by SARAH ROWLAND | More Fantasia Festival: Mind Game, Week One » Firecracker

Might have been the whiskey talking on that fateful night in Calgary, or it could have been the thin prairie air. Whatever forces were at work, it was enough for Paul Fox, a Toronto-based filmmaker, and Wil Zmak an L.A.-based screenwriter, to engage in such a passionate discussion about the sorry state of contemporary horror cinema that after several diatribes and countless shots of distilled spirits, the virtual strangers decided to make a film together.

Three years later, we have The Dark Hours, a straight-up chill seeker that beat out the latest from the likes of Italian macabre maestro Dario Argento and Japanese gore guru Takashi Miike for the audience award at Scotland’s 2005 Dead by Dawn horror film fest.

“It seems like such a long time ago now,” says Fox about his film’s insemination. “But I do remember drinking a lot that night. Then again, it doesn’t take much for me to get going on horror films. It’s a pretty much a go-to place when I drink.”

According to Fox, his alcohol induced kinship with Zmak came just in the nick of time. “At that point, I had sort of given up on even watching horrors,” he says. “They had just gotten into this formulaic rut of teenagers running around on suburban lawns with knife-wielding psychos chasing them. The movies I loved growing up—Rosemary’s Baby being my favourite—didn’t pander. They were smarter, something that has sort of fallen by the wayside. I guess it can be said of any genre where all movies seem to be dumber versions of their former selves. But I think horror films have been struck pretty hard. They all seem to be made for the lowest common denominator.”

Well, he might not be the new Polanski yet, but Fox has more than accomplished what he and Zmak set out to do. Partly inspired by a documentary on Bellevue Hospital, The Dark Hours follows Samantha, (Kate Greenhouse), a psychiatrist who treats violent sex offenders at a sterile nut house for the criminally insane. After losing it on one of her patients, she decides to take some much-needed time off and hang out with her husband (Gordon Currie) and her sister (Iris Graham) at the family cottage. But before she gets a chance to chill with some hot cocoa, a former patient (Aidan Devine) and his sidekick (Dov Tiefenbach) break in and force them to participate in his brand of psychological tests at gun point. In a nightmarish game of truth or dare, we find out that the good doctor has questionable ethics and her cabin-mates have dirty little secrets of their own.

It’s stark, intelligent and Fox gets some great performances from his Cancon cast, most notably Tiefenbach (Flower & Garnet, The Delicate Art of Parking). With a nose like a concord, a Crispin Glover-inspired voice and charisma coming out of his ass, he steals almost every scene he’s in.

“It’s hard to put your finger on why he’s so incredible to watch,” Fox says about Tiefenbach. “He’s like one of those older-school actors that you’ll spot here and there throughout their careers. So even if you can’t remember his name, whenever you see him, you’re always like, ‘Oh, that guy.’”

You can check out “That Guy” when Fox presents The Dark Hours at this year’s Fantasia festival.

The Dark Hours screens at the Hall Theatre on Thursday, July 14 at 9:45 p.m.

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