By John Corrado

The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here.

Director Nick Toti’s It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This is a found footage horror movie that definitely works best as a midnight experience shared with an audience. The filmmaker has stated that he has no intention to ever release it online, and just tour it around to different film festivals instead, and that is somewhat understandable.

The film itself is okay as a sort of modern (if decidedly less convincing) riff on The Blair Witch Project, and I’m not sure how it would play at home, outside of a festival setting. But what Toti does with it as a live experience (including leading a meditation session before the screening and a seance afterwards) helps to elevate the material. As such, it’s a bit hard to fully judge the film itself, but the the Midnight Madness screening was wild.

Nick and his partner Rachel Kempf are massive horror fans, who buy an old duplex in their Missouri neighborhood to shoot their low-budget horror movie. The house is abandoned, filled with debris from squatters, and has bizarre, satanic messages scrawled on the walls. They soon notice strangers standing outside staring at the house, as if paralyzed in time.

The film unfolds through a series of home videos, including archival footage from the seances that Rachel likes to hold with her gay best friend Christian, which Nick started recording for a potential video project. The filmmakers do take us into their lives, opening themselves up in a somewhat vulnerable way that adds a documentary feel to the film, even if their performances don’t always quite sell the conceit that this is really happening.

The premise can feel a bit stretched out, even at eighty minutes (we didn’t need a gross sequence of the director vomiting into the toilet that goes on uncomfortably long). But Toti does deliver some solid jump scares, and a few sequences that are impactful. It feels like a cult movie in the making (if it did ever get released outside of theatrical screenings, I imagine it would be on physical media made to be passed around among friends). At its best, It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This offers a tense, surprisingly funny, and genuinely unnerving theatrical experience. 

Film Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)

Public Screenings: Friday, September 13th, 11:59 PM at Royal Alexandra Theatre; Saturday, September 14th, 8:45 PM at Scotiabank Theatre; Sunday, September 15th, 4:15 PM at Scotiabank