TIFF: 3 Horror-Adjacent Films We’re Keeping an Eye On

While TIFF’s Centrepiece section isn’t traditionally where horror fans go looking for scares, this year’s lineup features three genre titles that immediately caught our attention.

The biggest is Inherit from director Banjong Pisanthanakun, the filmmaker behind Shutter and co-director of The Medium. Starring Davika Hoorne, the film follows Woranart, a grandmother possessed by a demon, in what TIFF describes as a chilling psychological thriller. Considering Banjong’s track record, this is already one of our most anticipated genre premieres at the festival.

Another title we’ll be keeping a close eye on is Love Is a Monster from Neto Villalobos Brenes. Set in a dystopian world shaped by fear and inequality, the film stars Paulina García as a grandmother whose granddaughter’s kidnapping forces her into a series of impossible moral choices. It appears to lean more toward psychological thriller territory than outright horror, but the premise certainly has our attention.

Rounding out the trio is the hot The Surgeon from Roshan Sethi. Starring Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh, the film follows a kidnapped surgeon forced to perform one last operation in what TIFF describes as a “fun, pulse-pounding thriller.” Sethi is best known for dramas, so this one appears to fall closer to action-thriller than horror, but with Yeoh leading the cast, it’s easily one of the section’s most intriguing genre-adjacent selections.

Of the three, Inherit looks like the clear horror standout, while Love Is a Monster and The Surgeon round out a trio of genre films we’ll be watching closely when TIFF returns this September.