There's more than scares to surprise you in these boundary-pushing Canadian horror films

There's still time to scream...um...stream a movie before Halloween, but what you may not know is there are a number of new cliché-busting, critically successful Canadian horror flicks among your choices.

This year has seen the release of a series of well-reviewed Canadian horror films, some of which had to navigate pandemic-related production delays and digital-only festivals on top of the traditional challenges faced by Canadian filmmakers. 

Titles like The Retreat, Bloodthirsty and Brain Freeze all came out in 2021 to "fresh" scores on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.  If this is the first you're hearing about them, academics, critics and some of the filmmakers themselves aren't necessarily surprised. 

"Notoriously, Canadians don't watch Canadian film," said Emily Sanders, a PhD candidate in screen cultures and curatorial studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont.

According to a report published by the Canadian Media Producers Association, just three per cent of theatrical box office revenues in Canada came from Canadian films in 2020. That number has been between two and three per cent every year since at least 2010.

She said it can be more economic for Canadian films to release theatrically in the U.S.

"Often, what determines if Canadians see Canadian movies is if Americans see them," she said.

Director Pat Mills said the feeling among many Canadian filmmakers is that they're "under the underdog." 

"There's American indies [independent films] that are, like, the true underdog, and then there's us," he said. 

However he noted his latest film, The Retreat, has been a streaming success, especially on the platform Hulu in the U.S.

Edmonton-based film critic Sarah Clements said Canadian independent films can sometimes be missed by the general public at home after showings on the festival circuit — playing to cinephiles at events such as Montreal's Fantasia or Toronto's After Dark. 

"They sort of just disappear and go on video-on-demand, and you have to be searching through the video-on-demand catalogue and stumble on it," she said.

But for Clements, the quantity and quality of Canadian films, especially in the horror genre, has been impressive.

"I've watched more than I normally would," she said. "I can't recall if any of them from Canada have stood out to me as much as they have this year."