Vancouver’s MachineFair make their Toronto debut with Biographies of the Dead and Dying, a story that’s as much about writing and creativity as it is about death and mortality. Andrew Templeton’s script tiptoes coyly along the gothic genre line to explore the beauty and agony of the creative process, while Amiel Gladstone’s direction coaxes the perfect atmospheric tone from the would-be ghost story.

Aviva Armour-Ostroff plays Alice, a one-hit chick lit author who’s rented an allegedly haunted house on the coast of Vancouver Island in the hopes of finding inspiration for her next novel. Alice is tormented by her...