HELLIONS
VANGUARD D: Bruce McDonald. Canada. 82 min. Sep 17, 9:30 pm Winter Garden Sep 18, 4 pm Scotiabank 4. See tiff.net. Rating: NN
Having just found out she’s pregnant, small-town teenager Dora (Chloe Rose) is trapped in her home on Halloween night by pint-sized masked marauders bent on harvesting her unborn baby – which is gestating at an alarming rate.
McDonald’s second horror movie (after 2008’s Pontypool) has a playful spirit and an effectively otherworldly quality thanks to cinematographer Norayr Kasper’s use of infrared cameras, and Degrassi’s Rose goes all out as the panicked Dora.
But the thrills diminish very quickly as Pascal Trottier’s script runs out of ideas, collapsing into incoherence in the final reel.