Movies
TIFF ’11: ‘Midnight Madness’ Announces ‘Kill List,’ ‘Smuggler’ and ‘The Day’
After revealed a handful of image clues late last night, the official Midnight Madness Twitter was updated tonight with an announcement of the first three films playing as part of the Toronto International Film Festival from September 8-18.
So how epic will the event be? We’ve only got three films and already I’m excited out of my mind.
The first is the absolutely fantastic Kill List, which David Harley raved about out of the SXSW Film Festival this past March. Toronto audiences are going to literally lose their sh*t over this. It’s on my own person top 10 of 2011 thus far. IFC acquired the horror film about a group of demobbed soldiers turned contract killers who run up against a devil-worshipping coven.
Also playing is Doug Aarniokoski’s The Day, which stars Shawn Ashmore, Ashley Bell, Cory Hardrict, Dominic Monaghan, Shannyn Sossamon and Andrew Coutts. You’ve read a lot about the film here on Bloody, now I’m sure there’s plenty more in the pipeline leading up to its premiere!
The other film isn’t horror, but that means tomorrow you’ll wake up to FOUR more genre film announcements. Also showing is Katsuhito Ishii’s Japanese action comedy Smuggler, which you’ll find details on inside.
KILL LIST (trailers | images): “Eight months after a disastrous job in Kiev left him physically and mentally scarred, ex-soldier turned contract killer Jay, is pressured by his partner Gal, into taking a new assignment. As they descend into the dark, disturbing world of the contract, Jay begins to unravel once again – his fear and paranoia sending him deep into the heart of darkness.”
THE DAY (teaser trailer | images) : “The film is a visceral action thriller with moral depth spanning 24 hours during which the ensemble cast is pit against insurmountable odds.”
SMUGGLER (trailer | official website): “After his acting career fails, Kinuta is left drifting and disconnected. When a confrontation in an arcade turns bad, he ends up in debt. To earn the money, he takes a job with Jo, cleaning up murder scenes. To his surprise, he makes friends with Jo, but the cruelty of the underworld in which they work shocks him–and inevitably challenges him to find the strength to take a different path.”
Two things that have proven to be pretty dependable at the box office in recent years are horror movies and Christopher Nolan movies. With Nolan’s The Odyssey absolutely dominating the box office this past weekend, many fans of Nolan’s work have been left hungry for a Nolan-directed horror movie. After all, The Odyssey does whet the appetite for Nolan nightmare fuel.
Christopher Nolan has brushed up against the horror genre in the past with 2002 thriller Insomnia, but does he have any interest in someday making a full-on horror movie?
Nolan tells the Empire Podcast in a new chat, “I’ve always been interested in doing a horror film.”
“But horror is most successful when the conceptual framework of whatever the story is is just so undeniable. I think there are very few really great horror movies,” Nolan continues.
So why hasn’t Christopher Nolan directed a horror movie yet?
He explains to Empire, “I’ve never clicked with a particular idea or concept that worked for me. I love the genre. Of all genres, it’s the most visceral. Where the direct response to the audience is the most important. That is to say, you’re trying to make people literally feel something in their bones about what’s going on on-screen.”
Nolan calls horror “a genre in which experimentation is demanded.” He explains, “I go to see a lot of horror films with my kids these days, and you’ll see things in the first half an hour, 45 minutes of any horror film that you’d never see in another genre. Risks that are taken. Dangerous approaches to things. Admittedly, a lot of movies can’t sustain that to the end. But in the horror genre, that kind of innovation is not just respected – it’s really demanded.”
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is now playing in theaters.
Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)
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