LUCIDMEDIA

Toronto After Dark – The Children/Someone’s Knocking at the Door

Written by Adam A. Donaldson Thursday, 20 August 2009 15:54

Here I was on Tuesday night, my first night at Toronto After Dark and it’s already half over. This upstart cousin of Montreal’s Fantasia Fest is still relatively young, but it has already garnered a reputation for being on the cutting edge of horror and genre film. After Dark operates out of the Bloor Cinema, a venue that always guarantees a positive viewing experience no matter the screening. Once again, the theatre’s atmosphere serves it well, as did a date change for the festival. After Dark normally runs in October and for the first time it’s running in August this year, much to the delight of those braving long lines in the balmy summer evening over the chilly October rain.

This year, every film at the festival is opening with a Canadian made short. The first feature of this evening was Tom Shankland’s The Children, and opening for it was the night’s most whimsical (and least gory) film, “Lobotomobile.” A sweet little musical ditty, “Lobotomobile,” by Sara St. Onge, is about a frontal lobotomy on wheels service that rolls into your neighbourhood and offers cheap, professional, on-the-spot lobotomies. I loved the positively clinical and passive performances of the actors, and the man that played the Doctor had this wonderfully knowing little grin on his face as he goes about his business. The short was surprisingly brief but really well done, almost as if it were an extended commercial for a real life business. Ask how the local Lobotomobile can come to your pleasantly drab suburban neighbourhood and leave behind emotionless automatons. The social subtext is especially delicious.

Next up, obviously, was The Children. Seemingly designed in the mode of classic 60s British horror, this UK film played just right with the After Dark crowd; they cheered, jeered and whooped with every grisly development. Director Shankland was not in attendance, but Festival Director Adam Lopez read an e-mailed note from the filmmaker in lieu of a personal appearance. Apparently, The Children was inspired by the real life point of view of Shankland in watching people deal with their own, non-homicidal, kids. The screaming, the tantrums, the hitting, spend enough time amongst the public and soon you’ll have enough negative stories about other people’s kids to fill a book. Ultimately, turning them into sociopathic killing machines seems like a short trip.

The film takes place during the Christmas holidays as two families comes together to celebrate the season. What this means is that the parents sit downstairs drinking mass quantities of wine and talking about how the public school system is failing their kids while the kids themselves are upstairs showing signs of burgeoning derangement. (For the record, rhythmic banging on the xylophone as if it were a drum kit is a warning sign.) One gets a feeling that Shankland is as much targeting the parents that let their kids run wild and believe in the disciplinary power of the time out, as he is in taking on the beastly kids that inspired The Children. But whatever the inspiration, the results are extremely crowd-pleasing. Not that the film is farce though, it truly delivers on the chills and ratchets up the tension expertly with every scene.

Interestingly, I had a hunch about something as the story unfolded. It’s almost like 28 Days Later, but the kids, the parents and everyone in the audience don’t know that it’s 28 Days Later yet until the final creeps-inducing scene. Like old Doc Loomis’ worst nightmare, these kids are chilling in their homicidal rampage, especially William Howes as Paulie. Meanwhile, Shankland services the story well on a technical level with a bleak, middle-of-nowhere setting and a cool colour pallet on film. He also uses violence sparingly and surprisingly to make sure that every blunt object used, and every sharp edge stabbing is felt at maximum effectiveness. The Children will definitely make you think twice before babysitting.

After The Children, many of its patrons shuffled out of the Bloor and got back in line for the night’s second and final screening. Someone’s Knocking at the Door, whichopened with “Heart of Karl” by Steven Kostanski, a film that nearly, seamlessly blends live action with stop motion animation elements. Karl is some kind of Freddy Krueger-esque demon with a Joker-like grin, and he and his human brother Max must fight their way out of some ghoulish nightmare of an institution that’s a cross between German Expressionism and something out of the mind of Clive Barker. Wonderfully gory and generally icky, “Heart of Karl” is a master of form and style. Like Barker’s best, this short made my skin crawl in a good way if I mean that the way I think I do. It certainly put people in the right frame of mind for the feature anyway.

Indeed, Someone’s Knocking at the Door was the night’s, if not the festival’s, goriest offering. As disgusting as it is disturbed, Toronto After Dark is one of the only fests to screen Someone’s Knocking, making it a rare treat for local horror fans, and I don’t think they were disappointed. Hardcore? Let’s put it this way: it features an act called “the reverse birthing.” And did I mention that the serial killer’s weapon of choice is his own 15-inch phallus?

Before the show, Lopez said that this film was about “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll,” and within five minutes the filmmaker proved him correct on all three counts. As well the film starts off proving why it received special notice in the festival program as being “delightfully depraved” with a scene that mixed typical horror movie seduction with a gut wrenching kill that immediately set the tone (and the bar). But if there was one thing the program didn’t mention it was how funny the film was. Filmmaker Chad Ferrin has a gift for dialogue and one-liners that really adds great texture to the average gaggle of college kid stereotypes that normally find themselves flung together in these movies. But at least the cast is talented though, and in fact they’re actually quite winning. It makes the escalating brutalization of the characters a bit harder to take as the film goes on.

Ferrin naturally goes for the gold in terms of filth and degradation; the guy had hardcore horror fans and the gore-curious alike squinting and grimacing to some of the onscreen bloodletting. Movies like Hostel tend to revel in the violence while ignoring the need to develop character to make you care about the fate of those being tortured, but Ferrin finds a balance. In fact, nearly the entire second act is gore-free and it’s where much of the film’s humour and character development is concentrated. Of course, the film likes its violent streak too, its got a Sorority House Massacre meets Deliverance feel to the acts of degeneracy, but Ferrin is smart about it. Call it deliberate depravity, the man knows how to manipulate through editing, so that just when you think you’ve saw something, it’s already gone. Ferrin’s definitely from the Hitchcock school of horror film editing, but he’s not afraid to hit the hammer either.

So with thoughts filled with images of psychotic children and raping hillbillies, this evening’s viewers of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival head out into the night. This is my first year at After Dark and I have to say that the festival treats you right. And bonus points to the organizers and volunteers for keeping things rolling on time; all the screenings started exactly as scheduled. Horror is good, but punctual horror is better and greatly appreciated.