The Demons
(Canada)

The horrors in this stunning feature from Philippe Lesage are mostly (mostly…) implicit, largely being pulled from the air around Félix, a 10-year-old haunted like any sensitive kid by his dawning apprehension of a world much less secure than he thought.

It’s early summer in a deceptively sunny Montreal suburb, probably in the late ’80s (period is more of a dimension here, like an unreliable memory), with Lesage’s Steadicam gliding inquisitively through the lives of Félix’s friends, usually with a hint of something sinister just out of frame, as if Robert Altman had attempted a Québécois rehash of It Follows.

If The Demons, easily one of the best Canadian films of the year, doesn’t get a proper opening in Vancouver, then I fucking give up.

Thursday (December 3); Friday (December 4).