Image from The Green Inferno
One of the highlights of TIFF is Colin Geddes’ Midnight Madness lineup. Every night at 12 a.m., Ryerson Theatre fills up with the festival’s most enthusiastic audiences to watch an assortment of flicks that might feel out of place at more reasonable hours. This usually includes a large dose of horror from around the world, some action from Asia, and perhaps a bawdy comedy or two.
In the past, Colin Geddes has shown a knack for balancing a couple big-name features with smaller films from unknown filmmakers. This year is no different. The highest profile feature comes from Hostel creator Eli Roth, but this year’s programme also includes a rare horror movie from Austria and a low budget indie from a couple of untested Vancouver filmmakers.
The whole programme consists of 10 films, and the festival offers a “Midnight Madness” pack which gives you access to all of them for $176 (or $113 for students and seniors). Here’s the five flicks that look promising.
All Cheerleaders Die
In 2001, two young filmmakers shot a low budget horror feature on video (before that was normal). It was called All Cheerleaders Die and it was about a bullied outsider’s perverse revenge scheme on a clique of cheerleaders. It was barely seen, and both filmmakers forged ahead with their own independent careers. One of them, Lucky McKee, found some cult success with the Anna Faris-starring May before making a string of direct-to-video joints. The other filmmaker, Chris Silvestri, saw his career stall after directing I Know Who Killed Me, a Lindsay Lohan vehicle that may not be as bad as its reputation suggests. Either way, both filmmakers could use a career boost and have returned to remake their original 2001 film, which is also this year’s opening night Midnight Madness film. Will it be good? Who knows, but it should be interesting to see how the two filmmakers handle their own material 12 years later.
You can catch All Cheerleaders Die at the Ryerson Theatre at 11:59pm on Thursday, September 5. You can also catch it at 3:00pm on Friday, September 6 at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema and at 9:30pm on Sunday, September 15 at the Scotiabank.
The Green Inferno
Eli Roth’s actual career as a filmmaker began, for all intents and purposes, when he brought Cabin Fever to Midnight Madness in 2002 and it became one of the most buzzed about films of the festival. In the meantime, he’s directed two Hostel movies, beaten up Nazis with a baseball bat in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, and helped launch Hemlock Grove for Netflix. The Green Inferno is Roth’s first feature since 2007. In the film, a group of naïve, young environmentalists go to Peru to interfere with the destruction of the rainforest. But then they go ahead and get themselves kidnapped by an uncivilized tribe of Amazonian cannibals. Honestly? That scenario sounds racist as hell, but in Roth’s defense, he’s drawing from an entire subgenre of Italian cannibal movies, most notably the sometimes-banned Cannibal Holocaust. Whatever you might think of Roth as a filmmaker, he’s not one to pull punches, and The Green Inferno is sure to satisfy Midnight Madness’ most devoted gorehounds.
The Green Inferno will have its world premiere at the Ryerson Theatre on Saturday, September 7 at 11:59pm. You can also catch it the following Monday at 1:30pm at the Scotiabank Theatre.
Afflicted
With Afflicted, two fresh-faced Canadian filmmakers, Clif Prowse and Derek Lee, come to a Midnight Madness with a meta genre movie that sounds like a cross between Paranormal Activity and The Fly. Playing two characters named Clif and Derek (duh), the directors also co-star in the film. What was supposed to be video diary of One Last Totally Awesome European Vacation for the fatally ill Derek turns into an ongoing documentation of his bodily changes. After a one night stand turns ugly, Derek’s body begins changing in unexpected ways. Judging by the synopsis, I can’t quite tell if this is an indie superhero movie or a post-Cronenbergian body horror flick. I’ll guess I’ll have to watch it to find out. Either way, the team behind the film consists of two Vancouver-based filmmakers that have been making short films together since eighth grade (awww!). Afflicted is their first feature.
Afflicted will premiere at 11:59pm on Monday, September 9 at the Ryerson Theatre. It can also be seen at 8:45pm the following Wednesday at the Scotiabank Theatre.
The Station
Like Canada (or English Canada, anyway) Austria is a relatively small nation sitting beside a much larger nation that speaks the same language. While Germany may not be as hegemonic as the United States in its cultural influence, it’s still big enough to affect it’s smaller neighbour’s cinematic output. Even Austria’s most well-known filmmaker, Michael Haneke, makes more movies in France than his own country. All of this just means that you have probably never seen an Austrian horror film. Well, that can change at this year’s Midnight Madness with The Station, about a group of scientists a isolated research station in the Alps. A melting glacier begins to affect the organisms around the station in strange ways, changing the DNA of the local wildlife and putting the scientists in danger. Despite, or maybe because of, The Station‘s debt to John Carpenter’s version of The Thing, this flick sounds like a hell of a good time.
The Station premieres at the Ryerson Theatre on Friday, September 6 at 11:59pm. You can also catch it at the Scotiabank Theatre on the following Sunday at 2:15pm or Friday, September 13 at 9:30pm.
R100
The title of this film, R100, is a joke about the Japanese film ratings R-15 and R-18. In other words, this movie is only appropriate for people who are a hundred years old. R100 promises to make up for the lack of comedies in this year’s Midnight Madness programme by giving us a storyline ripe for ribald humour and plenty scenarios that would make your parents uncomfortable. Directed by Hitoshi Matsumoto, a well-known comedian in Japan, R100 tells the story of an average father who joins a strange S&M club that sends leather-clad dominatrices to assault him in public spaces. Matsumoto’s previous comedies, Big Man Japan and Symbol both made a splash at TIFF with their off-kilter senses of humour, and R100 promises to be no exception.
R100 premieres at the Ryerson Theatre on Thursday, September 12. You can catch it at the Scotiabank Theatre on the following Friday at 11:30am and the following Saturday at 9:00pm.
The full Midnight Madness programme and schedule can be found at the TIFF website, where you can also purchase tickets. For people who like scary movies and gore, Midnight Madness makes for an excellent introduction to the Toronto International Film Festival. It also offers some of the best movie audiences in the city.
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Alan Jones writes about film for Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @alanjonesxxxv.
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