It’s the final day of the After Dark Film Fest and after a hectic week of running around to screenings and contacting sources I would love to say that it’s a relief. But in reality I am going to miss it. It’s been an amazing festival.

On the agenda is the much-hyped Murder Party. But before heading off to the event I begin the process of an email interview with Alex Orr, the director of Blood Car. Email interviews are the lowest form of journalism, they’re extremely convenient but it’s like a blind man performing brain surgery. Messy.

My first round of communicating with Alex proves to be very unsuccessful as his first answer renders the remainder of my questions redundant. Anyway my second round of questions has been fired off and hopefully they’ll be a lot more accurate. The Blood Car DVD is being self-distributed by Fake Wood Wallpaper through TLA. If you have $17 buy it.

At the Bloor Cinema the evening kicks off with two animated shorts: Sweet Strangers and The Tragic Story of Nling. Both are brilliantly animated but Nling takes the cake with its unusual style. Director, Jeffery St. Jules, was on hand to explain the process, “This film was all printed on paper and cut out so every frame is actually a cut on paper, even though it’s live actors.”

Chris Sharp, who plays the Brown Knight in Murder Party and is one of the producers, presented the feature and provided the Q&A. “This movie is a little bit talkie, it’s like The Breakfast Club with chainsaws and hard drugs,” said Sharp.

The film suffered from over-hype and after a fantastic opening began to lose its drive. The premise is classic: a group of art students decides to murder someone in the name of art on Halloween and sends out a single invitation. A reclusive man on medication finds the invite and decides to attend. Anyone who has spent time with art majors will appreciate the way the film captures the group. The film is well shot and features some good effects, but it doesn’t build to its climax with enough urgency.

One of the highlights was an effect where a character has a chain saw ploughed through his head. After the screening Sharp’s Q&A revealed how they achieved this, “[Paul Goldblatt] did a prosthesis on [the character] and we kind of cut a curve around the chainsaw so it would fit nicely around his face. Then we did After Effects 2 to animate the revolving blades. It’s really a nice combination of the actor himself, special effects make up, and CG coming together magically [dramatically stated].”

The evening ended with the after party (or the Murder Party Party as festival programmer Todd Brown called it) at The Bovine. It was a smaller turnout then the opening party, probably because it was Thursday, but with the Bovine being a smaller venue it didn’t make much difference. Without a Canadian beer to call my own I ordered the first beer the bartender mentioned. It tasted like it’d been seasoned with a heavy dose of pepper. I wish I remembered the name so I could make sure not to order it again.

The third After Dark will be held next year and personally I can’t wait.