Festival director Adam Lopez and Murder Party star Chris Sharp answered questions from the audience. Photo: Nicole VottaConjoined twins, brown knights, zombie chickens and philosopher donkeys. Where do you find them? The Toronto After Dark Film Festival.
The second Toronto After Dark Film Festival opened Oct. 19 and wrapped up Oct. 25 at the Bloor Cinema. The festival, which shines a light on independent horror, fantasy and science fiction films, featured 14 films and over 30 short films.
Communications director Chris Emery said the festival organizers and fans have one standard they hold the films to.
“We always say that our film festival is based on thrilling cinema,” Emery said. “They like the thrilling cinema, they like seeing the film where you’re walking down the dark corridor and you’re not sure what’s going to jump out or try to kill you.”
A Taste for BrainsThe festival opened with the Canadian premier of the highly anticipated Mulberry Street. Set in New York City, Mulberry Street is a zombie movie in the vein of Land of the Dead and 28 Days Later. A virus spread by rats takes over the city and the victims turn into rodent like zombies. It’s a solid movie and the audience clearly loved it. But it feels a bit too familiar. Maybe the zombie genre needs a break.
However, two more zombie movies were on the bill, the zombie chicken comedy Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead and Automaton Transfusion. Directed by Steven C. Miller, Automaton Transfusion is definitely low-budget and the cast isn’t quite Oscar worthy. It contains a political slant that works surprising well, though. These zombies were developed by the United States military. The experiment goes horrifically awry and a remarkable amount of gore ensues.
Wolfhound was billed as one of the festival’s highlights. Rumored to be the highest budget Russian film ever made and with a plot line that owes more to Beastmaster or Kull than Lord of the Rings how could it go wrong? If you went into the film expecting highbrow fantasy, you would have come out disappointed. This is cheesy sword and sorcery fun.
Most pleasantly surprising were the shorts. Short films were shown before each feature and in blocks of nine on Saturday and Sunday. While some of the features regrettably fell into clichés, the shorts were daring and visually arresting. Some of the most notable were the surrealist An Introduction to Lucid Dreaming and A Very Sunny Morning, the gas-masked dystopian fantasy Ambassador’s Day, and the morality tale The Tragic Story of Nling. Latchkey’s Lament and Operation: Fish were easily the most visually appealing films.
The festival wrapped up with Murder Party. Festival director Adam Lopez took the stage to cheers and applause, as he declared the festival a success. According to Lopez, over 5,000 people attended the festival, a figure well beyond their expectations.
While thanking staff, volunteers and audience, Lopez said their enthusiasm and love of thrills was what keeps the festival going.
“We do it all for you guys,” he said.
Lopez promised the festival would be back next year, same time, same place. Whatever monster or madman reigns supreme next year, there will be gore and horror and audience chants.
What do we want? Kills!
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