RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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After Kane Parsons' Backrooms and Curry Barker's Obsession made box office history, Midnight Madness programmer Peter Kuplowsky has his own collection of Gen Z-fluent horror filmmakers competing to become Hollywood's next horror film sensations for the major studios to fight over at the upcoming Toronto Film Festival .
Take debut feature director Joshua Giuliano who will open Kuplowsky's late night thrills and spills showcase with a world premiere for River, a survival slasher that brings together modern scream queens Jane Levy and Jessica Rothe in a dark tale about three estranged siblings reuniting to scatter their late father's ashes along a remote river, only to face a waking nightmare. Related Stories Movies Scary World News Has Auteur Directors Looking Onwards and Inwards at Toronto Film Festival Movies Gary Oldman, Curry Barker, 'Barbie' Producer Robbie Brenner to Keynote Toronto Film Festival
"The film begins as a domestic drama between siblings, and then ratchets into one of the most suspenseful films I've seen in years," Kuplowsky told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of unveiling his 2026 Midnight Madness sidebar lineup on Thursday.
"This (film) feels very stripped down, very minimalist, and I could see it being in conversations with movies like Backrooms and Obssession because of how uncomplicated its machinations are. It is delivering on a very pure and primal genre experience and executed in a way that is going to elicit shrieks and screams and gasps from the audience," he added.
River hits Kuplowsky's sweet spot by beginning in one place — an estranged siblings drama — before the character conflicts and tension escalate and whip-saw the audience to the intended point of nerve-shredding engagement in Toronto. Midnight Madness also has a first look for Kick On , an action horror thriller from Nick Kozakis, and about a night of partying by four friends descending into a spiral of paranoia, violence and betrayals.
What might have been early on predictable for Kuplowsky with Kick On eventually turns wonderfully weird and deranged. "There's a level of ultra-violence and commitment to just visceral gag after gag subjected onto the characters that is going to be a quite breathless experience at midnight" in Toronto, the veteran TIFF programmer added.
Other world premieres in the squishy and scary movie section include Anna Biller's plague-haunted ghost story The Face of Horror , a follow-up to The Love Witch that stars Jonah Hauer-King, Kristine Froseth, Ellie Bamber, Bella Heathcote and Ben Radcliffe; and Eugene Kotlyarenko's Vintage Violence , an action comedy set in Japan and starring Cole Sprouse as a social media influencer touting priceless jeans.
And Hollywood film buyers may want to stay up until the early morning hours in Toronto for films that bend more towards the absurd than jump scares, as with a world premiere for the latest film from Universal Language director Matthew Rankin, the documentary Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Brian Mulroney . His portrait of former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney is seen through the prism of TV appearances and other cultural touchestones.
"He's not scary. I do think his movies are freaky and they're bizarre," Kuplowsky observed. The same holds true for Matt Barats, an actor and comedian known for roles in Cash Cow, Inspector Ike and White House Plumbers and who is bringing to Midnight Madness his directorial effort, the Anchors Aweigh comedy for an international premiere.
Midnight Madness also booked Half, a vampire martial arts action thriller out of India from Golam director Samjad, which Kuplowsky bills as "speaking to an Indian cultural context — a curry Western vampire hybrid" as it blends the grit of traditional spaghetti westerns with Bollywood themes.
There's also an international premiere in Toronto after Venice for the Italian psychological thriller The Spiral from genre director Paolo Strippoli ( A Classic Horror Story ) and about a mother and daughter whose relationship spirals out of control after a shocking secret is spilled.
And there's a North American bow for Sabu's comedy Arrested Memory, which stars Taiwanese actor Ethan Juan and follows a detective with Alzheimer's Disease. Midnight Madness will close with Moon director Duncan Jones' Rogue Trooper, an animated comic book adaptation about a soldier, voiced by Aneurin Barnard, caught behind enemy lines with an offbeat platoon.
Shudder has already picked up the Midnight Madness opener River for its platform, with a theatrical release also planned. Otherwise, the remaining lineup are all acquisition titles up for grabs at TIFF.
But as Hollywood remains on the hunt for the next Obsession or Backrooms amid a gold rush for online creators, Kuplowsky argues studio execs need to look beyond what's playing well on YouTube and other digital platforms to breakout horror filmmaking talent that understands genre movies and Gen Z audiences and who the major studios and streamers can work with.
"You should be asking who are the filmmakers that we think we're excited about working with, rather than a film that is going to just recreate the formula to an exact T," he argued. "With Obsession , the film absolutely worked with an audience, and think they (Focus Features) found the right way to bring it to an audience. And I hope they'll continue to do that for films in the section," Kuplowsky said of his Midnight Madness lineup.
The Toronto Film Festival is set to run Sept. 10 to 20.
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