Genre films to put their stamp on the Toronto International Film Festival

TORONTO -- The Toronto International Film Festival kicked off on Thursday but, to be honest, it feels like Venice and Telluride have already let some of the air out of its tires.

Must-see movies such as La La Land, Moonlight, Bleed for This, Arrival, The Bad Batch, The Bleeder and Nocturnal Animals have already made headlines elsewhere, as have earlier festival films like the Cannes trio American Honey, Loving and Elle, Sundance duo Manchester by the Sea and The Birth of a Nation, and even Snowden and Blair Witch at Comic-Con.

Speaking of the latter title, if anything provides a jolt of energy to this year's festival, it may be Colin Geddes' lauded Midnight Madness program.

I am, and forever will be, a proud genre guy, and this year’s Midnight lineup is especially promising. I'll put it this way: Nocturnal Animals is one of my most anticipated films of the year, as I loved Tom Ford’s A Single Man and will watch any movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Having said that, there is no way I’m missing the midnight premiere of Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett's Blair Witch, which will almost certainly be an unforgettable TIFF experience. Such is life at a film festival, where tough decisions are made every day. Sometimes you make a mistake at Sundance and end up seeing The Greasy Strangler instead of Under the Shadow. That’s just how it goes.

Blair Witch may be the marquee Midnight title, but there's plenty more where that came from. I'm looking forward to Ben Wheatley's Boston-set action-thriller Free Fire starring reigning Oscar winner Brie Larson and Cillian Murphy, as well as The Belko Experiment from director Greg McLean and producer James Gunn, and the Nicolas Cage-Willem Dafoe crime caper Dog Eat Dog from director Paul Schrader and screenwriter Matthew Wilder.

Midnight Madness isn't the only subsection of the festival offering up genre films, as there's also Walter Hill’s (re)Assignment starring Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver, the Blake Lively-Jason Clarke thriller All I See Is You and two new episodes of the cult favorite TV series Black Mirror, courtesy of its new distributor Netflix.

In addition to the plethora of genre titles, there's a handful of quality titles that haven't screened anywhere yet, such as Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut American Pastoral, J.A. Bayona's devastating adaptation of A Monster Calls, Disney's chess drama Queen of Katwe, Sony's solid Opening Night western The Magnificent Seven, George Nolfi’s buzzy martial arts epic Birth of the Dragon, the Chloe Moretz drama Brain on Fire and the coming-of-age movie The Edge of Seventeen with Hailee Steinfeld.

Toronto is about making new discoveries as much as seeing big stars on the big screen. Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt top the marquee for The Magnificent Seven, but it’s Martin Seinmuller you’ll end up Googling on the way home. The same may go for Madina Nalwanga and Lewis MacDougall, the young leads in TIFF titles Queen of Katwe and A Monster Calls, respectively.

Elsewhere, Jared Abrahamsson is on TIFF’s own Rising Stars list for his performance as a troubled hockey player in the Canadian feature Hello, Destroyer. Angela Sarafyan has HBO’s Westworld on the horizon, but first she’ll be seen as Oscar Isaac’s wife in The Promise, which co-stars Christian Bale. Festival goers will also get a chance to check out their favorite TV actresses in action between Gina Rodriguez’s heroic turn in Deepwater Horizon and Tatiana Maslany as the object of Dane DeHaan’s eye in Two Lovers and a Bear. The eclectic cast of The Bad Batch, led by rising star Suki Waterhouse, will be worth keeping an eye on, as will Moonlight stars Trevante Rhodes and Janelle Monae.

It’s not just stars who break out and make a name for themselves in Toronto, as plenty of producers will be keeping an eye on the Mo Brothers (Timo Tjahjanto and Kimo Stamboel), whose Headshot debuts at Midnight Madness; Kelly Fremon Craig, the writer-director of STX’s The Edge of Seventeen; Tramps filmmaker Adam Leon; and the directors of intriguing foreign-language films such as Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello) and Zoology (Ivan I. Tverdovsky).

There are also several interesting romantic pairings at TIFF, such as Ben Mendelssohn and Rooney Mara in Una, David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike in A United Kingdom, and Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga in Loving. With more than 300 movies screening over the next week, it's clear that the festival has something for everyone. So even if many of the high-profile movies feel "old" to some people, they may be new to you. Choose wisely, and please, for the love of God, don't scream "arrrgghh" during the piracy warning in front of every screening. We get it, thanks.