The Midnight Madness program at the Toronto International Film Festival has always been a space for cinema that pushes boundaries, disrupts worldviews, and leaves a slippery residue of viscera on the screen—during a festival otherwise dominated by predominantly highbrow, highly serious selections. As the fest turns fifty this September, the program’s disregard for good taste, social norms, and any semblance of staying inside the box shows zero signs of changing.
It’s no wonder TIFF’s Midnight Madness/Strange Cuts program was recently ranked first in Dread Central’s definitive list of the 90 Best Genre Fests on Earth (in a three-way tie with Fantasia and Sitges, respectively).
To prepare for this year’s lineup, I sat down with TIFF Midnight Madness lead programmer Peter Kuplowsky to break down the salacious selections—from the nastiest and most shocking titles to the grim, macabre, and everything in between. Kuplowsky is partly responsible for bringing countless cursed creations to mainstream attention over the years. You may also know him as a producer of excellent genre fare like Psycho Goreman, In a Violent Nature, and Frogman.
So, to start things off, I had to ask: which films this year are most likely to have audiences clutching their pearls?
F—k My Son
“Very much in the tradition of early John Waters,” Kuplowsky explains, before referencing the crude brilliance of Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 and underground comics legend Johnny Ryan. “The razor’s edge this film walks is remarkable. And that’s largely thanks to the cast—Robert Longstreet and Tipper Newton are just incredible.” Expect grotesque laughs, pitch-black satire, and a whole lot of yelling.
Todd Rohal (The Catechism Cataclysm, Uncle Kent 2) violates all boundaries of good taste in F*** My Son, the gleefully profane adaptation of Johnny Ryan’s underground comic about a decrepit mother (Robert Longstreet in drag, of course) who will stop at nothing to get her mutant son (Steve Little) laid. Tf?
Karmadonna
Aleksandar Radivojević, co-writer of A Serbian Film, returns with what sounds like a blistering takedown of influencer culture and reality TV. “It’s not nearly as hardcore [as A Serbian Film], thankfully,” Kuplowsky notes, “but it definitely takes no prisoners.” He likens it to “Larry Cohen’s God Told Me To meets Crank”—a warped, gore-drenched vision about a pregnant woman receiving kill-or-be-killed instructions from a divine voice claiming to be the “creator of content.” “It’s got wild gore and Sam Raimi-style camera energy. For gorehounds, this is the pick.”
And what about the films for horror purists?
Dust Bunny
From Hannibal and Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller comes a tale of a little girl haunted by the monster under her bed—and the John Wick-style hitman (Mads Mikkelsen, no less) she recruits to fight it. “It straddles action, fantasy, and horror,” says Kuplowsky. “It’s got incredible creature work, and also Sigourney Weaver and David Dastmalchian supporting—this could be a gateway horror movie if your kid’s cool enough to stay up till midnight.” Dust Bunny is a whimsically macabre directorial debut from acclaimed television showrunner Bryan Fuller. And sure, this one might be perfect gateway genre…
But you definitely don’t want to bring your kids to…
Obsession
Curry Barker’s breakout feature is the section’s most disturbing offering. “This is the scariest film in the lineup,” Kuplowsky warns. He describes the shocker as a twisted monkey’s paw scenario about teenage crushes, consent, and escalating horror, and that Obsession recalls the intensity of Barbarian while carving out its own emotionally-charged territory. “It gets under your skin in ways horror films rarely do,” Kuplowsky notes. “It’s a debut, and it’s absolutely devastating.”
In the film, when a hopeless romantic makes a wish that his long-time crush falls in love with him, a sinister enchantment ensues in writer-director Curry Barker’s freaky and frightening feature debut. Baker’s recent YouTube horror project Milk & Serial made our list of the 10 best found footage titles of 2024.
But what’s the one unmissable underdog of the lineup?
JUNK WORLD
A prequel to the 2017 stop-motion cult hit Junk Head, Takahide Hori’s JUNK WORLD is four years in the making—with a team of six people. “It’s like Mad God meets Brothers Quay meets Jan Švankmajer,” Kuplowsky gushes. “It’s visually incredible, deeply weird, and totally self-contained even if you haven’t seen the original.” This is the film that will have Midnight Madness audiences leaving the theatre stunned—and then immediately Googling where to watch Junk Head.
In the film, a surprise attack on a joint expedition between humans and their emancipated clones becomes the freaky fulcrum for a dimension-hopping, time-travel fable set over a millennia before Takahide Hori’s original subterranean stop-motion animated opus, Junk Head.
As for those Canadian bookends:
Nirvanna the Band the Show: The Movie
Midnight Madness 2025 opens and closes with homegrown talent: Matt Johnson’s (BlackBerry) meta-feature Nirvanna the Band the Show: The Movie continues Johnson’s tradition of DIY absurdism. “These are two films that have already launched successfully on the festival circuit,” Kuplowsky says, “but I really wanted to celebrate them here, because they’re defining Canadian genre filmmaking right now.”
TIFF’s synopsis: They were never in time to book a gig at The Rivoli, then one day… they weren’t in their time at all. From Matt Johnson (BlackBerry) and Jay McCarrol’s cult comedy series comes an adventure 17 years in the making.
Dead Lover
One of my favorite films to screen out of Sundance earlier this year is Grace Glowicki’s gonzo horror-comedy Dead Lover. I described it in my review as “a scrappy and transgressive exhumation of the fine line between beauty and the grotesque.” Kuplowsky lists it as “zany, macabre, and infectiously fun,” and that its “like Hundreds of Beavers meets early Guy Maddin.” He also hints that the closing night screening will be an “event” unto itself, saying “we’re pulling out all the stops—it’ll be a night to remember.”
In the film, a wily gravedigger (Grace Glowicki) falls for the one man who is attracted to her fetid funk (Ben Petrie), but when fate doth conspire, she takes drastic measures to preserve their love in this camp phantasmagoria.
And lest we forget the rest of the line-up:
The Napa Boys
In the tradition of American Pie, Lord of the Rings, and Wet Hot American Summer comes a new installment in a beloved IP franchise: The Napa Boys are back! In search of wine. In search of women. In search of themselves.
Normal
Director Ben Wheatley and John Wick creator Derek Kolstad pit a provisional sheriff (Bob Odenkirk) against his constituents when the exposure of a small town’s sordid secret sparks a rip-roaring firefight.
The Furious
Acclaimed action choreographer-turned-director Kenji Tanigaki (SPL, Flash Point, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In) propels a desperate father (Xie Miao) into a knock-down, drag-out war to rescue his daughter from a nefarious array of cutthroat kidnappers
Well there we have it. This years TIFF Midnight Madness lineup promises to be yet another gleeful descent into depravity, genre chaos, and boundary-pushing madness, with ten wild-eyed new films that span the gamut between everything from high-concept creature features to stop-motion mind-melters.
TIFF Midnight Madness runs September 4–14, 2025. The full schedule will be revealed on August 12.
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