Toronto – Horror films usually don’t pique an interest with me mostly because the script/screenplay themselves are usually the horror, not the action. But a friend mentioned the Toronto After Dark Film Festival and I just had to see several of these films. So… here are my two selections. There were other ones but I’ll get to them in time.

Dead Snow is a film from Norway. Modeled after every other teanage slasher flick, it starts out with 7 med-school friends taking a weekend vacation in a log cabin. But the loosely existing plot quickly escalates to what the film is all about. To make a long story short, what you’re watching for is Nazi zombies. That’s right: fast-walking, flesh-eating, never-dying, vengeful undead who are just slightly stiff because they’ve been buried for 60 years. Apparently a battalion of German troops holding a mining town in Norway was met with some local brutality near the end of the war. Not ready to leave the Earth without gold/jewelry (Fortune and glory, kid!), they stuck around waiting for their loot to be discovered. And of course, it’s in that log cabin. So, med-students meet zombies and all hell breaks loose, Evil Dead style. There’s plenty of weaponary here to choose from: fists, feet, head, torchlight, sickle, hammer, axe, bayonet, helmet, grenade, snowmobile, machine gun, and yes, don’t forget the chainsaw. The movie remains light on its feet and it’s never really scary, but it sure is a gore-fest. The pace is slow at first, and the zombie action doesn’t show up until the half-way-mark. But once it does, there are lots of interesting twists. I loved it when one of the students flashes a sickle and hammer, Soviet style, at a zombie and it lets out this cry of supreme annoyance (which btw sounds exactly the same as normal zombie cry but with bass) – that moment was quite brilliant. So, take this path if you want a gore-fest and some light laughs.

Grace is another kind of zombie movie; in fact it’s probably too good to simply be labeled a horror film. Set in a typical family background, you are introduced to Michael and Madeline, who had a miscarriage and are trying for a second time. I won’t hide the central theme here, either, since you can read it on After Dark’s website. The movie is about Madeline having another miscarriage, after a car accident conveniently kills Michael – except this time she gives birth. What results is a zombie baby that only eats human blood/flesh. The film might be a bit offensive to vegans/vegetarians, as it pokes fun at them at almost every turn for the first while. And while I’m at it I guess it is may also offend men since it kills off the younger mommy-attached husband by the 1/6 mark, shows the older-husband and an older male acquaintance as useless tools, and has two lesbian relationships criss-crossing. But beyond any of that, the film shows what maternal instincts can propel a woman to accomplish. The concept of a zombie baby, I have to say, is really fresh, and that’s how the film can hit several new angles that’s not typical of a zombie flick. It succeeds both in being a shocker and ask some serious questions: 1) If people are really willing to go that far for an unborn/newborn, is it really the welfare of the child that motivate them? 2) Are we to get on the holistic vs. medicine merry-go-round, or is there another solution? 3) Are boomer parents really obsessed with their progeny? 4) Are all babies of vegetarian mothers blood-thirsty zombies? (obviously I’m joking…) But I do find it rather funny how the only thing Madeline could watch during pregnancy was the Animal Channel and that is used as a device that foreshadows a zombie baby. Imagine what would happen if she had been watching Space… would Grace had been Spock, Worf, or a intestine-dwelling alien baby? Either way, this is a subtle shocker (if there is such a thing) and an interesting one to talk over midnight snack of ears. Corn, I mean.

Dead Snow

Grace

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