Movies
TIFF ’11: Astounding ‘Midnight Madness’ Lineup Revealed!
While most people vacation during the holidays, my own person break (that I work intensely through) is every September when I fly up to Canada for the annual Toronto International Film Festival, which always plays host to an amazing array of genre premieres (remember High Tension, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, REC 2, Inside, Martyrs and even Frontier(s)?) through its illustrious “Midnight Madness” sidebar.
Running from September 8-18, this year is no exception as TIFF will play host to some outrageous premieres: Inside directors Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo return with the world premiere of Livid; A Horrible Way to Die duo (writer Simon Barrett and director Adam Wingard) return to the fest with the world of their home invasion slasher You’re Next; Ben Wheatley is going to shock the thousands of audience members with Kill List; lastly comes an out of left field shocker from Bobcat Goldthwait entitled God Bless America (featuring the Carrie-esque phot released the other night. We were asked to remove this image is it’s “not representational” of the film).
Check out the full list of ten films, and don’t forget that TIFF will also be presenting Twixt, Melancholia and The Skin I Live In.
NOTE: THIS PAGE WILL BE UPDATED WITH MORE TRAILERS AND IMAGES AS THEY’RE RELEASED.
Director: Julien Maury, Alexandre Bustillo
Starring: Marie-Claude Pietragalla, Catherine Jacob, Béatrice Dalle, Chloé Coulloud, Felix Moati, Jeremy Kapone
“It’s young Lucy’s first day as a trainee in-house caregiver. She visits Mrs Jessel, an old woman who lies in cerebral coma, by herself, in her large desolate house. Learning by accident that Mrs Jessel, a former dance teacher of repute, supposedly possesses a treasure somewhere in the house, Lucy and friends William and Ben decide to search the house in the hope of finding it. At night, they get into the house, which reveals itself to be increasingly peculiar. Their hunt for Mrs Jessel’s treasure leads them into a horrifying supernatural series of events that will change Lucy forever… ”
Director: Adam Wingard
Starring: Nick Tucci, Wendy Glenn, AJ Bowen, Joe Swanberg, Margaret Laney, Amy Seimetz, Ti West, Calvin Reeder, Larry Fessenden, Kate Lyn Sheil, Barbara Crampton, Rob Moran, Sharni Vinson
“In ‘You’re Next’ the Davison family comes under attack from a terrifying group of sadistic murderers during a family reunion getaway. Barricaded in their secluded vacation home, they fight off a barrage of axes, crossbows and machetes from both inside and outside the house. However, the masked killers didn’t count on Erin (Vinson), the young girlfriend of the eldest Davison son whose mysterious past has made her very difficult to kill.”
Director: Ben Wheatley
Starring: Neil Maskell, Michael Smiley, MyAnna Buring
“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.”
Director: Bobcat Goldthwait
Starring: Joel Murray, Tara Lynne Barr, Mackenzie Brooke Smith, Melinda Page Hamilton, Rich McDonald, Guerrin Gardner
“Loveless, jobless and possibly terminally ill, Frank has had enough of the downward spiral of America. With nothing left to lose, Frank takes his gun decides to off the stupidest, cruelest and most repellent members of society with an unusual accomplice:
16-year-old Roxy, who shares his sense of rage and disenfranchisement. From stand-up comedian and director Bobcat Goldthwait comes a scathing and hilarious attack on all that is sacred in the United States of America.”
Director: Doug Aarniokoski
Starring: Shawn Ashmore, Ashley Bell, Cory Hardrict, Dominic Monaghan, Shannyn Sossamon, Andrew Coutts
“The film is a visceral action thriller with moral depth spanning 24 hours during which the ensemble cast is pit against insurmountable odds.”
Director: Alexandre Courtes
Starring: Rupert Evans, Kenny Doughty, Unax Ugalde, Dave Legeno, Anna Skellern, Richard Brake, Eric Godon, Joseph Kennedy, Marcus Garvey
“George, Max and Ricky are in a rock band and waiting for their big breakthrough. Between small gigs and rehearsals they work in the kitchen of a high-security asylum for good pay at minimum risk — they have no physical contact with the inmates. One night just before dinner time, a big storm shuts down the security system, the doors open and the lunatics break loose. Help is on its way and should soon arrive … they just have to survive until it does.”
Director: Eduardo Sanchez
Starring: Johnny Lewis, Alexandra Holden
“When newlywed Molly Reynolds returns to her long-abandoned family home, frightful reminders of a nightmarish childhood begin seeping into her new life. She soon begins an inexorable descent into evil that blurs the lines between psychosis and possession. From the director of ‘The Blair Witch Project.’”
Director: Gareth Evans
Starring: Iko Uwais, Doni Alamsyah and Yayan Ruhian
“A swat team is trapped in a run-down apartment block filled with heavily armed drug dealers and killers. The stakes intensify as the squad races within the maze of rooms and floors in the building, activating bone-crunching battles against the hive of vicious assassins. Starring Indonesian martial arts sensation Iko Uwais.”
“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.”
Director(s) : Frédéric Jardin
Cast : Tomer Sisley, Julien Boisselier, Birol unel
“When Vincent, a double-dealing cop, steals a big bag of cocaine from some drug dealers, they counter by kidnapping and threatening to kill his son if the bag isn’t returned – fast. The swap is to go down at their headquarters in a big nightclub on the outskirts of Paris, but Vincent gets caught in a spiral of deception and betrayal and must fight his way through packed dance floors and dark corridors of the labyrinth-like club.“
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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