Toronto film festival: It’s Get Out meets the viral Shitty Media Men list in this hugely entertaining mix of dark comedy and stalker thriller with a brilliant alternating turn from Taron Egerton

Everyone knows an Adam. He’s not like those other guys, the ones who won’t take no for an answer and speak lasciviously about women to their mates. He’s doing the work, listening to and uplifting female voices, working at an all-female gallery while being constantly aware of his cis white male privilege. He has a Mubi tote bag, reads Edna O’Brien’s Country Girl in Hackney cafes, has a poster of Cléo from 5 to 7 in his apartment and has even named his dog after his favourite Haim sister. He is … a nice guy.

In first-time writer-director Jonathan Schey’s canny debut Everybody Wants to Fuck Me, Adam is also a fraud.

Everybody Wants to Fuck Me is premiering at the Toronto film festival and will be released at a later date

This year’s festival offers an unusual Patricia Highsmith thriller, an adaptation of a hit stage show, a harrowing prison drama and a new way into the Rocky franchise

Defining Toronto’s place within the fall festival season has become a little harder in recent years. As fewer studios and film-makers want to brave the risks that come attached to premiering on such a stage (last year’s best picture winner One Battle After Another skipped festivals entirely and went straight to cinema), those that do tend to prefer Venice, Telluride and, especially this year, New York.

Last year’s biggest Toronto breakout was Obsession, a micro-budget, up-for-sale horror that played as part of the midnight madness strand, and while that film is now being pushed as an awards contender, it’s not what crowds and pundits typically expect from the starry, prestige-first festival. Is it best viewed now as a rough-and-ready genre hub or maybe a sales market, where perhaps we can still expect some Oscar contenders to be unveiled. It can make figuring out what to see and what to avoid a little harder – but here are some films to keep an eye on over the next week or so.

The 51st edition of the Canadian festival will also feature world premieres starring Taron Egerton, Amanda Seyfried and Chase Infiniti

World premieres of films led by Helen Mirren, Seth Rogen and Chris Rock lead the lineup for this year’s Toronto film festival.

The September festival, taking place after the Venice film festival, has previously seen the premieres of Oscar-winning movies such as Green Book, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Still Alice, Dallas Buyers Club and Silver Linings Playbook.

This empty-calorie Netflix flick, about a steely woman being hunted by a scary local in the Australian wilderness, is shot like a Mountain Dew commercial

Charlize Theron plays the latest in a long line of movie characters to confront the harsh realities of the Australian landscape, in Netflix’s empty-calorie action drama Apex – only to discover that the real terror lies in the locals. Just ask John Grant from Wake in Fright or the backpackers in Wolf Creek. In Apex, director Baltasar Kormákur depicts neither the land nor the locals in particularly interesting ways, bathing the former in the glossy, sun-lit sheen of a Mountain Dew commercial and serving up a villain barely distinguishable from the usual backwoods bogeymen.

The film opens by firmly establishing its popcorn survival movie credentials, leaning into “pretty but dangerous” imagery as Theron’s protagonist, Sasha, wakes up in a tent dangling off the side of a mountain. Her unfazed reaction tells us that this vertigo-inducing choice of accommodation was intentional. In the tent, next to her, is hubby and fellow adrenaline fiend, Tommy (Eric Bana), though he’s not long for this world, soon to tumble like a ragdoll into the great beyond.