ick icky ick

Tag

TIFF 2021

Posts tagged TIFF 2021, newest first.

All posts
3 min read

[TIFF Review] ‘Silent Night’ Hides Grim Tragedy Within Awkward Christmas Comedy

For the most part, writer/director Camille Griffin’s feature debut, Silent Night, plays like many comedies set around holiday gatherings. It features typical awkwardness that comes from a large makeshift family coming together during one of the most stressful times of the year, attempting to cast aside grudges, secrets, or bad manners for the sake of […]

Meagan Navarro
3 min read

[TIFF Review] ‘Titane’ Goes Full Throttle on Transgressive Body Horror and Dark Humor

Filmmaker Julia Ducournau broke out with a provocative debut feature that blended horror, comedy, and tenderness in a coming-of-age cannibal tale. It set the bar high for her anticipated sophomore effort, which Cannes reactions only bolstered. The reality is that Ducournau’s follow-up, Titane, continues what she started with Raw. Sexual and gender identity gets explored through provocative body […]

Meagan Navarro
3 min read

[TIFF Review] ‘Saloum’ Blends Crime Thriller with Supernatural Mysticism in Unpredictable Genre-Bender

Underseen on Netflix is the Senegalese series Sakho & Mangane, a stylish crime procedural with a supernatural twist. Its creator, Jean Luc Herbulot, again displays a talent for effortlessly shifting through genres with Saloum, a contemporary genre-bender infused with ancestral folklore. The setting and its history add to Herbulot’s stylish story, which helps when the dense and sometimes […]

Meagan Navarro
4 min read

[TIFF Review] Irish Folklore Film ‘You Are Not My Mother’ Finds The Horror At Home

The term folk horror inspires certain kinds of imagery: pastoral fields, shrouded woods, period pieces, and witchcraft. In North American horror, legends tend to take the form of tall tales (Urban Legend, Candyman, I Know What You Did Last Summer) or whispered myths (Wendigos, Indigenous burial grounds, etc). In Irish writer/director’s Kate Dolan’s directorial feature […]

Joe Lipsett
3 min read

[TIFF Review] Netflix’s Single-Location Thriller ‘The Guilty’ is a Showcase for Jake Gyllenhaal

The Guilty originated as a critically acclaimed, intense Danish thriller that marked the feature debut by Gustav Möller. A seemingly simple premise set entirely within a single-location frayed nerves thanks to a confluence of impeccable ingredients. So, it’s not surprising that remake rights were snatched up almost immediately. The result is a Jake Gyllenhaal vehicle directed by Antoine Fuqua, […]

Meagan Navarro
3 min read

[TIFF Review] ‘Encounter’ Surprises With Genre-Bending Alien Invasion Paranoid Thriller

Director Michael Pearce demonstrated a keen ability to play in multiple genre sandboxes simultaneously with his feature debut, Beast, which kept audiences guessing right up until its conclusion. His awaited follow-up, Encounter, continues his streak for wildly imaginative and engaging character-driven work through a genre-bending filter. Only this time, it’s run through the setup of a paranoid alien invasion-style […]

Meagan Navarro
4 min read

[TIFF Review] Screenlife Horror ‘DASHCAM’ Aims for Manic Splatstick Chaos

Director Rob Savage captured that trapped feeling of lockdown with last summer’s buzziest horror movie, Host, a Zoom séance gone wrong. It established Savage as a filmmaker who wears his horror influences on his sleeves. His latest, filmed during the second lockdown, demonstrates that once again. Savage’s follow-up feature, DASHCAM, aims to achieve Sam Raimi levels of splatstick […]

Meagan Navarro
3 min read

[TIFF Review] Vampire Drama ‘Kicking Blood’ Heavier on Style Than Bite

Save for sunlight or perhaps a stake to the heart, vampires live forever. Instead of just one lifetime, they can experience many. That means that a regular staple in vampire fiction depicts the erosion of time, where pleasure and discovery eventually wane and boredom sets in. Kicking Blood adds to the existential conversation, featuring a world-wearied bloodsucker […]

Meagan Navarro
3 min read

[TIFF Review] ‘A Banquet’ Tests Maternal Bonds and Patience in Simmering Psychological Horror

Existing somewhere at the crossroads of Jack Ketchum’s “The Box” and Rose Glass’s Saint Maud lies A Banquet. A strange affliction wreaks havoc on the lives of a family still on the mend from tragedy. Ruth Paxton’s feature debut favors a slow simmering atmosphere in a psychodrama that sees a family in psychological deterioration. One that can test the […]

Meagan Navarro
3 min read

[TIFF Review] ‘Mlungu Wam (Good Madam)’ Haunts With Murky, Eerie Reflection of the Past

South African psychological horror Mlungu Wam (Good Madam) uses an intimate character study nestled in a possibly haunted house as an allegory. It wields one stubborn and unreliable narrator as an entry point into a cultural examination and a haunted legacy. Yet, largely thanks to its obscure ambiguity and intimate storytelling, it never feels heavy-handed […]

Meagan Navarro
4 min read

[TIFF Review] ‘Memoria’ Is a Contemplative Meditation on Memory and Experience

There’s a calculated aimlessness to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, particularly in the way that the writer/director’s first film English and Spanish doesn’t employ a conventional narrative structure (there’s no rising action or climax, for example). Instead, as its title suggests, Memoria is intent on exploring memories and memorials and, in the process, (re)creating them as experiences […]

Joe Lipsett
2 min read

Altered Innocence Travels to ‘After Blue (Dirty Paradise)’ Ahead of TIFF Premiere

The Toronto International Film Festival hype has hit overdrive now that the Midnight Madness titles have been announced. One of the coolest films set to make its North American Premiere is After Blue (Dirty Paradise), a nightmarish sci-fi horror fantasy from French filmmaker Bertrand Mandico. Variety reports today that Altered Innocence has picked up North American rights to the […]

Brad Miska
1 min read

TIFF Highlight: First Look at Horror Satire ‘Mlungu Wam (Good Madam)’ [Images]

The Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness program is already jam-packed with genre films and yet there are even more goodies hiding within the line-up. One highlight is Mlungu Wam (Good Madam), a horror satire in which residues of apartheid-era domestic servitude confront legacies of colonial land theft. The film hails from South African auteur […]

Brad Miska