The Toronto International Film Festival announced today the 2023 selections for the highly regarded Midnight Madness program.
The infamous Midnight Madness lineup features 10 titles, 7 of which are World Premieres, and highlight the weird and the wicked of film.
“Sides will be split — both figuratively and literally (on screen) — as Midnight Madness returns to the Royal Alexandra Theatre with another stimulating concoction of unpredictable shock and ‘y’arr!’ cinema,” said Peter Kuplowsky, TIFF International Programmer, Midnight Madness. “Featuring two timely satiric provocations from Saudi Arabia (NAGA) and Serbia (Working Class Goes to Hell) — nations that are making their section debut — this year’s madness infectiously ignites with 11 o’clock numbers that go all the way to midnight courtesy of Larry Charles’ bonkers and bawdy Dicks: The Musical. A menagerie of tastes will be sated, so bottoms up!
“There are so many fantastic genre films playing the festival circuit that it is always a challenge to sharpen the pool of submissions to only 10 films, but I’m pretty happy with the shades of horror I have been able to feature in this year’s lineup,” Kuplowsky tells Bloody Disgusting alongside the big announce. “It really runs the gamut in permutations of the genre.
“We’ve got visceral scares with Sleep and When Evil Lurks, the latter of which contains one of the most shockingly violent deaths I have seen in some time. The two martial arts films are gobsmackingly gory, with Kill turning into a kind of action-slasher in certain setpieces, and Boy Kills World is definitely a Sam Raimi production (the Evil Dead Rise cheese grater returns with a vengeance). I’ll further tease that the thrillingly tense Naga has a wild creature-feature episode within its rollicking one-crazy-night structure, and Working Class Goes to Hell (from the filmmaker behind The Life and Death of a Porno Gang) simmers with creeping dread as it depicts a labour union turning to Satanism to help their cause! And while Finn Wolfhard and Billy Byrk inject endearing comedy into their nostalgic summer camp slasher, the more straight ahead comedy Dicks: The Musical also memorably dips into some very funny horror camp.”
Here’s the full line-up:
AGGRO DR1FT Harmony Korine | USA
North American Premiere
Spellbinding infrared photography conjures a hallucinatory portrait of a haunted assassin (Jordi Mollà) in this sensuous experimental elegy from Harmony Korine (Spring Breakers, Trash Humpers).
Boy Kills World Moritz Mohr | Germany/South Africa/USA
World Premiere
The film is an action-thriller spectacle set in a dystopian world. When Boy’s (Bill Skarsgård) family is murdered by the city’s brutal leader, he escapes to the jungle where he is trained by a mysterious shaman for one purpose — to avenge his family and kill the leader.
*OPENING FILM*
Dicks: The Musical Larry Charles | USA
World Premiere
Larry Charles (Borat) conducts an uproarious musical-comedy riff on The Parent Trap that follows a pair of identical twins who conspire to reunite their divorced and disturbingly deranged parents (Nathan Lane and Megan Mullally).
Hell of a Summer Finn Wolfhard, Billy Bryk | USA/Canada
World Premiere
A masked killer terrorizes the counsellors of a summer camp in this sardonic slasher-comedy.
Finn Wolfhard wrote and directed the upcoming movie alongside Billy Bryk (Ghostbusters: Afterlife), with both actors also starring in the film. The cast also includes Fred Hechinger (Fear Street 1994), as well as D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (“Reservation Dogs”), Abby Quinn (“Mad About You”), and Pardis Saremi (“Career Opportunities in Murder and Mayhem”).
KILL Nikhil Nagesh Bhat | India World Premiere
In Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s relentless martial arts thriller, a passenger train bound for New Delhi becomes a bloody battleground of brutal close-quarters combat as a pair of commandos square off against a 40-strong army of invading bandits.
NAGA Meshal Aljaser | Saudi Arabia
World Premiere
In Meshal Aljaser’s exhilaratingly madcap thriller, a young woman stranded in the Arabian desert races to be home before curfew under the threat of extreme punishment from her scary strict father.
*CLOSING FILM*
Riddle of Fire Weston Razooli | USA North American Premiere
Three mischievous children embark on a woodland odyssey when their mother sends them on an errand.
Sleep Jason Yu | South Korea
North American Premiere
A pregnant wife who becomes worried about her husband’s sleeping habits. What starts out as some light sleep-talking soon escalates to unexpectedly grotesque behaviour. They consult a sleep clinic without success and as his nightmarish behaviour escalates, they desperately seek help from a shaman.
When Evil Lurks Demián Rugna | Argentina
World Premiere
In the film, “Two brothers find a mutilated corpse near their property and convene with the locals to suss it out. They learn that the odd happenings in their village are the cause of a spirit that’s found its way into a local man waiting for the proper protocols to rid his body of the festering demon. An escape attempt ensues as the film keeps its protagonists on-edge, racing against imminent danger to shake the spirit’s relentless clutches.”
Working Class Goes to Hell Mladen Đorđević | Serbia
World Premiere
After losing their loved ones, jobs, and dignity to a tragic factory fire and corrupt privatization, a group of ex-workers seeks solace and hope in the supernatural.
The Toronto International Film Festival takes place September 7–17, 2023.
The post TIFF’s Midnight Madness – First Looks at All the Hot Genre Films Including Sam Raimi’s ‘Boy Kills World’! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.