TIFF 2026 Recap - N for New Special

And we'll go ahead and start off with a movie that I think is like the only real major disagreement of the movies that we saw.

It was the first of the Midnight Madness movies.

And it was called River, which is a slasher film that stars Jane Levy and Jessica Roth as two sisters who are dealing with the recent passing of their father and also...

Their brother, Max Mattern, who's kind of younger, they all are in West Virginia and they go on the little pontoon boat that their dad has.

And they end up, you know, trying to dump his ashes out.

And then while they're out there, the engine line gets cut.

And so they're kind of stuck out there in the middle of the West Virginia River.

And while they're also out there, a slasher killer comes by and starts stalking them.

Yeah, so this was, like I said, the first of the Midnight Madness premieres, which is a big thing over at TIFF, right? There's usually, like, a huge line of Midnight Madness movies that get a lot of attention.

i'd say they get a fair amount of attention it's only right now the spotlight has never been bigger on midnight madness due to a little movie that premiered last year but only came out earlier this year called obsession you might have heard of it yes you know maybe you might have heard of it a little bit you might have seen a little bit of discourse about it but that was the yeah the big like massive like steal or not even feel like the massive premiere from last year.

So obviously everyone's going to like pay attention.

Like, okay, what's, what's coming on.

What's going to be in this year's lineup.

And this is probably one of the ones I was looking forward to the most because I love Jane Levy so much.

And it's her, she hasn't been in a horror movie in a minute.

And so this is like the, her first time probably since like, probably since don't breathe and that was like a decade ago yeah yeah yeah so yeah i was very very much looking forward to it and then i came out of it just mostly bored

moment the movie ended i was like oh hell yeah that was so fun you're like i didn't like it man it was a very interesting kind of like that caught me and that was a fair thing like as we were coming out all of uh different uh buddies you would introduce me to the 1500 of them yeah all came out and had a very similar divisive reaction.

Some people were not as enthused by it.

Some of us really had a lot of fun.

And I did have a lot of fun with this one, actually.

I think it's a credit to the directorial debut of Joshua Giolano.

Giuliano.

Giuliano, apologies.

Giuliano, sorry.

Giuliano, yes.

And we'll go ahead and start off with a movie that I think is like the only real major disagreement of the movies that we saw.

It was the first of the Midnight Madness movies.

And it was called River, which is a slasher film that stars Jane Levy and Jessica Roth as two sisters who are dealing with the recent passing of their father and also...

Their brother, Max Mattern, who's kind of younger, they all are in West Virginia and they go on the little pontoon boat that their dad has.

And they end up, you know, trying to dump his ashes out.

And then while they're out there, the engine line gets cut.

And so they're kind of stuck out there in the middle of the West Virginia River.

And while they're also out there, a slasher killer comes by and starts stalking them.

Yeah, so this was, like I said, the first of the Midnight Madness premieres, which is a big thing over at TIFF, right? There's usually, like, a huge line of Midnight Madness movies that get a lot of attention.

i'd say they get a fair amount of attention it's only right now the spotlight has never been bigger on midnight madness due to a little movie that premiered last year but only came out earlier this year called obsession you might have heard of it yes you know maybe you might have heard of it a little bit you might have seen a little bit of discourse about it but that was the yeah the big like massive like steal or not even feel like the massive premiere from last year.

So obviously everyone's going to like pay attention.

Like, okay, what's, what's coming on.

What's going to be in this year's lineup.

And this is probably one of the ones I was looking forward to the most because I love Jane Levy so much.

And it's her, she hasn't been in a horror movie in a minute.

And so this is like the, her first time probably since like, probably since don't breathe and that was like a decade ago yeah yeah yeah so yeah i was very very much looking forward to it and then i came out of it just mostly bored

moment the movie ended i was like oh hell yeah that was so fun you're like i didn't like it man it was a very interesting kind of like that caught me and that was a fair thing like as we were coming out all of uh different uh buddies you would introduce me to the 1500 of them yeah all came out and had a very similar divisive reaction.

Some people were not as enthused by it.

Some of us really had a lot of fun.

And I did have a lot of fun with this one, actually.

I think it's a credit to the directorial debut of Joshua Giolano.

Giuliano.

Giuliano, apologies.

Giuliano, sorry.

Giuliano, yes.