From what I gather, the Toronto International Film Festival doesn't traffic much in genres like horror or science fiction unless it's a film about French-speaking chainsaw-wielding maniacs, or perhaps a quiet coming-of-age story about a gay zombie. What few genre flicks there are at TIFF are programmed in the "Midnight Madness" section, which is where I saw The Burrowers, which happens to be both a Western and a horror movie.

Now, first, the title is great because it makes you think that the film is actually The Borrowers and that you're just hearing the Canadian pronunciation. But no, it's The Burrowers, about people or things that burrow. This burrowing is accomplished in the Dakota Territory in 1879, where one family has been slaughtered and another gone missing. A search party is sent, including a young man who was fixin' to propose marriage to one of the missing young ladies. It is assumed that the Indians are responsible, and there is much consternation over what those savages might be doing to the poor girls at this very moment.

The Indians are not to blame, of course -- it's the Burrowers. I'm not going to tell you what they are. Suffice it to say that the film, a very accomplished effort by up-and-coming horror master J.T. Petty (watch his S&Man if you can find it), is suitably creepy and exhilarating once it gets past its slow start. It's also an impressive mixture of the Western and horror genres, something that has rarely been done at all, let alone this well.

The Burrowers is going straight to DVD next spring, a regrettable decision on the part of Lionsgate because it robs viewers of the chance to see the bleak prairie vistas and terrifying nighttime attacks on the big screen. I guess if it's not a remake of a Japanese film about angry ghosts, or a slasher movie about text-messaging American teenagers being massacred, it's not commercially viable at the multiplex. So it goes.

A film that is being released theatrically but that surely will not make any money is Synecdoche, New York. It's the directorial debut from Charlie Kaufman, who wrote Being John Malkovich and Adaptation and has been rightfully hailed as a master of surreal, self-referential comedy. While Synecdoche, New York is a terrifically inventive and bizarre movie, it's also well nigh unmarketable. First there's that word in the title, which is hard to pronounce (it's sin-ECK-duh-kee) and which is unfamiliar to most people (it's a figure of speech where a part of something is used to refer to the whole thing -- e.g., "wheels" to mean "car" -- or vice versa). And then there's its subject matter: a man, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, stages a massive play about his entire life, with actors playing him, and other actors playing the actors playing him, and so forth.

I know it won't be for everyone, but I find the film's strange humor and abundant what-the-hell? moments to be hilarious and invigorating. Things happen that don't make any sense, like some characters aging while others don't. Time moves randomly -- it's the first day of fall in one scene, then Halloween later in the same scene. A woman says she has twins named Robert, Daniel, and Allen. Someone buys a house that is currently on fire, and that continues to be on fire all the time without ever being consumed.

But the movie is also melancholy and wistful, like Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind, with ruminations on death and loss and the meaning of life. It's the first movie I've seen this year that I wanted to re-watch as soon as it was over, partly to remind myself of some of the brilliant one-liners, and partly just to wallow in the weirdness some more.

My last screening at the film festival was another one coming soon to a theater near you: Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna. This is an epic drama, almost three hours long, about four African-American soldiers in World War II who are separated from their unit behind enemy lines. This is beyond the scope of anything Lee has done before, and he rises to the challenge remarkably well, with battle scenes nearly as visceral and jolting as those in Saving Private Ryan and a multi-layered story involving the U.S. Army, the Nazis, and the Italian resistance movement.

The film's only significant flaw is its framing story, set in 1983, which is possibly unnecessary and definitely corny. When we're in the thick of it, back in 1944, the film is smooth and mature, mostly free of the bombast that has characterized so many of Lee's other films. Even when the focus is what it's like for blacks to give their lives in defense of a country that subjugates them, Lee's tone is never preachy or off-putting. This might be the most accessible and accomplished work of his career, and I'm glad to see it.

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