With the upcoming 18th edition of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival that runs from 15-19th, a festival that screens the best in new horror, thriller and sci-fi films. The festival which runs out of the Scotiabank Theatre in downtown Toronto will screen 10 feature films and 30 shorts. Here we preview four films that will be screened during the run! Check back for reviews coming from TADFF!
Queens of the Dead
Directed By: Tina Romero
Starring: Katy O’Brien, Jack Haven, Jaquel Spivey
Synopsis: When a zombie apocalypse breaks out in Brooklyn on the night of a giant warehouse party, an eclectic group of drag queens, club kids, & frenemies must put aside their drama and use their unique skills to fight against the brain-thirsty, scrolling undead.
Why I’m Excited: Queens of the Dead is the directorial debut of Tina Romero, the daughter of the late George A. If having horror royalty in the director chair isn’t enough, it’s also led by one of the most exciting up-and-coming actors this decade, Katy O’Brien. Those names alone make Queens an impossible-to-miss opening film for Toronto After Dark.
But beyond just names, Queens looks like an absolute riot. The trailer, set to a bumping soundtrack by Blitz//Berlin, highlights a small group of holdouts in a drag club holding off zombies, evoking Shaun of the Dead or even this year’s Sinners. Single-location movies live or die on the strength of the characters holed up together, and this group is as hilarious as they are badass.
Forbidden City
Directed By: Gabriele Mainetti
Starring: Yaxi Liu, Enrico Borello, Marco Giallini
Synopsis: In a mafia-controlled part of Rome, a restaurant owner teams up with a highly-skilled woman to collectively search for missing family members. Their mission places them directly in the cross-hairs of a violent mob family, leading to a twisty narrative and more than a few big action set-pieces.
Why I’m Excited: As films like 100 Yards and Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In show, there’s no better setting for a martial arts movie than a gang war in a small part of a massive city. And as The Godfather Part III and real-life show, there’s no better massive city than Rome, Italy.
Forbidden City draws inspiration from Italian mob movies and East Asian action films, with programmers additionally comparing it to films like The Raid and John Wick. From its conception it’s a truly international movie, with all the makings of a modern gangster and martial arts movie classic.
Director Gabriele Mainetti is already a fan favourite at TADFF, with his previous feature Freaks Out – a film about circus freaks fighting Nazis – winning 10 awards at 2022’s festival, including Best Feature Film. With Forbidden City, Mainetti has a bigger budget, a bigger cast, and bigger action set-pieces to build his fights around.
Sisu: Road to Revenge
Directed By: Jalmari Helander
Starring: Jorma Tommila, Richard Brake, Stephen Lang
Synopsis: Returning to the house where his family was brutally murdered during the war, ‘the man who refuses to die’ dismantles it, loads it on a truck, and is determined to rebuild it somewhere safe in their honor. When the Red Army commander who killed his family comes back hellbent on finishing the job, a relentless, eye-popping cross-country chase ensues – a fight to the death.
Why I’m Excited: In Sisu, a stoic, silent prospector in northern Finland is accosted by a unit of SS soldiers who steal his hard-earned gold. At risk of losing his livelihood, the prospector hunts down the soldiers, stopping at nothing to get his gold back and eliminate the Nazis from his country. Sisu premiered in TIFF’s Midnight Madness section in 2022 to raves, and would go on to be one of the most talked about action movies of the year.
Featuring outlandish action often bordering on insane, Sisu paints its main character as an unstoppable killing machine, and then just has fun with that. Director Jalmari Helander’s style is wild and barbaric, closer to The Revenant than John Wick, but with dashes of silliness straight out of conspiracy-theory-based action-comedies like Iron Sky and Moonfall.
There’s simply no reason to make a sequel unless the plan is to go bigger. Sisu: Road to Revenge starts with similarly sombre circumstances to the first movie, with the prospector returning to the home he left during the war. Seemingly unable to be left alone, he’s once again wronged and dragged into a world of absurd violence. This time, he’s fighting the Red Army instead of the Nazis.
Joining Road to Revenge is Stephen Lang, who’s proven his villain chops with an iconic performance as General Quarritch in the Avatar series. Casting Lang as general Igor Draganov implies a more significant role for the Red Army leader than the villain of the first film. Where Sisu had the prospector as an unstoppable, inscrutable force of nature, Road to Revenge looks to add an exciting rivalry between its two leading men.
Primate
Directed By: Johannes Roberts
Starring: Johnny Sequoyah, Troy Kotsur, Jessica Alexander
Synopsis: When pet chimp Ben contracts rabies and morphs into a murderous ape, a group of college students suddenly find their idyllic vacation transformed into a wild nightmare.
Why I’m Excited: It’s been 3 years since Jordan Peele released Nope, and in that time, I’ve rarely gone a day without thinking about that film’s breakout star: Gordy the chimp. In the film’s most harrowing scene, Gordy goes ape on the set of a 90s sitcom, killing most of the actors and crew. It’s a moment as terrifying as it is humbling. What happened? Why did Gordy snap? Who can truly know the mind of an ape?
While chimp-on-man violence made up only a small part of Nope, it’s the entire premise of Primate. Drawing comparisons to Jaws and Cujo, Johannes Roberts’ action-horror promises suspense and stakes on par with the best creature features, on a claustrophobic scale.
Maybe most exciting is the inclusion of Troy Kotsur, whose intimate performance in CODA won him 2021’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar. His first film since 2021, Primate is slightly more in line with the rest of Kotsur’s filmography – largely TV procedurals and the occasional thriller – but will undoubtedly show a very different side of the actor.
