Eli Roth promotes the movie Aftershock during the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto on Sept. 10, 2012.CHRIS YOUNG/The Canadian Press
By the time most celebrities are done striding down red carpets, posing at parties and chatting up press at the Toronto International Film Festival, there isn't much time left for, well, actual movies – and horror buff Eli Roth can't stand it.
"All I want to do in my free time is see movies," Roth said.
"It's such a tease. It's torture, actually, to know that these movies are playing in theatres and you can't go see them."
The 40-year-old multihyphenate actor, director, producer and writer – he directed the Hostel horror films and starred in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds – is in town primarily to promote his new film Aftershock.
Directed by Nicolas Lopez, the gory, grisly disaster flick follows six middle-class Americans – including Roth, who also co-wrote the film – partying it up through Chile before a devastating earthquake initiates a terrifying chaos, exacerbated by rampaging criminals sprung from the jail.
Though he's had a full publicity plate, Roth has filled pretty much every spare moment with screenings.
He rushed out to an early morning showing of Harmony Korine's edgy Spring Breakers, then dashed off to a screening of the Snoop Lion documentary Reincarnated. He also found time to squeeze in Paul Thomas Anderson's buzzed-about drama The Master and Brian De Palma's erotic thriller Passion.
But he was still left wanting more.
"I'm on this weird festival high where you don't know what day it is, you don't know what time it is," Roth said with a laugh.
"It kills me that there's these movies that I want to see – and I can see them in this beautiful theatre on this big screen – [but] I can't see them. It's torturing me, actually."