From exploding heads to car crash sex fetishes, director David Cronenberg is ever eager to freak out the audience. But Toronto was ready and willing this time around: Cronenberg's latest, Eastern Promises, has nabbed the audience award at the Toronto Film Fest.

The People's Choice Award grants a $15,000 cash prize to Cronenberg, whose Eastern Promises stars Viggo Mortensen as a mysterious Russian hitman and Naomi Watts as a housewife who crosses his path. The award bodes well for Eastern's future box office performance (which debuted to strong business this past weekend) and reflects the 85 percent Tomatometer it has with both critics and Rotten Tomatoes users. But what this will indicate for awards season remains to be seen. In 2005, Cronenberg was primed to have several best director nominations on his plate for A History of Violence but was curiously ignored by a majority of prestigious award panels.

While you're at it, check out our exclusive interview with Cronenberg and Mortensen.

Juno, starring Ellen Page as a high school student planning her immediate future with an unplanned pregnancy, won the runner-up People's Choice Award. Juno's positive buzz was palpable during Toronto and fun, whimsical comedies always draw attention to themselves amidst a festival's usual offerings of art flicks and dramas. The movie will hit theaters December 14 from Fox Searchlight.

The Prize of the International Critics went to Mexico's Rodrigo Plá, making his feature length debut with La Zona.  The film was chosen by a panel of critics who hail from all over the world, including France, Chile, and Canada, with the United States represented by L.A. Weekly's Scott Foundas.  The panel calls La Zona a film whose "subtle use of cinematographic codes (thriller, anticipation) [brings] to light a sadly realistic dichotomy: the gap in Mexican society and the frailty of human convictions."