Full Review
Toronto International Film Festivalby Jesse Wente
Occasionally, movies come along that surpass their limitations with aplomb. End of the Line is one such movie. Shot in a few short days on a silly-string budget, End of the Line is the latest Canadian film to knife its way into the horror-cinema landscape. Montreal director Maurice Devereaux's assured new feature could forever change how you ride the subway.
Karen (Ilona Elkin), a young psychiatric nurse, is having a terrible day. Her hospital is overrun with new patients, many of whom rant incoherently. Viviane (Christine Lan), a recently released patient, leapt in front of an oncoming subway train the day before. Looking through the drawings Viviane left behind, Karen sees demons crawling on the hospital walls, their eyes glowing. Is this an image from a disturbed mind, or a portrait of things to come?
As Karen heads home on the subway, her day goes from bad to horrifying. She and the other passengers she meets have unknowingly entered an underground world of cultists and monsters. It is a time of reckoning for these commuters, who are forced to confront Judgment Day between stops. They will have to ask themselves whom they can trust and how far they're willing to go in order to survive.
End of the Line jolts you from the opening scene to its twisted ending. An original and ambitious take on the survival horror genre, it plays on modern paranoia, recasting religious extremism through the lens of slasher and zombie movies. The menacing atmosphere is aided by deft art direction and creative special effects that belie the film's minuscule budget. Reminiscent of the early works of such filmmakers as David Cronenberg, John Carpenter and Wes Craven, End of the Line shows the kind of innovation and vision that suggests bigger things are to come from writer-director Devereaux.
Oh, and you might want to take a cab home after the screening.
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