sung/spoken lines that didn't seem to tie into any of the melodies of the main songs. As for the melodies themselves I really can't say that many were memorable. There's indeed some riffs that had some potential and a couple of songs had some call and response that seemed to briefly work, but there were far too many moments of singers singing, no scratch that, screaming themselves over each other. So perhaps there was more narrative drive in the songs - it's just that I couldn't make out the lyrics to know that.

I do have to say that Sarah Brightman was one of the highlights. Even with her spooky CGI eyes, she's quite the stunning woman with a strong presence and of course a massive voice. Anthony Stewart Head also embraces his role for all its worth - as a doctor protecting his teenage daughter from the outside world due to her rare blood disease. Two other things I liked: the animated sections that covered the history of GeneCo plus character back stories and some of the colourful lighting schemes (as you can see from the screenshots). I wish they had really focused on keeping bright colours across all the scenes, but it wasn't consistent and there were plenty of other moments that were just visually ugly with set design seeming to be all over the place.

In the end, the film simply failed to be any fun at all. I can't help but feel that this film desperately wants (and I think even expects) to be the next Rocky Horror Picture Show, but in the guise of a Rock Opera. I wish that it could be, but this isn't the film to do that. Not at all.





The evening wasn't a loss though. And that's due to the absolutely wonderful two minutes of "The Flower" - the Short that started things off. I don't need to say anything else except that there were actually people guffawing due to it. Yep, guffaws...Just watch it here:

Toronto After Dark 2008 - "MirageMan"

While out walking late at night, club bouncer and martial arts enthusiast Maco comes across a home invasion in progress. He knocks out one of the thieves, takes his mask and disables the rest of them, saving a number of women inside the house from further torture. One of these women is news reporter Carol Valdivieso and she creates a bit of a sensation by filing a report about her experience and the masked man who selflessly saved her. Maco's traumatized young brother responds well to the news that a hero is roaming the city, so Maco decides to continue his crime fighting ways.

Why is MirageMan, with its rather minimal plot and ultra low budget, possibly my favourite film of Toronto After Dark?


1) The fight scenes in the film are extraordinarily fun to watch. As Todd Brown from Twitch mentioned before the film, there are no wires or CGI in the entire movie - so when you see these guys beating each other up, they are really beating each other up. Huge roundhouse kicks to the head, body slamming kicks to the mid-section and all manner of hand-to-hand combat. Star Marko Zaror (who has been the stunt double for The Rock) is supremely skilled and you can believe it when he takes on an entire gang of 20 and pummels them all.


2) The spoofing of the super hero genre is absolutely dead-on, but it's also pretty gentle. The guys who made the film are obviously fans of the genre, but they certainly don't mind taking its conventions down a notch or two. For example, MirageMan discovers that creating the right outfit is time consuming (he makes lists with items like "light slippers" and "flexible pants") and that it may not lend itself to quick changes in public. And there's a wannabe sidekick who calls himself PseudoRobin that emails him constantly. There's even a few intertitles like:

Mission 1: MirageMan vs. The Gang Of Bilbao

3) The music is 70s waka-chaka waka-chaka funk-tastic! Check it out in the trailer:




4) The direction for such a low-budget film is very well done and incorporates a lot of the style of 70s action films by using quick zooms in and out and other techniques.


5) I love that "hands like knives" pose. Especially when he runs that way.



The darker tone of the film in the last 20 minutes or so doesn't completely work though - when your unstoppable hand-to-hand combat super hero starts using a gun, it lessens the enjoyment. However, there's an undercurrent of commentary of the state of violence found in many of the large South American cities - the home invasions, kidnappings, etc. If that shift in tone may not match up perfectly with the first hour or so of the film, it likely has a solid reason to be there. I can't say whether the filmmakers believe that vigilantism is a good thing, but if the climate in the cities is bad enough where you can envision vigilantes doing good, then perhaps there's a wider problem.

But as a shared film experience that first hour is still a terrifically fun time that garnered some of the best audience reactions of the festival.





The short film of the screening was Experimental with a capital 'E'. Called "Hydro-Levesque" (all the shorts before the features are Canadian in origin by the way - Bravo to the fest for doing that and getting wider exposure for them), it intertwines the fortunes of Quebec and Manitoba (specifically Winnipeg) with the power generation stations in the North. I was 11 around the time of some of the newsreel footage used in the film (e.g. the November 1976 provincial election victory by the separatist Parti-Quebecois), so it brought back very strong feelings - not all of them good. Say what you want about Rene Levesque though, the man could certainly convey passion. If I didn't quite get what the filmmaker was trying to do in this wildly edited short, I kinda enjoyed spending the time trying to figure it out...

Toronto After Dark 2008 - "Idiots And Angels"

When I initially viewed the trailer for Bill Plympton's wordless animated feature "Idiots And Angels", I thought that it might be a difficult task making it all the way through its roughly 80 minute run time. The style of animation and muted palette indicated that it might wear on my senses after awhile and without any dialogue I expected a long road ahead. Within the first 5 minutes however, my expectations were totally turned around...

With all due respect to Pixar and Studio Ghibli, I would love to see a film of this variety at least get nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Film if not win it outright (simply because it would bring more attention to a wider audience). There is a constant high level of inventiveness throughout the film that not only helps create some odd but interesting characters and situations, but plays with different angles, perspectives and transitions between scenes. There's no need for dialogue in the film - not only because you are continually sucked into these wonderful bits of animation (water drops from a shower that morph into a toothbrush which then morphs into a cereal spoon; the dancing barmaid who loves the Spanish music TV station; etc.), but simply because the story and characters are so well laid out.




The story isn't really overly complicated though...Every morning a very angry man wakes up, throws his alarm clock at a chirping bird and grumbles his way through his day which seems to mostly include enjoying the misfortunes of others and drinking at a local bar. Then one morning he wakes up to discover two small wings growing out of his back. He removes them, but they grow back, reach fully grown size and his life begins to change. The bar patrons laugh at his new appendages, but there is jealousy as well since these wings can be used for a variety of purposes. The biggest change though is that this angry man is prevented by the wings from committing any further evil or nasty acts.

There's a wide variety of human behaviour that the film taps into, but it seems to settle mostly on the consequences of good and evil actions. Even though selfless acts with good intentions can immediately be of worth to others, the personal benefits may not be as obvious to the one performing them. So why do people choose to behave in certain ways? The film doesn't necessarily attempt to answer that specific question, but it does show that there are several ways of earning your wings.

Plympton has been nominated twice for an Oscar for Best Animated Short, but I'd love to see him move up to the long form class this year. The animation speaks for itself.





Without a doubt one of the best looking and most professional of this year's short films is David Birnbaum's Found Objects. Set who-knows-where and who-knows-when, the kids of an apartment building are trying out for some kind of musical production and are being assigned a variety of instruments. Meanwhile, bombs are exploding non-stop outside the building. There's no explanation for any of this (as with the feature, there's no dialogue) and while I'll admit I didn't fully understand what the film was trying to do, it absolutely succeeded in creating a unique environment and atmosphere.

Toronto After Dark 2008 - "Let The Right One In"

If there's one thing I learned pretty early on as a parent it's that boys and girls are different. Not in the obvious stereotypical compartmentalized ways that our culture has defined them, but just in how they approach things. Whether it's tackling a problem, reacting to a situation or just playing with friends, there are some marked disparities between two kids of the opposite gender. That becomes even more pronounced if one of them happens to be a centuries old blood-sucking beast.

Sweden's "Let The Right One In" has won numerous awards at various festivals and has received a great deal of press - many describing it as among the best vampire films ever made. Thing is, it isn't really a vampire film...It's much more the story of a young 12 year old boy learning how to relate to the people around him (his mother who smothers him, his father who wants to be buddies, the bullies at school, etc.) and in particular his new neighbour Eli who is also 12 and a girl. Well, on the outside anyway...

Oskar receives advice from her to fight back against those bullies at school and their relationship grows from there in a gentle, slow and very sweet way. Eli controls the pace of this burgeoning friendship/love between her and Oskar while he just tries to figure her out. Her "issues" just help to further show the differences between them - he lacks the capacity to recognize subtlety or to know when to quite teasing, she shows a greater maturity, etc. These scenes were the heart of the film for me and because of this (and the stillness that many of their scenes together have), when the violence occurs it's given a much bigger impact.




But even with a few scenes of bloodletting and the vampire attacks, it isn't a gorefest...Director Tomas Alfredson uses a very washed out palette of colours on screen and even the red of the blood appears more like dark rust. Brighter reds do appear throughout the film, but mostly as pieces of furniture or even clothing worn by the characters. By not over emphasizing the specifics of the attacks, Alfredson makes the viewer fill in the gaps which allows for even more horrific images to come to mind.

The film was also very effective at pulling the viewer into Oskar's life and predicament. When he first fights back against one of the bullies there was a spontaneous round of applause from the crowd (a sell-out by the way - the first for the After Dark festival) and that's probably a good sign that the audience has developed an emotional tie to the character. Though the vampire element of the story is not the core of the film, I found it incorporated its mythic elements (eternal life, avoiding sunlight, etc.) very well into the characters and the main story.

Wider release of the film is expected in North America and I'll definitely catch this again. It's beautifully realized.





The short film that began the evening was the completely excellent "The Facts In The Case Of Mr. Hollow". In what appears as a single take, a roving camera crosses a single photograph and slowly picks up details about what has happened and gives you an idea about what likely is about to happen as well. As we zoom in and out of the foreground and background, it appears that time hasn't actually stopped in the picture since there are subtle changes to it (a match that wasn't lit at the beginning suddenly appears to have been struck, character expressions change, etc.). Directors Rodrigo Gudino and Vincent Marcone have created an absolute fabulous, not to mention unsettling, example of visual storytelling.