TIFF 2021 Film Reviews Portal

All of my 2021 Toronto International Film Festival coverage in one place

This marks my second year attending Toronto International Film Festival virtually. And while I won’t be able to access some of the biggest screenings - here’s looking at you, Dune, Last Night in Soho, Spencer, and Power of the Dog - this allows me to cover a wide range of smaller films, and my favorite slate of TIFF: Midnight Madness. Some of my planned coverage includes Antoine Fuqua’s remake of the Danish thriller The Guilty, Jimmy Chin and Chai Vaserhelyi’s cave rescue doc The Rescue, and Rob Savage’s second pandemic-era horror film DASHCAM. All reviews in viewing order…

DASHCAM

Kicking off this year’s Midnight Madness slate is Rob Savage’s followup to his 2020 “screenlife” hit, Host. Extrapolating COVID found footage beyond just a Zoom lobby, DASHCAM doubles down on pandemic horror to very mixed results. Ramping up the scope and intricacy - but not the ingenuity - of Host, the film gets wildly uneven mileage out of its grating protagonist and its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink terrors. Read the full review here.

TIFF 2021 Dispatch

I may be missing the big headliners of TIFF, but that only gives me more time to cover Midnight Madness and the festival’s less splashy titles. My first review roundup from this year’s TIFF includes an alien invasion road trip with Riz Ahmed, Jake Gyllenaal in a remake of a Danish hidden gem, and Naomi Watts in a misguided school shooting thriller. Here are the capsule reviews for Encounter, The Guilty, and Lakewood.

The Rescue

Kicking off TIFF’s documentary slate is Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vaserhelyi’s The Rescue, a deeper look at the daring mission to save 12 children and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in Thailand. A film naturally picking up the mantle of the filmmakers’ Oscar-winning Free Solo, it’s a rousing tale of humanity that crescendoes into an unbelievable climax of selfless individuals coming together. Read the full review here.

Saloum

Congolese filmmaker Jean Luc Herbulot’s Saloum is a confident genre mashup. Part Spaghetti Western, part crime thriller, part folk horror, the film packs a potent cocktail of tones within its brisk 84-minute runtime. With tinges of Robert Rodriguez and John Carpenter, coupled with a crackling performance from Yann Gael, Saloum is a lean, breakneck journey into the terrifying unknown and the wildest surprise at TIFF this year. Read the full review here.