The Substance, a feminist horror pic where Demi Moore plays an aging Hollywood star who embraces a secret cloning procedure to save her career will open the Midnight Madness sidebar at the Toronto Film Festival with a North American premiere, organizers said Thursday.
The Cannes award winner from director Coralie Fargeat also stars Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid, and will hit theaters on Sept. 20.
The Midnight Madness section, which launched the career of Eli Roth with Cabin Fever and saw Sacha Baron Cohen arrive in a cart pulled by donkeys to screen Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, booked in all 10 genre movies with chills and thrills for this year’s 2024 lineup.
The program that has film buyers and Hollywood execs staying up after midnight plans world premieres for Thibault Emin’s fantasy pic Else, which stars Matthieu Sampeur and Edith Proust and imagines a disease that has those afflicted melting into their surroundings; and Andrew DeYoung’s feature directorial debut Friendship, an indie comedy starring Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd and Kate Mara.
Also getting a world bow in Toronto is Joseph Kahn’s creature feature Ick, which stars Brandon Routh and Mena Suvari and features a terrifying alien being, or the titular Ick, invading a small town (Kahn’s Bodied won TIFF’s Midnight Madness audience award in 2017); Japanese director Kenichi Ugana’s punk movie The Gesuidouz; and Indonesian director Timo Tjahjanto’s gory martial arts action film The Shadow Strays for Netflix.
The Midnight Madness sidebar also booked Canadian premieres for Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy’s Dead Mail after the crime thriller bowed at SXSW; and Rachel Kempf and Nick Toti’s found footage horror film It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This.
And there’s a North American premiere for Dead Talents Society, a paranormal comedy by Taiwanese director John Hsu; and an international bow for Yang Li’s sci-fi action pic Escape from the 21st Century, a genre film about three teenagers who time-travel by sneezing and which arrives in Toronto after a Chinese commercial release.
Toronto earlier announced this year’s festival will open with Ben Stiller’s comedy Nutcrackers, from director David Gordon Green. And Rebel Wilson’s The Deb, a musical comedy set in rural Australia, will close TIFF.
The 2024 Toronto Film Festival is set to run from Sept. 5-15.
