Midnight Madness In Toronto
The Toronto International Film Festival’s program will have genre geeks and horror buffs salivating...
Action-packed thrillers, nerve-wracking chillers and pitch-dark comedies are set to entertain audiences at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, with a Midnight Madness programme packed full of shocking and rocking cinematic experiences - and nine world premieres.
One of these world premieres is The ABCs of Death (pictured), an ambitious anthology film, which feature segments directed by 26 of the world's leading talents in contemporary genre film including Australian director Andrew Traucki (who has delivered two drum-tight Australian thrillers in Black Water and The Reef and is currently editing his "final instalment in this trilogy of terror" with The Jungle), as well as Ben Wheatley (Kill List), Ti West (House of the Devil), Jason Eisener (Hobo With A Shotgun), Adam Wingard (You're Next), Xavier Gens (Frontieres) and Nacho Vigalondo (Time Crimes).
Described as "an alphabetical arsenal of destruction", The ABCs of Death saw each director assigned a letter of the alphabet, and then given free rein in choosing a word to create a story involving a tale of mortality.
Other features in the Midnight Madness section include Martin McDonagh's Seven Psychopaths, which reunites the In Bruges director with Colin Farrell who stars as a struggling screenwriter who inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld; and laughs of the dark variety continue with JT Petty's Hellbenders, an R-rated 3D exorcism comedy.
Forgoing the laughs in favour of true horror is Barry Levinson's The Bay, which chronicles the descent of a small town into absolute terror after the discovery of a deadly parasite. Also set to terrify is Nicolas Lopez's Aftershock, which stars Eli Roth and Selena Gomez and sees an American tourist's vacation in Chile quickly descend from fun to terror. And director Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus and The Midnight Meat Train) returns with his new film, No One Lives, which locates a killer in the grip of a dark and twisted love affair.
Also in the line-up is Pete Travis' futuristic neo-noir action film, Dredd, which, based on a screenplay from writer Alex Garland (28 Days Later), brings the titular iconic masked police officer to life. And there's also The Lords of Salem from heavy metal rocker, Rob Zombie, which revolves around a radio station DJ whose new grooves begin to trigger flashbacks of Salem's violent past.
The Toronto International Film Festival will take place 6-16 September 2012. Check out the full program here.
