Vintage Violence is an absurdist crime thriller for phone addicts
The Verge
β’2026-09-15T12:00:00-04:00
π° What Happened
The Verge published a round-up of reviews from day five of the Toronto International Film Festival on 15 September 2026, led by Vintage Violence, the latest film from director Eugene Kotlyarenko. The film follows Carter, played by Cole Sprouse, a disgraced MrBeast-style influencer who finds a cache of vintage Levi's while livestreaming and, on a fan's suggestion from Izumi (Kiko Mizuhara), travels to Tokyo to sell the denim, where almost everyone is running a scam and the yakuza become involved, including an enforcer with a prosthetic middle finger. The reviewer describes it as a chaotic, bloody crime thriller that constantly displays what characters are doing on their phones alongside the main action, from texts and livestreams to whale sounds, an approach he found hard to follow at times but ultimately effective; there is no trailer or theatrical date yet. The same piece found that a 4K director's cut rerelease of Ken Russell's The Devils, originally released in 1971 and rated NC-17, still lands with force, and that Marie Kreutzer's Gentle Monster, starring Lea Seydoux as a pianist whose husband's devices are seized in a CSAM investigation, is a difficult but excellent watch.
π The Backstory
Kotlyarenko previously made Spree in 2020, starring Joe Keery as a rideshare driver who livestreams his own murders, so Vintage Violence continues his interest in how online performance shapes behaviour. Films that build phone screens into their visual grammar have appeared in horror and genre cinema for years, and TIFF has become a key launch point for both festival darlings and streaming acquisitions, which is why a Verge entertainment editor was reviewing several films a day. The Devils has a long history as a censored and contested cult classic, which makes a 4K director's cut rerelease a notable event for repertory cinema. Gentle Monster draws on a subject matter that makes it deliberately uncomfortable viewing.
π― Why It Matters
The review is useful for audiences deciding what to watch once these films reach cinemas or streaming, with dates of 16 October for The Devils and 30 October in theatres and 18 November on Netflix for Gentle Monster. Vintage Violence is more of an open question, since it has no distribution date yet, and the piece suggests the film's phone-screen conceit will divide viewers even as it finds a following. More broadly, the round-up illustrates how festival coverage functions as early signal for what screens and platforms might pick up. For readers interested in how cinema represents life with phones, Vintage Violence is a notable experiment to watch for.
The Verge published a round-up of reviews from day five of the Toronto International Film Festival on 15 September 2026, led by Vintage Violence, the latest film from director Eugene Kotlyarenko. The film follows Carter, played by Cole Sprouse, a disgraced MrBeast-style influencer who finds a cache of vintage Levi's while livestreaming and, on a fan's suggestion from Izumi (Kiko Mizuhara), travels to Tokyo to sell the denim, where almost everyone is running a scam and the yakuza become involved, including an enforcer with a prosthetic middle finger. The reviewer describes it as a chaotic, bloody crime thriller that constantly displays what characters are doing on their phones alongside the main action, from texts and livestreams to whale sounds, an approach he found hard to follow at times but ultimately effective; there is no trailer or theatrical date yet. The same piece found that a 4K director's cut rerelease of Ken Russell's The Devils, originally released in 1971 and rated NC-17, still lands with force, and that Marie Kreutzer's Gentle Monster, starring Lea Seydoux as a pianist whose husband's devices are seized in a CSAM investigation, is a difficult but excellent watch.
Kotlyarenko previously made Spree in 2020, starring Joe Keery as a rideshare driver who livestreams his own murders, so Vintage Violence continues his interest in how online performance shapes behaviour. Films that build phone screens into their visual grammar have appeared in horror and genre cinema for years, and TIFF has become a key launch point for both festival darlings and streaming acquisitions, which is why a Verge entertainment editor was reviewing several films a day. The Devils has a long history as a censored and contested cult classic, which makes a 4K director's cut rerelease a notable event for repertory cinema. Gentle Monster draws on a subject matter that makes it deliberately uncomfortable viewing.
The review is useful for audiences deciding what to watch once these films reach cinemas or streaming, with dates of 16 October for The Devils and 30 October in theatres and 18 November on Netflix for Gentle Monster. Vintage Violence is more of an open question, since it has no distribution date yet, and the piece suggests the film's phone-screen conceit will divide viewers even as it finds a following. More broadly, the round-up illustrates how festival coverage functions as early signal for what screens and platforms might pick up. For readers interested in how cinema represents life with phones, Vintage Violence is a notable experiment to watch for.