Skip to main content

Toronto International Film Festival · 2023

Toronto International Film Festival 2023

Midnight Madness

Programme

10 films · 3 reviews

Jump to a film

Aggro Dr1ft

An action-movie miasma of skulls and swords, masks and machine guns, strippers and mobsters, horned demons and hot cars.

(Country: US; Year: 2023; Director: Harmony Korine; Stars: Jordi Mollà, Travis Scott)

Boy Kills World

Review preview for Boy Kills World

The film goes at it with all the manic intensity of an old Saturday morning kids TV show: Wacaday cruentus.

Donald Munro · 3.5 out of 5
A dystopian fever dream action film that follows Boy, a deaf mute with a vibrant imagination. When his family is murdered, he is trained by a mysterious shaman to repress his childish imagination and become an instrument of death.

(Country: Germany, South Africa, US; Year: 2023; Director: Moritz Mohr; Writer: Arend Remmers, Tyler Burton Smith; Stars: Bill Skarsgård, Jessica Rothe, Michelle Dockery, Brett Gelman, Isaiah Mustafa)

Full review

Dicks: The Musical

A pair of business rivals discover that they're identical twins and decide to swap places in an attempt to trick their divorced parents into getting back together.

(Country: US; Year: 2023; Director: Larry Charles; Writer: Aaron Jackson, Josh Sharp; Stars: Nathan Lane, Megan Mullally, Megan Thee Stallion, Bowen Yang, Aaron Jackson, Josh Sharp, Carlena Britch)

Hell Of A Summer

Counsellors at a summer camp are terrorised by a masked killer.

(Country: US, Canada; Year: 2023; Director: Billy Bryk, Finn Wolfhard; Writer: Billy Bryk, Finn Wolfhard; Stars: Finn Wolfhard, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Abby Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Julia Lalonde, Susan Coyne)

Kill

A train to New Delhi becomes a battleground as a pair of commandos faces an army of invading bandits.

(Country: India; Year: 2023; Director: Nikhil Nagesh Bhat; Writer: Ritesh Shah; Stars: Tanya Maniktala, Laksh Lalwani, Raghav Juyal)

Naga

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.

(Country: Saudi Arabia; Year: 2023; Director: Meshal Aljaser; Stars: Adwa Bader, Yazeed Almajyul, Khalid Bin Shaddad)

Riddle Of Fire

Review preview for Riddle Of Fire

Told from a child’s point of view, immediate and haphazard, magical and unlikely.

Jennie Kermode · 3 out of 5
Three mischievous children on dirt bikes, armed with paint guns and cocky attitudes, launch an attack at a local warehouse, outwitting a security guard and 'liberating' the very latest video game console for themselves - but to make use of it, they need to figure out the password with which their mother has locked the TV.

(Country: US; Year: 2023; Director: Weston Razooli; Writer: Weston Razooli; Stars: Lio Tipton, Weston Razooli, Charles Halford, Phoebe Ferro)

Full review

Sleep (Jam)

A pregnant wife becomes worried about her husband's sleeping habits. What starts out as 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.

(Country: South Korea; Year: 2023; Director: Jason Yu; Stars: Jung Yu-mi, Lee Sun-kyun)

When Evil Lurks

Review preview for When Evil Lurks

The film carries us from a carefree existence made possible by not paying attention, to a crushing tragedy.

Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
In a remote village, two brothers find a demon-infected man just about to give birth to evil itself. They decide to get rid of the man but merely succeed in helping him to deliver the inferno.

(Country: Argentina, US; Year: 2023; Director: Demián Rugna; Writer: Demián Rugna; Stars: Ezequiel Rodríguez, Luis Ziembrowski, Demián Salomón, Marcelo Michianaux, Federico Liss)

Full review

Working Class Goes To Hell

A small-town labour union turns to the dark arts for empowerment against the corrupt forces in its community.

(Country: Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Croatia; Year: 2023; Director: Mladen Djordjevic; Writer: Mladen Djordjevic; Stars: Tamara Krcunovic, Leon Lucev, Momo Picuric)