TIFF’s Mid­night Mad­ness serves up con­tro­ver­sy as well as gore

Going into this year’s Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val – the first in three years to be held pri­mar­i­ly in-per­son – Weird: The Al Yankovic Sto­ry was the film that seemed to be the crown­ing jew­el of the festival’s Mid­night Mad­ness line­up. It stars an afro-ed, mus­ta­chioed Daniel Rad­cliffe as tit­u­lar come­di­an-musi­cian Al Yankovic in a film that is more par­o­dy than it is an earnest biopic, and enjoy­ably so.

But while Weird had the most hype going into the fes­ti­val (right­ful­ly, as the Mid­night Mad­ness open­ing film), a week lat­er, it is The People’s Jok­er that is on most Mid­night Mad­ness lovers’ lips, even if the for­mer won the People’s Choice Award for its cat­e­go­ry on Sunday.

Entrenched in nos­tal­gic iconog­ra­phy from DC Comics’ Bat­man uni­verse, Vera Drew’s The People’s Jok­er is a fun­ny and heart­felt explo­ration of gen­der dys­mor­phia and eupho­ria, chart­ing the writer-director’s own expe­ri­ence with com­ing out as transgender.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, only one audi­ence set was able to view the film at the fes­ti­val, as Drew pulled the movie from TIFF fol­low­ing its first screen­ing after receiv­ing an ​“angry let­ter” from a ​“name­less” media con­glom­er­ate (all signs point to rights-hold­er Warn­er Broth­ers) over the use of char­ac­ters like Bat­man and the Jok­er. Iron­i­cal­ly, these char­ac­ters were in part used as bit­ing crit­i­cism of main­stream com­e­dy and how it ser­vices and prof­its billionaires.

This saga rais­es ques­tions per­tain­ing to par­o­dy and fair use rights, par­tic­u­lar­ly as Mid­night Mad­ness’ open­ing film focused on an artist like Weird Al who built a career off of par­o­dy­ing famous songs and artists. In her offi­cial state­ment on Twit­ter, Drew states that she con­sult­ed with legal coun­sel pri­or to the film’s screen­ing and that it had been cleared (the film also opens with a title card that states that it is pro­tect­ed under the Unit­ed States Copy­right Act of 1976 as an unau­tho­rized par­o­dy). She is cur­rent­ly search­ing for a dis­tri­b­u­tion part­ner who will help to make the film more accessible.

In addi­tion to Weird and The People’s Jok­er, six oth­er films had their world pre­mière as part of TIFF’s Mid­night Mad­ness line­up. Notable among them is the lat­est install­ment in the V/H/S anthol­o­gy hor­ror fran­chise: V/H/S 99. This effort fea­tured seg­ments direct­ed by Johannes Roberts (of 47 Meters Down fame) and music pro­duc­er and rap­per Fly­ing Lotus, who had his direc­to­r­i­al debut with Kuso in 2017. While the shorts, which focus on every­thing from sadis­tic tele­vi­sion game shows to being buried alive, are as gross as ever, the film falls short of bring­ing any­thing new or excit­ing to its fran­chise or the larg­er found-footage subgenre.

And though Finland’s Sisu (Immor­tal) plays like a Finnish Nazi-Killing Mad Max: Fury Road, South Korea’s Project Wolf Hunt­ing is the stand-out when it comes to Mid­night Mad­ness’ hor­ror movies. Direct­ed by Kim Hong-sun, the premise of Project Wolf Hunt­ing pits crim­i­nals against police offi­cers on a seclud­ed car­go ship, in what will most like­ly be this decade’s blood­i­est film. It tru­ly is impos­si­ble to over­state just how much blood­shed there is in this film.

If you have a strong stom­ach, Project Wolf Hunt­ing is a must-watch: its con­cept and set-up are per­fect­ly con­ven­tion­al and its first half-hour plays like an over-zeal­ous but unre­mark­able action movie, until a bomb­shell third par­ty lit­er­al­ly slams into the pic­ture and esca­lates the mad­ness ten­fold. What fol­lows is a hyper-vio­lent offer­ing that sits at the neat (spir­i­tu­al and con­cep­tu­al) inter­sec­tion of Malig­nant and Green Room.

Pearl, Ti West’s fol­low-up to this year’s X, also screened at the fes­ti­val (fol­low­ing a world pre­mière at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val), as did the self-reflex­ive action-fan­ta­sy Leonor Will Nev­er Die, which pre­miered ear­li­er this year at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val. Both films are fun in their own right — the for­mer has a stun­ning per­for­mance by Mia Goth which alone is worth the price of admis­sion, while the lat­ter is equal­ly enjoy­able as a com­e­dy and an earnest love let­ter to the gold­en age of filmmaking.

This year’s Mid­night Mad­ness could have cer­tain­ly gone smoother (if an unnamed media con­glom­er­ate didn’t feel so liti­gious), but this year’s line­up of slash­ers, gorefests, and come­dies, ulti­mate­ly served to suc­cess­ful­ly remind us how much we love com­ing togeth­er at the movie the­ater — some­times, at mid­night — to laugh and squirm and cringe at the screen, and on very spe­cial occa­sions, look away altogether.