I was familiar with the Toronto After Dark film festival for most of its six year existence. However, I didn’t find a reason to actually attend the festival until 2009 when Toronto After Dark added the long-delayed film Trick ‘r Treat to its line-up. I enjoyed that single screening, so I returned last year to check out The Last Exorcism.
I would say my third year attending the Toronto After Dark festival was my first proper year. This year I increased the number of screenings I attended from 1 to 3. While still a small percentage of the 18 films that screening during the week, it still resulted in an overall better festival experience.
I expected that my involvement at Toronto After Dark would increase, which is why I made it one of the events featured in the Toronto events sidebar of this blog (along with the much bigger film festivals TIFF and Hot Docs). Toronto After Dark caters very specifically to my love of genre films and I expect that I will continue to steadily increase my attendance in the years to come.
Now, to rank the films I saw at the festival. I saw three films at this year’s festival, each of them preceded by a short film. As such, for my ranking, I will rank the shorts and features separately.
Top 3 Features
- The Innkeepers
- Monster Brawl
- VS
- The Legend of Beaver Dam
- The Lady Paranorma
- How to Rid Your Lover of a Negative Emotion Caused by You