Welcome back to our Toronto International Film Fest 2015 preview series. Yesterday you got a taste of what's coming in the Special Presentations and Galas. Today it's a trip through the amazing Midnight Madness and Vanguard titles that have made TIFF so famous. Check them out below and come back tomorrow for a peek at the TIFF Docs and Contemporary World Cinema programs.
Baskin
We're all super psyched for this feature film debut by Turkish supernatural cop shooter from director Can Evrenol. Bring. It. On. - Ryland Aldrich
Midnight Madness
My Great Night
Álex de la Iglesia is back with many of his usual players, including Carlos Areces, Carolina Bang, Hugo Silva, and Mario Casas, along with a number of Pedro Almodovar regulars, Blanca Suárez and Carmen Machi, in this behind-the-scenes TV special farce. It is New Year’s Eve, it is live, and the shit will likely hit in the fan in the director’s usual over the top comedic style. - Kurt Halfyard
Vanguard
Green Room
If we here at ScreenAnarchy could get any more excited about a filmmaker than we are about Jeremy Saulnier, things might get a little messy. We've seen Green Room and there is no reason to fret. He brings the goods, in a slightly glossier package. Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Patrick Stewart, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, and Callum Turner star. - Ryland Aldrich
Midnight Madness
Love
The explicitly confrontational Gaspar Noé returns with his softest story to date. That Noé is getting sentimental will come as no relief to censors, who will still be faced with more images of shocking sexuality than Lars Von Triers' Nymphomaniac (but less than Antichrist... yeesh). Unlike the cold world of the sex-heavy Nymphomaniac, Noé's Love strives for nothing less than romantic pornography. A noble goal indeed. - Zach Gayne
Vanguard
Southbound
This anthologesque film is billed as "Five interwoven tales of terror and remorse on the open road." It features the directorial debut of producer and friend of the ScreenAnarchy family Roxanne Benjamin, along with horror vets David Bruckner, Patrick Horvath, and Radio Silence, so we're all excited to see what's in store. - Ryland Aldrich
Midnight Madness
February
Perhaps The Shining for the youth set? In Osgood Perkins' atmospheric horror, two young girls are trapped in their school over the winter break and one of them goes nuts. The TIFF.net guide promises a sophisticated kind of scary, and that is my bag. - Kurt Halfyard
Vanguard
Hardcore
No Midnight Madness opening weekend is complete without a hearty ass-kicker and this year's Ong Bak might just come in the form of a POV parkour-vaganza called Hardcore. Let's hope the film lives up to its title in ensuring the sold-out Ryerson audience's collective ass is grass. - Zach Gayne
Midnight Madness
The Devil's Candy
Next up for Sean Byrne after his fawned-over debut The Loved Ones, this haunted houser (with a twist) starring Ethan Embry is produced by the good folks at Snoot. - Ryland Aldrich
Midnight Madness
Men & Chicken
Mads Mikkelsen sports a wacky moustache in the latest from pitch black comedy wunderkind Anders Thomas Jensen. A fish out of water family comedy that promises to delightfully offend anyone with good taste. See also, Adams Apples, The Green Butchers. - Kurt Halfyard
Vanguard
Lace Crater
Lindsay Burdge and Peter Vack star in Harrison Atkins's feature debut about a woman who sleeps with a ghost and gets a ghostly STD. Boo! - Ryland Aldrich
Vanguard
The Final Girls
A group of friends get Purple Rose of Cairo'd at a screening of a cult 80s slasher flick, crossing realms into the onscreen reality of fictitious horror. Like The Last Action Hero used Woody Allen's Cairo premise to satirize the action genre, so too does The Final Girls dissect horror to comedic effect; hopefully taking the self-reflexivity of Wes Craven's Scream to new levels. - Zach Gayne
Midnight Madness
Evolution
From the writer of Enter the Void (Lucile Hadžihalilović) comes this story of a child who finds a dead body in the sea... and then weird shit happens. - Ryland Aldrich
Vanguard