TIFF 2026: The latest movie reviews from Toronto

The Toronto International Film Festival is a place to go to see the future of film, but this year it also provided a glimpse at what is coming very soon in the realm of streaming. Four different streamers — Peacock, Netflix, Amazon, and AMC — all premiered early looks at upcoming horror-adjacent series that are dropping very soon. And by doing it at TIFF, they showed just how important the month of October has become in the realm of streaming.

Perhaps the most high-profile is Carrie, which is coming to Prime Video. An adaptation of the classic Stephen King novel, which has already been turned into no fewer than three feature films, this version of Carrie is notable in particular because of who is helming it. Mike Flanagan has done a handful of King adaptations in the past — including Doctor Sleep and The Life of Chuck — but the director is perhaps best-known for his work on limited series for Netflix. That includes the likes of The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, and The Fall of the House of Usher. Those series came out on a near-annual basis between 2018 and 2023, making Flanagan’s particular blend of dramatic horror a staple of Netflix in October.

There are a lot of movies that have tried to seamlessly integrate modern tech — text messages, livestreams, etc. — into their storytelling. Some of the most novel attempts have been in the genre space, like the Twitch-style horror flick Deadstream. But the most chaotic to date might just be Vintage Violence, an absurd crime thriller with lots of blood, jokes, and screentime.

I was able to catch Vintage Violence, the latest from director Eugene Kotlyarenko, on my fifth day at the Toronto International Film Festival. Kotlyarenko has previously explored our hyper-connected culture in 2020’s Spree, a movie in which Stranger Things’ Joe Keery plays a rideshare driver who starts murdering passengers while livestreaming the crimes. But Vintage Violence takes things a step further by trying to replicate what it’s like to constantly be on your phone as the movie plays out. It’s a lot to take in, but I really enjoyed it. Unfortunately there isn’t a trailer yet to give you a better sense of how things work onscreen, but I’ll make sure to share it when they do release one.

It makes sense that Musk is a long film. The latest from Alex Gibney, who has previously directed documentaries about Theranos and Steve Jobs, is an impressively thorough retelling of the story of Elon Musk, from his early days as a dot-com millionaire to “taking a wood chipper” to vital US government departments. In order to understand Musk’s rise to power, you need to know the whole story. Musk tells it compellingly and convincingly, but doesn’t offer much in the way of revelations if you’re aware of Musk’s catastrophic influence on the world. For everyone else, a demanding runtime just shy of four hours might prove too much of a barrier to being convinced.

The film opens with shots of space and a voiceover of Musk detailing some of his sci-fi ambitions. From there, it’s a fairly chronological narrative of how we got to this point. The first section of the film reveals how Musk’s mythology was built, while also steadily seeding doubts that he’s the Tony Stark–style tycoon that many believe him to be. It starts off with the basic details, like when Musk was ousted as CEO from PayPal or how he convinced the world he founded Tesla, a company that existed before he was involved. The film juxtaposes his many bombastic claims about autonomous vehicles with visceral footage of a deadly crash involving a Tesla on autopilot. It drops in poignant interviews, like when former MAGA influencer Ashley St Clair, mother to one of Musk’s many children, declares in a terrified voice: “Elon is a nuke.”

Marvel’s mishandling of its Blade reboot will likely go down as one of the studio’s biggest mistakes. There was a great actor in place to play the vampire hunter (Mahershala Ali), and a promising director set to take over the reins (Bassam Tariq). In retrospect, though, the disappointing demise of Blade might not be such a bad thing, because Tariq and Ali have collaborated on something much more interesting than a superhero reboot: the powerful hitman thriller Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.

That was one of five movies I was able to cram into a very hectic third day at the Toronto International Film Festival (you can see my previous reports here and here), and it was one of those days that drives home why events like TIFF can be so special. Each film I saw was drastically different from the last — there was everything from a drama about drifting cars to a throwback horror flick based on a famous Japanese ghost story — which was a great reminder that there are still plenty of new ideas left in the world of film.

Due to a scheduling mishap, I was only able to check out two movies on my second day at the Toronto International Film Festival — but I did manage to get an early look at and some fascinating details on one of my most anticipated films this year.

Even if you don’t know the name Laika, you probably know the studio’s work; it’s the animation house behind stop-motion hits like ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, and Kubo and the Two Strings. Over the years Laika’s films have steadily gotten more impressive on both a technical and artistic level. Which brings us to the incredible-looking Wildwood, hitting theaters next month. If you’re unfamiliar, here’s a look:

Hello once again from Toronto, where for a week every year I watch far too many movies and tell you all about them. The festival, better known as TIFF, is always a great preview of the months ahead in film, with a nice mix of mainstream fare, awards contenders, indie surprises, and genre flicks destined to be cult classics. The streamers also love to make their presence felt here, previewing some of their most anticipated projects. Last year, for instance, Netflix showed off both Guillermo del Toro’s long-awaited Frankenstein as well as the third Knives Out movie, and I was also able to watch everything from the terrifying video game adaptation Exit 8 to Park-Chan wook’s dark satire No Other Choice.

This year looks similarly promising. There are new films from directors like Takashi Miike, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, and Werner Herzog, and very intriguing features including a four-hour-long documentary on Elon Musk. There are also previews of a surprising number of Halloween-adjacent streaming series in the form of Netflix’s Below, Peacock’s Crystal Lake, and Amazon’s Carrie. I’m aiming to see just shy of 30 films and series over the next week or so, and, just like last year, I’ll be writing daily dispatches covering every single thing I see with a brief review.