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The Toronto International Film Festival is almost like a preview of the movie slate for the next few months — and this year I’m watching as much as possible to give you all the scoop on what’s ahead. To do that, I’ll be writing a dispatch covering every movie I’ve seen that day, which will run daily throughout most of the festival. That includes bigger movies you probably already know about, like Netflix’s Wake Up Dead Man and Frankenstein, along with hopefully some great new films you maybe weren’t aware of, like the creepy adaptation of the horror game The Exit 8.
I won’t be able to see everything, of course, but I’ll do my best to bring you the most interesting stuff — and you can keep up with everything right here.
Wake Up Dead Man adds a delightfully dark twist to Knives Out
Image: Netflix
When director Rian Johnson introduced the new Knives Out film on the third day of TIFF 2025, he exclaimed: “we’re going back to church.”
By that he meant that Wake Up Dead Man, the latest Benoit Blanc mystery, would harken back to the origins of the whodunit, and in particular the gothic vibes of Edgar Allan Poe. And now that I’ve seen it, I have to say that Johnson pulled it off: the new movie has a darker and more spiritual feel than its predecessors, and yet it’s still distinctly Knives Out, which is to say twisting and hilarious. I gasped a few times, as did the rest of audience, at the many reveals. I’ll have a full review in the coming days, but you can read my initial thoughts below.
Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice is as bleak as it is hilarious
At my second day at TIFF 2025, the longest line I saw wasn’t for a movie: it was for the Criterion Closet. The space is housed in a van so that it could make it up to Toronto, and honestly, it felt a little wrong to see the outside of it after watching everyone from Michael Cera to Hideo Kojima spend time in its cramped interior digging through Blu-Rays.
The line was long enough that I didn’t even bother trying to get inside, which is probably a good thing since I’d just be overwhelmed anyways. Besides, standing in that line would cut into my movie time, which is already a precious resource given there are so many things to check out.
The Exit 8 movie is even scarier than the game
Greetings from Toronto, Canada! I’m braving long lines and busy streets for the next week or so to attend the Toronto International Film Festival, better known as TIFF, and I’m planning to take you all along with me. Each day I’ll be publishing a dispatch covering my time at the festival, including thoughts on every single movie I watch. As of now, I have more than 20 different features on my schedule so, uh, expect a lot of thoughts.
TIFF is historically a nice preview of the fall and holiday film slate, featuring a mix of awards contenders, indie flicks, and blockbuster-adjacent movies from big-name directors. In recent years, that has included everything from The Substance, to The Boy and the Heron, to whatever Megalopolis is. One of my favorite TIFF memories is watching the world premiere of Glass Onion in 2022, and seeing The Verge make a guest appearance that I couldn’t talk about with anyone until it started streaming months later.
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