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How the Media Industry Keeps Losing the Future – The New York Times

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If the career of Roger Fidler has any meaning, it is this: Sometimes, you can see the future coming but get trampled by it anyway.

Thirty years ago, Mr. Fidler was a media executive pushing a reassuring vision of the future of newspapers. The digital revolution would liberate news from printing presses, giving people portable devices that kept them informed all day long. Some stories would be enhanced by video, others by sound and animation. Readers could share articles, driving engagement across diverse communities.

All that has come to pass, more or less. Everyone is online all the time, and just about everyone seems interested, if not obsessed, by national and world happenings. But the traditional media that Mr. Fidler was championing do not receive much benefit. After decades of decline, their collapse seems to be accelerating.

Every day brings bad news. Sometimes it is about recently formed digital enterprises, sometimes venerable publications whose history stretches back more than a century.

Cutbacks were just announced at Law360, The Intercept and the youth-oriented video site NowThis, which laid off half its staff. The tech news site Engadget, which comprehensively tracks tech layoffs, laid off its top editors and other staff members. Condé Nast and Time are shedding employees. The continued existence of Vice Media, once valued at $5.7 billion, and Sports Illustrated, in another era the most influential sports publication, is uncertain. The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post eliminated hundreds of journalists between them. One out of four newspapers that existed in 2005 no longer does.

The slow crash of newspapers and magazines would be of limited interest save for one thing: Traditional media had at its core the exalted and difficult mission of communicating information about the world. From investigative reports on government to coverage of local politicians, the news served to make all the institutions and individuals covered a bit more transparent and, possibly, more honest.

The advice columns, movie reviews, recipes, stock data, weather report and just about everything else in newspapers moved easily online — except the news itself. Local and regional coverage had a hard time establishing itself as a paying proposition.

Now there are signs that the whole concept of “news” is fading. Asked where they get their local news, nearly as many respondents to a Gallup poll said social media as mentioned newspapers and magazines. A recent attempt to give people free subscriptions to their local papers in Pennsylvania as part of an academic study drew almost no takers.

“Soon after the printing press emerged in the 15th century, the scriptoriums for copying manuscripts in monasteries rapidly began shutting down,” said Mr. Fidler, now 81 and living in retirement in Santa Fe, N.M. “I’m not very optimistic about the survival of the majority of newspapers in the United States.”

Decline and flail

The decline of the news media has been paralleled by the fracturing of American society, which is now as angry and divided as it’s been since the height of the Vietnam War and civil rights protests more than a half-century ago. As the media fell, the noise level rose.

Perhaps it could have been different. Contrary to the myth that all the newspaper magnates of the 1980s and 1990s thought the good times would last forever, quite a few saw trouble lurking in the far distance.

Mr. Fidler spent 21 years at Knight Ridder, a newspaper chain that had important metro dailies in cities like Miami and San Jose, Calif. One early project was Viewtron, an effort to put terminals into people’s homes that would deliver news, shopping and chat. It delivered too little and cost too much. In 1986, Viewtron was shut down.

What Mr. Fidler took away from Viewtron’s failure was that newspaper readers needed something that looked like a newspaper and that didn’t pinch them in the wallet. He helped develop technology for lightweight tablets that would use flat-panel displays that were low cost but clear and bright with a relatively long battery life.

Such displays did not exist in the early 1990s but were promised by the end of the decade. The newspaper would be transmitted through high-speed digital telephone networks or direct broadcast satellite transmissions. “I think this will be the salvation for the traditional serious newspapers,” Thomas Winship, a longtime editor of The Boston Globe, told The New York Times in a 1992 profile of Mr. Fidler.

While at least some publishers were convinced, the tablets never came to save newspapers. One problem was there was no consensus on a software standard. Tablets did not really become viable until Apple introduced the iPad in 2010. But the real problem for the news business was the emergence of a devastating and unforeseen competitor: the internet.

“I was too narrowly focused,” Mr. Fidler conceded.

The internet would first create an alternative to printed newspapers and magazines, then become a competitor, and finally annihilate many of them. “I didn’t consider all the possible cross impacts of emerging technologies that would lead to Craigslist, alternative news sites, social media and other products that would greatly diminish newspaper circulation and advertising revenue,” Mr. Fidler said.

Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web in 1989 as a tool for collaborating and for sharing information. Being amorphous and infinitely flexible, it allowed for slow adapters and fast adapters at the same time, which circumvented the sort of hand-holding for readers that Mr. Fidler believed necessary. Newspapers lost their classified ads to the internet almost immediately. The display ads lingered, but Google and Facebook, and later Amazon, took over that market.

The web, by essentially allowing every voice to be heard at the same volume, encouraged publishers to join the party. Newspapers and magazines simply gave away what they had charged for in physical form. They were pushed by Silicon Valley, which needed quality content to keep people online and using its technology.

“Publishers got this mistaken belief that content is like a commodity and should be available everywhere for free,” Mr. Fidler said. It took years to institute paywalls, by which point many publications were fatally weakened.

The good old days weren’t that good

For all the gloom that the media is wallowing in about the media, the situation is contradictory.

Reliable local reporting in many places is sparse or nonexistent. But there is also a much wider variety of foreign, national and cultural news available online than previous generations could get in print. For all the celebration of the old days, if you were in a city with a mediocre newspaper — and there were many — access to quality journalism was difficult.

“Basically, the world has been opened up to us. There’s so much good journalism out there,” said David Mindich, a journalism professor at the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University. “If you had said to me 20 years ago, ‘I see a generation listening to long-form audio shows,’ I would have said: ‘Attention spans are getting shorter. I don’t think that’s going to happen.’ But it did.”

Most long-form audio shows, even at their best, are not news in the way, say, a zoning commission report is news. The erosion of the idea of news can be seen even more vividly in the magazine field. Where the goal was to inform, now it is to entertain.

“Time magazine just selected Taylor Swift as the person of the year,” said Samir Husni, a longtime magazine analyst. “It never selected Elvis or the Beatles. She was the first entertainer. We’re becoming more about marketing in journalism than truth in journalism because we’re depending on the customer to pay the price rather than advertising.”

This is how digital has changed journalism, he said: “The thing now is to make everybody happy. But that was never the role of journalism, making people happy.”

Marc Benioff, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who bought the struggling Time in 2018 with his wife, Lynne, viewed the selection of Ms. Swift differently: “Best selling issue of all time!” (In recent years, at least.) A few weeks after the Swift issue appeared, Time’s union said 15 percent of the magazine’s unionized editorial staff got the ax.

That was more of a strategic move than a sign of distress, Mr. Benioff said.

“If you’re going to make these media businesses work, you have to shift the product mix, which also means you have to shift the employee mix,” he texted. The paywall, put in place in 2011, was dropped last year. As a brand, Time needs the widest exposure possible.

Two years ago, Mr. Benioff told Axios that Time’s revenue would be up 30 percent in 2022 to $200 million. That might have been aspirational. “Revenue in 2024 should hit $200 million, a new high,” he says now. “We’re even going to make money.”

Other publications are trying to take the profit motive out of journalism.

Nonprofit news ventures tend to be small, low profile and unevenly distributed across regions. But there are many signs of growth. The number of outfits serving communities of color — never very well served by traditional publications — has doubled in the past five years, according to the Institute for Nonprofit News.

Readers generally respond, too.

“People talk about nonprofit reporting in their communities like it’s a normal part of the news ecosystem, not like it’s some outside force,” said Magda Konieczna, author of “Journalism Without Profit: Making News When the Market Fails.” In some places, the effect is striking. “Philadelphia is now a news jungle rather than a news desert.”

Ms. Konieczna teaches at Concordia University in Montreal. A few weeks ago, a Canadian news giant, Bell Media, announced that it was cutting hundreds of jobs and ending many of its television newscasts. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the decision was “eroding our very democracy.”

“My neighbors read The New Yorker but don’t know where to find local news, or why they would want to, in large part because it doesn’t really exist,” Ms. Konieczna said. “This is the dystopian future.”

The New Yorker, as it happened, employed A.J. Liebling, the greatest press critic of the postwar years. He called himself an optimist despite seeing a downhill march ever since he became a reporter in 1925.

“The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role is to make money,” he wrote. The more it did the latter, he argued, the less it bothered with the former.

There was no golden age, but Roger Fidler is still inconsolable. He long ago outlasted Knight Ridder, which was sold to McClatchy, another chain, in 2006. McClatchy declared bankruptcy in 2020. He spends a couple of hours each day reading the news in the printed edition of a community newspaper and the digital editions of national and regional newspapers. It is a lot, and yet not enough.

“Social media and its comments overwhelmed us,” he said. “We’re flooded with information because everybody’s a journalist. Everyone thinks they have the truth. Everyone certainly has an opinion. It’s discouraging to see how it’s gone.”

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Bayo Onanuga battles yet another media – Punch Newspapers

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Bayo Onanuga battles yet another media  Punch Newspapers

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Blood In The Snow Film Festival Celebrates 13 Years!

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Blood in the Snow FILM FESTIVAL

Celebrates

13 YEARS

Be Afraid.  Be Very Afraid”

Toronto, on – Blood in the Snow Film Festival (BITS), a unique and imaginative showcase of contemporary Canadian genre films are pleased to announce the popular Festival is back for its 13th exciting year.  The highly anticipated Horror Film festival presented by Super Channel runs November 18th– 23rd at Toronto’s Isabel Bader Theatre  The successful, long running festival takes on many different faces this year that include Scary, Action Horror, Horror Comedy, Sci-Fi and Thrillers.  Festival goers will be kept on the edge of their seats with this year’s powerful line-up.

Blood in the Snow Festival begins with the return of alumni (Wolf Cop) Lowell Deans action horror feature Dark Match featuring wrestling veteran Chris Jericho followed by the mysterious Hunting Mathew Nichols. The unexpected thrills continue with Blood in the Snow World Premiere of Pins and Needles and the Fantasia Best First Feature Award winner, Self Driver.  The festival ends this year on a fun note with the Toronto Premiere of Scared Sh*tless (featuring Kids in the Halls Mark McKinney).  Other titles include the horror anthology series Creepy Bits and Zoom call shock of Invited by Blood in the Snow alumni Navin Ramaswaran (Poor Agnes). The festival will also include five feature length short film programs including the festivals comedy horror program Funny Frights and Unusual Sights and the highly anticipated Dark Visions program, part of opening night festivities.  Blood in the Snow Film Festival Director and Founder, Kelly Michael Stewart anticipates this year’s festival to be its strongest.  This was the first time in our 13 year history, all our programmers agreed on the exact same eight feature programs we have selected.”

Below is this year’s horror fest’s exciting lineup of features and shorts scheduled to screen, in-person at the Isabel Bader theatre. 

**All festival features will be preceded by a short film and followed by a Q&A with filmmakers.

Tickets for the Isabel Bader Theatre lineup on sale now and can be purchased  https://www.bloodinthesnow.ca

Super Channel is pleased to once again assume the role of Presenting Sponsor for the Blood in the Snow Film Festival. We extend our sincere appreciation to the entire BITS team for their unwavering commitment to amplifying the voices of diverse filmmakers and providing a platform for the celebration of Canadian genre content. – Don McDonald, the CEO of Super Channel

Blood in the Snow Festival 2024 Full screening schedule:

Monday November 18th
7pm – Dark Visions

Shiva (13:29) dir. Josh Saltzman

Shiva is an unnerving tale about a recently widowed woman who breaks with a long-held Jewish mourning ritual in hopes of connecting with her deceased husband.

How to Stay Awake (5:30) dir. Vanessa Magic

A woman fights to stay awake, to avoid battling the terrifying realm of sleep paralysis, but as she risks everything to break free, will she be released from the grip of her nocturnal tormentor?

Pocket Princess (9:45) dir. Olivia Loccisano

A young girl must take part in a dangerous task in order to complete her doll collection in this miniature fairytale.

For Rent (10:33) dir. Michèle Kaye

In her new home, Donna unravels a sinister truth—her landlord is a demon with a dark appetite. As her family mysteriously vanishes, Donna confronts the demonic landlord, only to plunge into a shadowy game where the house hungers for more than just occupants. An ominous cycle begins, shrouded in mystery.

Lucys Birthday (9:29) dir. Peter Sreckovic

A father struggles to enjoy his young daughter’s birthday despite a series of strange and disturbing disruptions.

Parasitic (10:00) dir. Ryan M Andrews

Last call at a dive bar, a writer struggling to find his voice gets more than he bargains for.

 Naualli (6:00) dir. Adrian Gonzalez de la Pena

A grieving man seeks revenge, unwittingly awakening a mystical creature known as the Nagual.

The Saint and The Bear (6:34) dir. Dallas R Soonias

Two strangers cross paths on an ominous park bench.

The Sorrow (13:00) dir. Thomas Affolter

A retired army general and his live-in nurse find they are not alone in a house filled with dark secrets.

Cadabra (6:00) dir. Tiffany Wice

An amateur magician receives more than he anticipated when he purchases a cursed hat from the estate of his deceased hero.

9:30 – Dark Match dir. Lowell Dean Horror / Action

A small time WRESTLING COMPANY accepts a well-paying but too good to be true gig.

 

Tuesday November 19th
7pm – Mournful Mediums

Night Lab (15:00) dir. Andrew Ellinas

When a mysterious package arrives from one of the lab’s field research stations, a promising young researcher uncovers a conspiracy against her masterminded by her jealous boss. She soon finds herself having to grapple with her conscience before making a life-or-death decision.

Dirty Bad Wrong (14:40) dir. Erica Orofino

Desperate to keep her promise to host the best superhero party for her 6-year-old, young mother Sid, a sex worker, takes extreme measures and books a last-minute client with a dark fetish.

Midnight at the lonely river (17:00) dir. Abraham Cote

When the lights go out at a seedy little motel bar, at the crossroads of a seedy little town, nefarious happenings are taking place, and three predators are enacting their evil deeds. Enter Vicky, a drifter who quickly realizes whats happening right under everyones nose. After midnight, In the shadows of this dim establishment, evil begets evil, and the predator becomes the prey.

Mean Ends (14:58) dir. Émile Lavoie

A buried body, a missing sister and an inquisitive neighbour makes for a hell of an evening. And the sun isnt close to settling on Erics sh*tty day.

Stuffy (18:26) dir. Dan Nicholls

A young couple sets off in the middle of the night to bury their kid’s stuffed bunny, as one of them is convinced that the stuffy might be cursed.

Dungeon of Death (18:33) dir. Brian P. Rowe

Torturer Raullin loves a work challenge, especially if that challenge involves hurting people to extract information from them.

9:30 – Hunting Matthew Nichols (96 mins) dir. Markian Tarasiuk

Twenty-three years after her brother mysteriously disappeared, a documentary filmmaker sets out to solve his missing person’s case. But when a disturbing piece of evidence is revealed, she comes to believe that her brother might still be alive.

w/ short: Josephine (6:15) dir. John Francis Bregar

A man haunted by his past seeks forgiveness from his deceased wife, but a session with two spirit mediums leads to an unsettling encounter.

Wednesday November 20th
7pm – BITS and BYTES

Ezra (10:57) dirs. Luke Hutchie, Mike Mildon, Marianna Phung

After fleeing the dark and demonic chains of his shadowy old home, Ezra, a killer gay vampire, takes a leap of faith and enters the modern world.

Head Shop (18:14 episode 1-3) dir. Namaï Kham Po

In a post-apocalyptic world, Annas life and work are dominated by her father Sylvestre, a short-tempered mechanic with a terrible reputation for tearing the head off anyone who dares cross him. He decides that shes old enough to follow in his footsteps, much to her dismay. To prove herself, she must now decapitate her first victim. Can she find a way to defy fate?

D dot H (18 :15 episodes 1-2) dirs. Meegwun Fairbrother, Mary Galloway

Struggling artist Doug is visited by the beautiful and enigmatic H, who claims he holds the power to visiting inconceivable places.” Still half-asleep, Doug is shocked when H vanishes suddenly and her doppelganger, Hannah, strides past.

Creepy Bits: Last Sonata (21:08) dir.

Adrian Bobb, Ashlea Wessel, David J. Fernandes, Sid Zanforlin and Kelly Paoli.

Set among forests, lakes, and small towns, Creepy Bits is a horror anthology series helmed by five innovative filmmakers exploring themes of human vs. nature, the invasion and destruction of the natural world by outsiders, and isolation within a vast, eerie landscape that is not afraid to fight back.

Tales from the Void: Whistle in the Woods” (24:36) dir. Francesco Loschiavo

Horror anthology TV series based on stories from r/NoSleep. Each tale blends genre thrills & social commentary exploring the dark side of the human psyche.

9:30 – Self Driver dir. Michael Pierro Thriller

Facing mounting expenses and the unrelenting pressure of modern living, a down-on-his-luck cab driver is lured on to a mysterious new app that promises fast, easy money. As his first night on the job unfolds, he is pulled ever deeper into the dark underbelly of society, embarking on a journey that will test his moral code and shake his understanding of what it means to have freewill. The question becomes not how much money he can make, but what he’ll be compelled to do to make it.
 

w/ short: Northern Escape (10:38) dirs. Lucy Sanci, Alexis Korotash

A couple on a cottage getaway tries to work on their relationship but ends up getting more than they bargained for when they discover something sinister lurking beneath the surface.

Thursday November 21st
7pm – Funny Frights

Midnight Snack (1:41) dir. Sandra Foisy

Hunger always strikes in the dead of night.

Hell is a Teenage Girl (15:00) dir. Stephen Sawchuk

Every Halloween, the small town of Springboro is terrorized by its resident SLASHER – a masked serial killer who targets sinful teenagers that break The Rules of Horror’ – dont drink, dont do drugs, and dont have sex!

Gaslit (10:36) dir. Anna MacLean

A woman goes to dangerous lengths to prove she wasn’t responsible for a fart.

Bath Bomb (9:55) dir. Colin G Cooper

A possessive doctor prepares an ostensibly romantic bath for his narcissistic boyfriend, but after an accusation of infidelity, things take a deeply disturbing turn.

Any Last Words (14:22) dir. Isaac Rathé

A crook trying to flee town is paid an untimely visit by some of his former colleagues. What would you say to save your life if you were staring down the barrel of a gun?

Papier mâché (4:30) dir. Simon Madore

A whimsical depiction of the hard and tumultuous life of a piñata.

The Living Room (9:59) dir. Joslyn Rogers

After an unexpected call from Lady Luck, Ms. Valentine must choose between her sanity and her winnings – all before the jungle consumes her.

A Divine Comedy: What the Hell (8:55) dir. Valerie Lee Barnhart
 Dante’s classic Hell is falling into oblivion. Charlotte,

sharp-witted Harpy, navigates the chaos and sets out despite the odds for a new life and destiny.

Mr Fuzz (2:30) dir. Christopher Walsh

A long-limbed, fuzzy-haired creature will do whatever it takes to keep you watching his show.

Out of the Hands of the Wicked (5:00) dirs. Luke Sargent, Benjamin Hackman

After a harrowing journey home from hell, old Pa boasts of his triumph over evil, and how he came to lock the devil in his heart.

The Shitty Ride (9:13) dir. Cole Doran

Hoping to impress the girl of his dreams, Cole buys a used car but gets more than he bargained for with his shitty ride.

9:30 – Invited dir. Navin Ramaswaran Horror

When a reluctant mother attends her daughter’s Zoom elopement, she and the rest of the family in attendance quickly realize the groom is part of a Russian cult with deadly intentions.

w/ shorts: Defile dir. Brian Sepanzyk

A couple’s secluded getaway is suddenly interrupted by a strange family who exposes them to the horrors that lie beyond the tree line.

 A Mother’s Love dir. Lisa Ovies

A young girl deals with the consequences of trusting someone online.

Friday November 22nd
7:00 pm – Creepy Bits (anthology horror series)

Creepy Bits is a short horror anthology series that explores pandemic age themes of isolation, paranoia and distrust of authority, serving them up in bite-sized chunks. Directed by Adrian Bobb, Ashlea Wessel, David J. Fernandes, Sid Zanforlin and Kelly Paoli.

9:30 – Pins and Needles (81 min) dir. James Villeneuve Horror / Thriller

Follows Max, a diabetic, biology grad student who is entrapped in a devilish new-age wellness experiment and must escape a lethal game of cat and mouse to avoid becoming the next test subject to extend the lives of the rich and privileged.

w/ short: Adjoining (11:42) dirs. Harrison Houde, Dakota Daulby

A couple’s motel stay takes a chilling turn when they discover they’re being observed, leading to unexpected consequences.

Saturday November 23rd
4pm – Emerging Screams (94 mins)

Apnea (14:58) dir. David Matheson

A single, working mother finds her career and her offbeat sons safety in jeopardy when she discovers that her late mother is possessing her in her sleep.

Nereid (7:48) dir. Lori Zozzolotto

A mysterious woman escapes from an abusive relationship with earth shattering results.

BedLamer (15:00) dir. Alexa Jane Jerrett

On the shores of a small fishing village lives a lonely settlement of men – capturing and domesticating otherworldly creatures that were never meant to be tamed.

Blocked (6:30) dir. Aisha Alfa

A new mom is literally consumed with the futility of cleaning up after her kid.

Dance of the Faery (10:23) dir. Kaela Brianna Egert

A young woman cleans up her estranged, great aunt’s home after her death. Upon inspection, she soon realizes that her eccentric obsession with fairies was not born out of love, but of fear.

Deep End (7:36) dir. Juan Pablo Saenz

A gay couple’s heated argument during a hike spiral into a nightmare when one of them vanishes, leading the other to a mysterious cave that could reveal the chilling truth.

Ojichaag – Spirit Within (11:21) dir. Rachel Beaulieu

An emotionally devastated woman seeks comfort in her choice to end her life. As she faces death in the form of a spirit, she must decide to let herself go to fight to stay alive.

Lure (9.56) dir. Jacob Phair

A tormented father awaits the return of the man who saved his son’s life.

Let Me In (10:00) dirs. Joel Buxton, Charles Smith

A reluctant man interviews an unusual immigration candidate: himself from a doomed dimension

7:00 pm –The Silent Planet (95 mins) dir. Jeffrey St. Jules Sci-fi

An aging convict serving out a life sentence alone on a distant planet is forced to confront his past when a new prisoner shows up and pushes him to remember his life on earth

w/ short: Ascension (3:57) dir. Kenzie Yango

Deep in a remote forest, two friends, Mia and Riley, embark on a leisurely hike. As tensions run high between the two, a strange humming noise appears that seems to be coming from somewhere in the woods.

9:30 – Scared Shitless (73 mins) dir. Vivieno Caldinelli Horror / Comedy

A plumber and his germophobic son are forced to get their hands dirty to save the residents of an apartment building, when a genetically engineered, blood-thirsty creature escapes into the plumbing system.
 

w/ short: Oh…Canada (6:20) dir. Vincenzo Nappi

Oh, Canada. Such a wonderful place to live – WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT. A musical look into the artifice surrounding Canadian identity.

 

Tickets for the Isabel Bader Theatre lineup on sale now and can be purchased https://www.bloodinthesnow.ca/#festival

 

Follow “Blood In The Snow” Film Festival:

https://www.instagram.com/bitsfilmfest/

 

Media Inquiries:

Sasha Stoltz Publicity:

Sasha Stoltz | Sasha@sashastoltzpublicity.com | 416.579.4804
https://www.sashastoltzpublicity.com

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It’s time for a Halloween movie marathon. 10 iconic horror films

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Sometimes, you just have to return to the classics.

That’s especially true as Halloween approaches. While you queue up your spooky movie marathon, here are 10 iconic horror movies from the past 70 years for inspiration, and what AP writers had to say about them when they were first released.

We resurrected excerpts from these reviews, edited for clarity, from the dead — did they stand the test of time?

“Rear Window” (1954)

“Rear Window” is a wonderful trick pulled off by Alfred Hitchcock. He breaks his hero’s leg, sets him up at an apartment window where he can observe, among other things, a murder across the court. The panorama of other people’s lives is laid out before you, as seen through the eyes of a Peeping Tom.

James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter and others make it good fun.

— Bob Thomas

“Halloween” (1978)

At 19, Jamie Lee Curtis is starring in a creepy little thriller film called “Halloween.”

Until now, Jamie’s main achievement has been as a regular on the “Operation Petticoat” TV series. Jamie is much prouder of “Halloween,” though it is obviously an exploitation picture aimed at the thrill market.

The idea for “Halloween” sprang from independent producer-distributor Irwin Yablans, who wanted a terror-tale involving a babysitter. John Carpenter and Debra Hill fashioned a script about a madman who kills his sister, escapes from an asylum and returns to his hometown intending to murder his sister’s friends.

— Bob Thomas

“The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)

“The Silence of the Lambs” moves from one nail-biting sequence to another. Jonathan Demme spares the audience nothing, including closeups of skinned corpses. The squeamish had best stay home and watch “The Cosby Show.”

Ted Tally adapted the Thomas Harris novel with great skill, and Demme twists the suspense almost to the breaking point. The climactic confrontation between Clarice Starling and Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) is carried a tad too far, though it is undeniably exciting with well-edited sequences.

Such a tale as “The Silence of the Lambs” requires accomplished actors to pull it off. Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins are highly qualified. She provides steely intelligence, with enough vulnerability to sustain the suspense. He delivers a classic portrayal of pure, brilliant evil.

— Bob Thomas

“Scream” (1996)

In this smart, witty homage to the genre, students at a suburban California high school are being killed in the same gruesome fashion as the victims in the slasher films they know by heart.

If it sounds like the script of every other horror movie to come and go at the local movie theater, it’s not.

By turns terrifying and funny, “Scream” — written by newcomer David Williamson — is as taut as a thriller, intelligent without being self-congratulatory, and generous in its references to Wes Craven’s competitors in gore.

— Ned Kilkelly

“The Blair Witch Project” (1999)

Imaginative, intense and stunning are a few words that come to mind with “The Blair Witch Project.”

“Blair Witch” is the supposed footage found after three student filmmakers disappear in the woods of western Maryland while shooting a documentary about a legendary witch.

The filmmakers want us to believe the footage is real, the story is real, that three young people died and we are witnessing the final days of their lives. It isn’t. It’s all fiction.

But Eduardo Sanchez and Dan Myrick, who co-wrote and co-directed the film, take us to the edge of belief, squirming in our seats the whole way. It’s an ambitious and well-executed concept.

— Christy Lemire

“Saw” (2004)

The fright flick “Saw” is consistent, if nothing else.

This serial-killer tale is inanely plotted, badly written, poorly acted, coarsely directed, hideously photographed and clumsily edited, all these ingredients leading to a yawner of a surprise ending. To top it off, the music’s bad, too.

You could forgive all (well, not all, or even, fractionally, much) of the movie’s flaws if there were any chills or scares to this sordid little horror affair.

But “Saw” director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell, who developed the story together, have come up with nothing more than an exercise in unpleasantry and ugliness.

— David Germain

Germain gave “Saw” one star out of four.

“Paranormal Activity” (2009)

The no-budget ghost story “Paranormal Activity” arrives 10 years after “The Blair Witch Project,” and the two horror movies share more than a clever construct and shaky, handheld camerawork.

The entire film takes place at the couple’s cookie-cutter dwelling, its layout and furnishings indistinguishable from just about any other readymade home constructed in the past 20 years. Its ordinariness makes the eerie, nocturnal activities all the more terrifying, as does the anonymity of the actors adequately playing the leads.

The thinness of the premise is laid bare toward the end, but not enough to erase the horror of those silent, nighttime images seen through Micah’s bedroom camera. “Paranormal Activity” owns a raw, primal potency, proving again that, to the mind, suggestion has as much power as a sledgehammer to the skull.

— Glenn Whipp

Whipp gave “Paranormal Activity” three stars out of four.

“The Conjuring” (2013)

As sympathetic, methodical ghostbusters Lorraine and Ed Warren, Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson make the old-fashioned haunted-house horror film “The Conjuring” something more than your average fright fest.

“The Conjuring,” which boasts incredulously of being their most fearsome, previously unknown case, is built very in the ’70s-style mold of “Amityville” and, if one is kind, “The Exorcist.” The film opens with a majestic, foreboding title card that announces its aspirations to such a lineage.

But as effectively crafted as “The Conjuring” is, it’s lacking the raw, haunting power of the models it falls shy of. “The Exorcist” is a high standard, though; “The Conjuring” is an unusually sturdy piece of haunted-house genre filmmaking.

— Jake Coyle

Coyle gave “The Conjuring” two and half stars out of four.

Read the full review here.

“Get Out” (2017)

Fifty years after Sidney Poitier upended the latent racial prejudices of his white date’s liberal family in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” writer-director Jordan Peele has crafted a similar confrontation with altogether more combustible results in “Get Out.”

In Peele’s directorial debut, the former “Key and Peele” star has — as he often did on that satirical sketch series — turned inside out even supposedly progressive assumptions about race. But Peele has largely left comedy behind in a more chilling portrait of the racism that lurks beneath smiling white faces and defensive, paper-thin protestations like, “But I voted for Obama!” and “Isn’t Tiger Woods amazing?”

It’s long been a lamentable joke that in horror films — never the most inclusive of genres — the Black dude is always the first to go. In this way, “Get Out” is radical and refreshing in its perspective.

— Jake Coyle

Coyle gave “Get Out” three stars out of four.

Read the full review here.

“Hereditary” (2018)

In Ari Aster’s intensely nightmarish feature-film debut “Hereditary,” when Annie (Toni Collette), an artist and mother of two teenagers, sneaks out to a grief-support group following the death of her mother, she lies to her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) that she’s “going to the movies.”

A night out with “Hereditary” is many things, but you won’t confuse it for an evening of healing and therapy. It’s more like the opposite.

Aster’s film, relentlessly unsettling and pitilessly gripping, has carried with it an ominous air of danger and dread: a movie so horrifying and good that you have to see it, even if you shouldn’t want to, even if you might never sleep peacefully again.

The hype is mostly justified.

— Jake Coyle

Coyle gave “Hereditary” three stars out of four.

Read the full review here. ___

Researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed from New York.

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