Careful (1992)
Feb 14, 2001Kitsch Surrealism
The third film from Guy Maddin film. This feels like a parody/homage to German Expressionism all filmed on deliberately unreal sets and purple dialogue played with an hilarious deadpan
Telefilm Canada
Love & Human Remains (1993)
Jun 8, 2002Modern Sexuality/Serial Killer
From Denys Arcand, a strong and powerful examination of all differing aspects of sexuality in the 1990s via a crosscut of characters, including a serial killer also in the mix
The Hanging Garden (1997)
Mar 17, 1999Gay Man's Childhood/Ghosts
A Canadian film about a gay man returning home and revisiting his childhood after ten years away that ends up in a weird series of parallel realities
The Red Violin (1998)
Jul 19, 2000Stories of a Cursed Violin
A reasonable arthouse hit, this tells the story of a cursed violin through five different periods of history
Last Night (1998)
Jun 28, 1999The End of the World
Excellent Canadian-made End of the World film where actor/director Don McKellar eschews lavish big-budget spectacle for a wry, often haunting series of characters studies about how people meet the end
The Divine Ryans (1999)
Sep 26, 1999Family Saga/Father's Ghost/Surreal Dreams
Canadian family saga told through the eyes of a young boy growing up amid a strange extended Newfoundland family. Featuring a number of fantastical elements.
Babel (1999)
Oct 26, 1999Children's Film/Millennial Apocalypse
An inane French/Canadian-made children's film about three cute creatures that come to help a boy stop the resurrection of the Tower of Babel on the eve of the millennium
Ginger Snaps Back: The Begining (2004)
Jul 25, 2007Teenage Girl Werewolves
Third of the Ginger Snaps films, a prequel set during the pioneer era with Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle again as sisters taking refuge at a fort under attack by werewolves. The scene-setting and atmosphere of foreboding is superlative
Ginger Snaps: Unleashed (2004)
Jan 7, 2006Teenage Girl Werewolf
The first of two sequels to the Canadian werewolf film. This takes place with the surviving sister placed in a rehab facility and is the best of the trilogy, even better than the first film was in its writing and characters
Tideland (2005)
Feb 23, 2008Surreal World of Childhood Imagination
Bizarre but undeniably brilliant Terry Gilliam film about a young girl in the cornfields of the Midwest who builds a fantasy out of the sometimes disturbing things around her
Beowulf & Grendel (2005)
Nov 10, 2006Epic Legend
An interesting and worthwhile attempt to retell the epic legend of Beowulf but to give it grounding as an historical work. Filmed in Iceland with an international cast
Fido (2006)
May 19, 2010Domesticated Zombies Comedy
Charmingly droll film that posits an alternate version of the 1950s where zombies have been domesticated. This has a perfect sense of mood and admirable deadpan playing by all involved
Blindness (2008)
Apr 17, 2010Plague of Blindness
A hugely underrated film that depicts the brutal collapse of society that occurs when the entire world is affected by a plague that causes blindness. Directed in strong and powerful images
The Thaw (2009)
Jul 24, 2011Prehistoric Flesh-Eating Insects
Okay borrowing from the set-up of The Thing about an outbreak of flesh-eating prehistoric insects at an Arctic research station
Splice (2010)
May 22, 2010Genetically-Engineered Creature
A genetically engineered creature film from Vincenzo Natali, this ventures into some fascinating places but ultimately returns to Frankenstein science territory
Territories (2010)
May 21, 2012Rogue Border Guards Torture Tourists
An appealingly politicised variant on the Backwoods Brutality film in which two rogue US border guards decide to set up their own home Guantanamo Bay … not Torture Porn but an effectively brutal study on the effect of torture
Hobo With a Shotgun (2011)
Mar 27, 2011Vigilante Derelict/Gonzo Exploitation Homage
Another of the Grindhouse mock trailers gets it own film. This hits in with a wonderfully enthusiastic B movie energy and buckets of gore that remind of early Peter Jackson
Donovan’s Echo (2011)
Oct 21, 2011Precognition
Film about clairvoyance and predestination that owes much to Don't Look Now. Unfortunately, this reduces everything to the prosaic level of a tv movie thriller
The Moth Diaries (2011)
May 20, 2012Possible Vampire in a Girl's Boarding School
Interesting attempt to rewrite Carmilla for the Twilight crowd. In fact, this is a film that features more credible teenage girls and is far more successful as a horror film and at creating uncanny mood than the Twilight films were
In Their Skin (2012)
Nov 8, 2012Home Invasion Thriller
Canadian-made home invasion thriller that reminds of Michael Haneke's Funny Games. A film that seems set to brutalise a middle class couple's sensibilities only to slip into utter tameness
The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh (2012)
Aug 19, 2013Ghost Story
Rue Morgue magazine editor Rodrigo Gudiño makes his directorial debut with an old-fashioned ghost story that is a slow, moody ambiguous single-person drama
Rufus (2012)
Apr 6, 2017Smalltown Vampire
Not that the title gives you any reason to expect it but this is actually a vampire film, one of the rare entries in a genre that is looking very anemic these days. An original and quite interesting smalltown take that resembles George Romero's Martin and Let the Right One In
Eddie the Sleepwalking Cannibal (2012)
May 5, 2013Sleepwalking Cannibalism/Black Comedy
Rather peculiar film about a man who becomes a cannibal whenever he sleepwalks and an artist who finds inspiration at the sight of the dead bodies. This taps a rich vein of black comedy
Cosmopolis (2012)
Jul 11, 2012Vision of Near-Future Social Collapse
David Cronenberg film that takes place in a limousine and consists of a surreal drift through a near-future world in the midst of economic collapse, observing it with darkly brilliant, razor-sharp agitprop dialogue
The Suicide Shop (2012)
Mar 10, 2013Animation/Black Comedy
French animated film that is about as far from children's entertainment as it is possible to get – a mordantly dark comedy that operates in similar territory to The Addams Family in its tale of a family that operates a shop selling items of despatch to the suicidally minded
Enemy (2013)
Mar 14, 2014Mysterious Doppelganger
Denis Villeneuve slips into a very Cronenbergian vein to deliver a film about Jake Gyllenhaal and a mysterious doppelganger. A fascinatingly oblique and cryptic work, just as long as one does not require that it comes with any easy explanations
The Colony (2013)
Apr 11, 2013Grim Survival in a Frozen Future
This creates a fascinatingly different future - a world of grim survivalism amid a new Ice Age in the aftermath of Global Warming. The look of the film is fantastic, only to fritter it on an action focus and Mad Max cliches
The Calling (2014)
Sep 19, 2014Serial Killer Thriller
Modest serial killer thriller – imagine one of the numerous Silence of the Lambs copies crossbred with Fargo. The film's quiet pace soon segues into an absorbing thriller plot, while Christopher Heyerdahl gives a fine performance as the killer
Stage Fright (2014)
Jun 23, 2014Slasher Musical
A slasher musical??? The mind does a double takes trying to process the incongruity of the genre mash-ups. That said, this works exceedingly well – neither compromising on the slasher aspects, yet equally delivering some clever and witty musical numbers
Debug (2014)
Aug 12, 2016Malevolent A.I. on a Spaceship
Actor David Hewlett directs a B-budget film where a team of convicted hackers are sent to clean out the computers on a spaceship only to come up against a malevolent A.I.
Turbo Kid (2015)
Oct 23, 2015Retro 80s Parody of Post-Holocaust Films
There is a fantastically witty idea here – a low-tech parody of the 1980s post-holocaust film – but one that seems in search of an accompanying film. The film overspills with retro ephemera and stylistic jokes but I wish there had been more to it beyond the hook of the initial joke
A Christmas Horror Story (2015)
Dec 25, 2015Anthology of Christmas Horror Stories
An anthology that offers a quartet of Christmas horror stories, including ones of zombified elves and a Krampus monster. Hosted by William Shatner who plays a radio talkshow host in the wraparound
The Dark Stranger (2015)
May 28, 2018Boogeyman Emerges from a Graphic Novel
This comes with an original idea where a troubled girl starts drawing a graphic novel that mirrors her own life only for the characters to emerge into the real world. Less horror than a dark allegorical fantasy
Hellions (2015)
Jan 10, 2016Masked Children Pursue a Girl on Halloween Night
The return of director of Pontypool should be anticipated. But this kills a near-foolproof premise – masked children come after a heroine on Halloween night wanting her unborn baby – with a pink lighting scheme
Darken (2017)
May 4, 2026Labyrinth World
A film that comes with an interesting sounding premise where a woman ventures through a doorway into a labyrinth world of interconnected rooms and ends up in a fight against the ruling theocracy
Pyewacket (2017)
Nov 12, 2024Teenager Casts a Death Spell
Chillingly effective film where a teenage girl casts a spell to kill her mother, only to become terrified and try to turn back what she has unleashed
The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
Mar 5, 2018Charles Dickens and the Writing of A Christmas Carol
Among the fad for biopics about writers and the origins of famous stories, this, about Charles Dickens and the creation of A Christmas Carol, is the most lunatic – and that's not counting the blatant lie of the title
Dead Shack (2017)
Nov 11, 2018Zombie Film
The zombie film is feeling very played out these days. This is a no expectation entry (even the title seems utterly generic) that proves an unexpected delight, filled with endearing characterisations
Radius (2017)
Mar 9, 2018Amnesiac Man Wakes Up With Killing Power
This comes with a fascinatingly original premise – man wakes up with complete amnesia and finds that he has the ability to kill anyone within thirty feet of him. The case of a film that holds attention with a captivating and unusual plot and a series of constant whiplash reversals
Riot Girls (2019)
Nov 16, 2020Girlfriends in the Aftermath of a Plague That Has Killed All Adults
A plague has killed off all adults. In the ruins, two girlfriends venture into the domain ruled by the tyrannical football jocks to rescue one's brother
Supergrid (2018)
Apr 7, 2022Socially Collapsed Future Action
Lowell Dean, director of WolfCop, makes what feels like a revival of the low-budget Mad Max film - an action film set in a socially collapsed future
Rabid (2019)
Oct 26, 2019Parasitic Skin Graft
The Soska Sisters take on remaking the classic David Cronenberg film about a woman with a blood-drinking skin graft who leaves a trail of rabid victims. The sisters smartly update the original, bringing a host of new ideas to bear
Random Acts of Violence (2019)
Aug 21, 2020Comic-Book Artist Imitated by a Serial Killer
Actor Jay Baruchel directs a film in which a comic-book artist bases a graphic novel on a true-life serial killer only to find that the killer has returned and is imitating his work
Dreamland (2019)
Aug 8, 2021Crime Thriller with a Vampire
Bruce McDonald, who directed the standout Pontypool, makes a crime film where Stephen McHattie plays both a hitman and a heroin-addicted trumpet player. For head-scratching reasons, the film also includes a vampire
Code 8 (2019)
Sep 13, 2021Superpowered Heist Film
One of the few original, non-comic book based superhero films of the 2010s set in a world where those with powers are treated as a minority. This is essentially a heist film but with the addition of super-powers
Astronaut (2019)
Aug 9, 2019Senior Pursues a Dream to Go Into Space
Space movies were big following successes like Gravity and The Martian. At complete contrast, this is a genteel laidback film with Richard Dreyfuss as a senior obsessed with boarding a spaceflight
Come True (2020)
Oct 10, 2021Dream Horrors
A Canadian-made horror film about a teenage runaway who signs into a mysterious dream institute that conduct experiments that open up something disturbing inside her
Bloodthirsty (2020)
Feb 28, 2022Female Werewolf
Promising film about an ingénue singer under the control of a Svengali-esque record producer who is struggling against giving in to her true werewolf nature
Bleed With Me (2020)
Sep 12, 2022Sinister Happenings at a Cabin in the Woods
A film where a girl goes to stay with her girl friend at a cabin in the woods but thinks her friend might be drugging her and taking her blood
Brain Freeze (2021)
Jun 20, 2024Quebecois Zombies
A Quebecois (French Canadian) zombie film about the residents of an island being turned into zombies by a fertiliser used on the golf course
Dark Nature (2022)
Oct 5, 2023Monster in the Wilderness
A horror film made by Canada’s indigenous Metis people that concerns a group of women on a therapeutic wilderness trek are stalked and attacked by a monster
Crimes of the Future (2022)
Jul 2, 2022Future Surgical Experiments
A 79 year-old David Cronenberg returns with one of his best films, a synthesis of his major themes in an extraordinary and perverse look at a future where surgery has become performance art. This site's best film of 2022.
We Are Zombies (2023)
May 11, 2026Zombie Comedy
A zombie comedy from the Quebecois trio who were responsible for Turbo Kid, this takes place in a world where zombies are less a horde than an annoyance who have been relegated to the fringes of society
Simulant (2023)
Apr 28, 2024Rogue Androids
Another in the spate of recent A.I. films of the 2010s/20s. Here one can buy android replacements for one’s late spouse but someone is hacking and causing them to go rogue
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023)
Jul 20, 2025Vampire Comedy
I was sold on this from the title. A droll Canadian (Quebec-made) vampire comedy about a vampire girl who cannot bring herself to kill and a suicidal teenager who becomes her willing victim
Infinity Pool (2023)
Feb 25, 2023Executed Clones/Bored Lawless Elites
Extraordinary Brandon Cronenberg film about a fictional country where those convicted of crimes can have clone copies executed in their place, leading to an tourist underworld where all crimes are permissible
The Silent Planet (2024)
Aug 3, 2026Prison Planet
A Canadian film starring Elias Koteas as an aging man banished to solitary servitude on a prison planet where his loneliness is broken by the arrival of a fellow prisoner
Humane (2024)
May 10, 2024Future Euthanasia
David Cronenberg’s daughter Caitlin makes her directorial debut with a film set around a family dinner in a future where the world has decided to euthanize the world population by twenty percent
The Shrouds (2024)
Jun 21, 2025Grave Camera Technology
At age 81, David Cronenberg is still on great form with this perversely fascinating work about the development of a technology that places cameras inside graves to observe corpses as they decay
The Invisibles (2024)
Jan 18, 2026Man Fades Away
This has an intriguingly original concept where milquetoast Tim Blake Nelson wakes up to find he has faded away and become invisible to other people - and then finds a secret world of other similar Invisibles
Kryptic (2025)
Sep 14, 2025Mysterious Identity Exchange/Bigfoot Creature
As the title suggests, this is cryptic. Chloe Pirrie wanders off in the woods, encounters a mysterious Bigfoot creature and afterwards experiences a baffling identity exchange
Deathstalker (2025)
Jan 2, 2026Sword and Sorcery
A remake of the popular 1980s sword and sorcery film that was originally produced by Roger Corman. This version is directed by makeup effects artist Steven Kostanski who fills it with an amazing range of creature effects