Toronto After Dark Film Festival: Geeking Out With the City's Most Dedicated Genre Fans

By Thom Ernst

I like my genre films with an audience. So, I was gratified to receive a last-minute festival pass for the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. Yes, the fest widened its net in recent years with virtual screenings—not the worst, but not ideal for fans of bigger screens..

 What do we know of this strange outlier nestling in after the Planet in Focus and the imagineNATIVE film festivals, and just ahead of the comparably bizarre Blood in the Snow Festival (all this while a whiff of TIFF still lingers)?

Toronto After Dark Film Festival is 16 years old. It's got a dedicated audience of geeks, freaks, movie stars and now me. It has a reputation (endearingly) for being disorganized. It's a festival dedicated to triggering that absurd little switch that makes us love movies.

Posy Taylor (bottom) and Jacqueline Byers in Prey for the Devil, the opener at Toronto After Dark

And I know that its founder and director, Adam Lopez, is probably the festival's biggest fan— it's on that, that After Dark works.  

Well, that, and the movies: a collection of feature horror, science-fiction, and action films and a selection of short films (of which more will be said about later in the week).

A genre film fan's paradise? Yeah, but that might be simplifying things. Is something else going on? An arch to an overriding theme? A master class in genre film appreciation? Raising horror film awareness?

Perhaps. I don't know. I don't have the answers. I'm new here.

Sixteen years and this is my first After Dark. I have no explanation. I knew of the festival; I read the flyers. For whatever reason, the festival felt out of my reach, just far enough off the path to making me wonder if it was safe.

Then again, a genre film festival, particularly one presented after dark—and on a school night—should feel dangerous. I was going to have to brave it.

Reading the festival guide left me giddy: the undead making a mess of things in a gated Mexican community, escaped convicts battling zombies, a murderous cult unprepared to deal with the babysitter who happens to be a semi-pro MMA fighter, and a movie that looks like its director, Neil Marshall, has been caught playing in caves again.

I'm at the festival to see its opening film, Prey for the Devil. The movie is legitimately scary. But that's all I can say right now before the film's official release date later this month. Present is the film's director Daniel Stamm and its lead actor, Jacqueline Byers. The audience loves Byers. It makes me wonder if I should know who she is.  

Lopez hosts the Q & A, offering a few questions off the top before tossing it to the audience. Stamm is thrilled to be there; he talks too much and explains too much of his process, but I imagine he's feeding—gorging, really—on the film's reception.

Later I see Belgium’s H4Z4RD, a riotous action-comedy thriller mainly shot from inside a single ride.

Festival founder Adam Lopez

It’s an audience movie, without question, and the person introducing the film—a senior programmer, I believe—knows it. He grabs the microphone like Tom Waits (I'm of a certain age) about to break into a ballad.

He talks about scenes and filming logistics. He's not so much filmsplaining as he is overwhelmed by whatever good fortune has put him there at that moment, and the audience loves it. This dude also loves the festival. He certainly loves this movie.

The introductions are infectious. The audience craves it. Everyone does. The volunteers look and act the part in their After Dark T-shirts and flex a party-ready aura. Even the house manager—or whoever that is walking around clipped to a microphone and carrying a clipboard—is pleasant and quick to laugh. "Shouldn't you be filled with anxiety?" I ask her. 

She laughs.

But that's the experience of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. It is not the moment. And I was talking about a moment. 

The moment happens when Adam Lopez steps into the spotlight, literally. The theatre at the Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto is full. The audience goes wild for Lopez. Lopez thanks the audience, his programmers, the sponsors, and Cineplex Odeon.  

And then:

"I usually save the big thanks for closing night," says Lopez. He tells the audience he didn't think he'd be around to introduce the 2022 season. He had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Today he 90% clear of the disease. He credits support from friends, family, and the audience. It's heartfelt. He claims to be getting emotional, but I hear nothing but strength.

And for a moment, I regret my hard-core push for an in-person pass. It seems petty in light of this new information.

But then I look around the theatre. I see and feel the energy of the festival. I recognize each person's affection for the festival, from volunteers to programmers to the house manager. And I know that I was right to push to be there because no one should have to miss this.

The Toronto After Dark Film Festival runs from Thursday, October 19, to Sunday, October 23, 2022. Festival Tickets, Schedules, and Information can be found here: Toronto After Dark Film Festival.