My Toronto After Dark reviews continue with some zombies, werewolves, and a missing dog. Overall, a nice way to end my time at the festival.
Cockneys Vs Zombies is a British comedy that has East Londoners and retirement home residents battling it up against brain-hungry zombies. Workers at a building development uncover a tomb filled with zombies but this is just the beginning. We then get to know the elderly residents living at a nursing home soon to be sold for another building development. One of the residents’ (Alan Ford) grandchildren vow to help their granddad and residents, so they don’t have to move out… their brilliant idea is to rob a bank. During the heist, they are trapped in the bank only to come out some time later to a city run down by zombies. Let the hunting, killing, and chasing begin!
Director Mattias Hoene does a good job in this being his first feature and a genre one at that. The cast works really well together. And of course, the British humour is like a character on its own. Cockneys vs Zombies made us laugh out loud many times. What also works in this film is that we keep rooting for the the retirement home residents to kick some zombie butt… and they deliver plenty! This is a zombie comedy I will most likely watch again.
On a completely different realm, we have Quentin Dupieux‘s Wrong; a film about a missing dog that takes into realms that are certainly bizarre, darkly funny, absurd, and a test of one’s patience and imagination. Jack Plotnick plays Dolph, a docile man who one wakes up to find his dog Paul missing. Paul’s disappearance somewhat holds the plot together. Dolph eventually meets Master Chang (William Fichtner) who tries to help him find Paul by using his telepathic abilities. There is really no major thread in the film. But it’ll have you thinking about many things, including how we treat our pets, and about palm trees. Yes, palm trees. Confusing? Perhaps so.
Without giving much away, Wrong somewhat feels like a David Lynch film including its strangely appropriate musical score, done by Tahiti Boy and Mr. Oizo (Dupieux’s musical alter ego). The casting is well done and the film itself has some great camera angles, and set designs. These are a few thing I really liked about the film. Throughout it, Wrong generates some laughs, and some questionable shrugs. If you liked Dupieux’s first film, Rubber, you may find Wrong tolerable. If not, I’d say you skip it and see something else. I’m still working may way through it…and I don’t mind.
The closing night film, Lobos de Arga (Game of Werewolves) is director’s Juan Martinez Moreno‘s take take on the classic werewolf genre. When writer Tomás Mariño (Gorka Otxoa) goes back to his home town of Arga (in Galicia) to attend a celebration in his name. Turns out he isn’t being celebrated at all but that his family carries a curse placed on them because of his great-grandmother’s indiscretion. Turns out the curse turned her only son into a werewolf, who’s been living in Arga for a hundred years.
Tomás and his friends try to end the curse, with hilarious yet serious consequences. The three male leads Gorka Otxoa, Carlos Areces (Calisto) and Secun de la Rosa (Mario) all work so well together; be it giving us a few scares or making us laugh out loud. The film delivers lots of good times. There is something about Spanish humour that works so well in this film, although rest assured, not much is lost in translation. Lobos is Martinez Moreno’s homage to some classics, as he told us in the Q&A after the film. This film certainly has references to American Werewolf in London but also the sensibility of older films like The Wolf Man from 1941. A great way to close the festival, in my opinion.
I missed some other fun films at Toronto After Dark this year, I know. Nonetheless, my time was well spent between films at Pub After Dark getting to know new friends, discussing all things film and beyond. Congrats to Toronto After Dark staff and volunteers on another successful run!
