Media

How To Create A Social Media Strategy In 11 Steps

Published

1 year ago

October 5, 2023

Social media still feels fairly “new” to many of us.

It’s hard to overstate the rate at which social media has grown since then, to become an integral part of our daily lives.

There are now countless social media platforms, with new competitors popping up weekly (at least, it can feel that way).

Today, we use social media to maintain relationships across continents, share our big (and small) life moments with our loved ones, get the latest news, track our favorite celebrities, and more. It has reshaped how we connect, communicate, and consume content.

Social media has also become a cornerstone of modern marketing.

From the biggest global brands to nonprofits, universities, or local mom-and-pop shops, no marketing strategy is complete without a social media component.

For marketers, social media offers the opportunity to connect directly with customers and prospects, grow awareness and positive sentiment around your brand, and build a community of engaged and loyal followers.

A robust social media strategy can set you apart from your competition and drive real results for your bottom line.

In this article, we’ll explore what a social media marketing strategy is and why you need one, before diving into a step-by-step guide to creating your own strategy from scratch.

What Is Social Media Marketing?

Before getting into the specifics, let’s start with the basics: understanding the concept of social media marketing and its purpose.

Social media marketing employs social media platforms and networks as tools to promote brands, products, and services, and for organizations to connect directly with their target audience.

This is done primarily through creating and distributing content designed to engage and provide value to a brand’s ideal consumer. There are two overarching social media marketing approaches:

Organic – content you share on your social media profiles for free.
Paid – sponsored content on social media that leverages advertising spend to drive audiences towards a specific goal (e.g., generate leads, drive traffic to your site, etc.)

It’s a cost-effective method for reaching a diverse audience, meeting your customers where they are, and gathering insights about your target consumer’s behaviors and interests.

Beyond just producing content, social media allows your brand to build and nurture a community. By interacting directly with customers and answering their questions and concerns, you can positively influence your brand’s reputation.

Let’s look a little closer at what else makes social media marketing so powerful.

Increased Brand Awareness

There are 4.8 billion social media users worldwide, representing almost 60% of the total global population. That’s a sizeable audience and a promising one for marketers.

Whether you’re looking to attract new customers in markets from the other side of the world or help build awareness with local shoppers, social media marketing can help you do it.

And all marketers know that with increased awareness comes more leads, which creates more sales.

Good Return On Investment (ROI)

You don’t need a huge budget to build an audience on social media, and that’s one of the things that makes it such a popular marketing tool.

Creating a business profile is usually free on most platforms, and it’s not essential that you put money into paid social content; you can achieve your goals with the right organic strategy.

Just by focusing on consistently posting content your targets will find valuable, you can build an audience and expand your reach.

Improved SEO

Social platforms can also help your search engine optimization efforts.

While there’s no direct correlation between your search engine ranking and social media – in that, your ranking is not directly affected by what you post on YouTube or Instagram – there is a connection.

For one, social media allows you to boost your content. This leads to more traffic and more engagement, which are positive user signals.

It also gives you more opportunities for generating backlinks, not to mention that your profile could rank in its own right for search terms.

Better Customer Service

Increasingly, customers are turning to social media to easily reach out to brands – whether they need help troubleshooting an issue or are looking for tips and tricks.

This provides a major opportunity for companies to offer seamless customer service and help rectify problems.

It can be an effective way to turn a negative experience into a positive one while allowing you to keep your finger on the pulse of patterns in buying, use, and potential issues.

What Is A Social Media Strategy?

All the benefits we just talked about sound pretty darn nice – so how do we make them happen?

That’s where a social media marketing strategy comes in.

A social media strategy is a thorough roadmap that outlines how your brand will leverage social media to achieve your marketing and business goals.

The purpose of a social strategy is to provide direction for your social marketing efforts, ensuring that they are aligned with your business’s overarching objectives, and are thoughtfully designed to create results.

Your social media marketing strategy will typically include details such as your target audience(s), which platforms you’ll use, any key metrics or KPIs, content strategy, community management approach, and more – which we’ll cover in more detail later in this guide.

Why You Need A Social Media Marketing Strategy

Now that you know what a social media strategy is, the next logical question is: Do you really need one?

The answer: a resounding ‘yes’. If you’re going to jump into the world of social media marketing, you must have a strategy.

Things move extremely fast on social media; the algorithms, features, and platforms are changing day to day. And without a well-considered strategy, it’s incredibly easy to fall behind.

A social media strategy gives you the guardrails and structure necessary to keep you on the path to success and prevent you from getting overwhelmed. Here are some other reasons why you need a social strategy:

Efficiency: Having a concrete plan in place means you can allocate your time and resources to the areas that matter most. Your strategy should provide clarity on where you’re focusing, the platforms you’re prioritizing, what your content strategy is, and where to put your advertising dollars (if any). From here, you can make sure you’re allocating your resources appropriately.
Consistency: With your strategy in hand, you’ll be able to maintain consistency in your content, your messaging, your brand voice and tone, and your visual identity across platforms.
Long-term sustainability: Your strategy will keep your brand on the straight and narrow so that you can nurture a meaningful social presence. It will help you keep your key goals and metrics top-of-mind, and prevent you from getting sidetracked by fleeting trends or short-term efforts that ultimately peter out.

How To Create A Social Media Strategy In 11 Steps

1. Set Clear, Measurable Objectives

As with any other marketing approach, the first step to crafting an effective social media strategy is to clearly define what you aim to accomplish.

Start with your “why.” Why is your brand diving into the social media space, and what do you ultimately hope to achieve? These are the first questions you should be asking yourself.

As you define the answers, you should be keeping your brand’s larger goals in mind, and thinking about how your objectives will ladder up to, or align with them.

Do you want to boost brand awareness? Increase traffic to your website? Generate new leads or conversions? Improve your brand’s reputation? Nurture an engaged and loyal audience?

You might have one specific goal or several – just be sure that each of them satisfies the following three criteria:

It’s achievable.
It’s measurable.
It’s relevant to your brand.

Once you know why you’re doing this, you can start getting more specific.

2. Identify Your Audience

Next, you will want to determine who you are targeting on social media.

This is crucial, as success will depend on creating content that interests and engages your audience – and that starts with knowing who they are.

One helpful step you can take is to develop customer personas that represent who you will be talking to on social media, and group similar audience members together.

These detailed personas can (and should) cover everything from how old they are and where they live to their interests, pain points, content preferences, and online behavior.

Be sure to include things like:

Demographics – age, gender, job title, salary, location, etc.
Interests – what type of content would interest them? What topics do they engage with? What are their hobbies and passions, both at work and at home?
Their goals in relation to your content – are they looking for a new job? To improve their fitness? To learn a skill? To find a software solution to save them time? To discover a delicious new ice cream brand? Think about how your brand, product, or service will be the solution to their goals.
Where they spend time – what is their social platform of choice? Are they hanging out on LinkedIn or TikTok? Or both?
Content consumption – are they more likely to watch videos or read text posts? What kind of content are they looking for on social? What other brands or individuals are they following?

One caveat to note: Don’t get too granular trying to target outliers or exceptions. Instead, look for generalities that are consistent with each grouping.

All of this information will be paramount in informing what content you make, where, and how it comes to life.

3. Check Out The Competition

By now, you may have enough audience data to understand which platforms you might prioritize.

But before you make that call, it helps to take a look at the social media activity of your competitors, or other companies in similar industries.

There’s a good chance some of your competitors already use social media marketing, which is great news – you can learn from them.

Do a deep dive into their profiles and content to see what strategies they’re employing, what topics they’re covering, and what kind of engagement they’re getting on different pieces of content. This will help you get a feel for the kind of content your audience likes – as well as the ones they’re not as interested in.

Which platforms are your competitors active on, and which ones are they not using? Where are they getting the best results, and where is engagement lacking? Is this because your targets prefer one platform over another, or are your peers missing an opportunity?

By studying your competitors’ social profiles and content, you can spot gaps and opportunities in the market, and gather important insights to guide your strategy.

This is not a one-and-done thing, by the way. You should always stay abreast of your competitors’ social media presence as part of your social listening process.

4. Choose Your Platforms

Now it’s time to choose which social media platforms your brand will focus on, at least to begin with.

Before you go any further, take note: Your brand does not have to be on every single social platform. In fact, your brand probably shouldn’t be on every social platform – especially if you’re just starting out with social media marketing.

Selecting the right platforms is a crucial step, and you should focus on platforms that align most closely with the activity and preferences of your target audience.

The most obvious options are the “big four” platforms: Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and LinkedIn. But these might not all be right for your brand – and there are so many more to choose from, including TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, and more.

At the end of the day, it’s all about meeting your audience where they are.

Are you targeting retirees? TikTok might not be the best choice for you. But if you’re looking to reach a Gen Z audience, you should likely be there. If you’re a B2B brand, you probably want to be on LinkedIn – but there are also opportunities there for B2C brands, too.

Do some research into each platform to understand their strengths and weaknesses and how they might fit into your strategy.

5. Define Your Brand’s Voice And Tone

In social media marketing, just as with all marketing, keeping a consistent brand voice and tone is key.

Before you begin posting on social media – and even before you develop your content strategy – you should align internally on what you’d like your tone to be.

Will it be cheeky? Serious and informative? Casual yet educational? Snarky? Whatever you choose, ensure it makes sense for who you’re speaking to, and that it’s infused consistently throughout your content.

In an ideal world, your marketing department already has established guardrails here that you can leverage – but feel free to make small tweaks to optimize for a social audience.

6. Optimize Your Profile(s)

Your social profiles are where your content is aggregated on each platform, and it’s the first place social users will go to learn more about your brand. That’s why it’s important you include all the necessary information upfront.

Start by choosing a handle that reflects your business. Then, include your business name, contact details, some information about your company in the bio, and anything else visitors might need to know.

Here, you can use a keyword research tool to determine which words and phrases your customers use in search and include them in your profile.

The visual elements are key here. Make sure your branding is consistent, and you’re using correctly sized and formatted images so that they show up in the highest possible quality.

The goal is to make your brand instantly recognizable across all touchpoints.

7. Develop Your Content Strategy

It’s time to build your content strategy, which will be the essence of your social media marketing presence.

Before you do too much, revisit your goals and the target audience information you compiled in earlier steps. These will help form the foundation of your strategy and the content you plan to make.

Then, think about the platforms you’re going to be using and what trends you have noticed there in terms of content formats, types, and topics that are most popular.

Depending on the platform(s) you’re using, your content might include educational videos, links to blog posts, memes, polls, or anything else your audience will find useful.

This usually generates better engagement and sharing among your audience than strictly sales-focused pieces.

Focus on including a diverse mix of content types – from informative to entertaining to promotional content about your brand – as well as formats.

Just make sure every piece of content reflects your brand’s voice and tone, serves your objectives, and provides value to your audience.

8. Create A Social Media Content Calendar

As we’ve touched on, consistency is very important when it comes to social media marketing. You want to maintain audience engagement, which requires a consistent flow of valuable content.

In order to achieve this, you need to make a content calendar that clearly outlines when you’ll be posting and where you’ll be posting it.

At first, you might want to experiment with posting times and frequency to find what works best for your brand and audience. Ideally, you want to find a sweet spot between posting too much (and annoying your audience) and posting too little (and being forgotten about).

Your goal is to catch the attention of the most people and generate as much engagement as you can – and this will vary, depending on several factors like your business, your audience, the time of year, different holidays, etc.

The great thing about a content calendar is that it will keep you organized and allow you to think ahead. Using your calendar, you can plan for major events, holidays, industry moments, and trends.

Is there a specific holiday that is super relevant to your brand and audience? Start planning your content at least a few weeks in advance, so you’ll be ready to roll.

A content calendar can also be very useful for keeping team members (and stakeholders from other teams) informed about your social media plans.

9. Consider Community Engagement

Social media marketing isn’t just about posting content and signing off. It’s about really engaging your audience, and building a community on each platform.

You should consider how you will do this as you build out your strategy.

Ask yourself questions like, who will respond to comments and messages? How will we handle customer complaints or customer service inquiries via social media? How can we actively start conversations with our audience?

Make sure to include space in your social strategy to proactively engage with other individuals, brands, and content in your space.

10. Track Your Performance

At this point, you should have started posting content to social media – and it’s time to start analyzing your performance.

By looking at your metrics, you can gather information about what’s working and start to identify trends.

This is another one of those steps that never ends; you should regularly assess how your content is performing on social media and optimize based on what you find.

Most social media platforms offer some analytics for business accounts, where you can view numbers for metrics like reach, impressions, engagement rate, click-through rates, and more. The ones you focus on will depend on your goals and the KPIs you set for yourself.

For example, if you’re looking to grow brand awareness, you’ll want to look at the number of impressions your posts are getting. If your goal is to increase engagement, you’ll want to track likes, comments, and shares. Or, if you’re using paid ads, you probably want to keep an eye on your cost per click.

Look for commonalities among your most successful and least successful posts. This will give you insight into the type of social content you should lean into, and what you can deprioritize.

Also, don’t forget to read (and reply to!) the comments. Comments from your audience can be very insightful and will help you understand the sentiment around what you’re posting.

11. Optimize And Refine Your Strategy

Social media is constantly evolving, and so should your marketing strategy.

Social media marketing isn’t the type of thing that pays instant dividends. It takes time to understand what works and how to be successful.

But one thing is certain: You won’t be successful by playing it safe and sticking to a static strategy.

Even once you feel confident that your content is on-brand and generating the right results for you, your strategy will still require regular adjustments based on changing preferences, trends, and audience needs.

Keep looking to your performance insights to find what works best, and adjust content as needed.

Experiment with new content formats, features, and tactics to see what opportunities you might be missing. There are always new content features being released on social media platforms, as well as being phased out. Stay on top of these.

Pay attention to the social landscape and what your competitors are doing.

The goal is to always be looking for new ways to maximize the impact of your social media presence.

And while that’s a job that is never done, over time, you’ll gain a feel for what you’re doing that will help you generate more consistent results.

In Summary

The world of social media marketing can be a daunting one, and it’s easy to get distracted or discouraged.

But keep at it.

A well-crafted social media marketing strategy can go a long way in growing your business and even boosting your bottom line – and the returns are well worth the investment.

Remember to regularly step back and look at the bigger picture.

Focus on creating valuable, engaging content that’s aligned with your brand goals and objectives.

Be willing to experiment, put in the resources, and embrace the unknown, all with the purpose of creating authentic connections with your audience and helping your business thrive.

By putting in the work, keeping an open mind, and not being afraid to take risks, your social media marketing strategy will help you reap the rewards for your business.

Happy posting!

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Media

Bayo Onanuga battles yet another media – Punch Newspapers

Published

1 week ago

October 31, 2024

Harry Miller

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Bayo Onanuga battles yet another media Punch Newspapers

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Media

Blood In The Snow Film Festival Celebrates 13 Years!

Published

3 weeks ago

October 22, 2024

Sasha Stoltz

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 Dean’s 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 Hall’s 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.

Lucy’s 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 what’s happening right under everyone’s 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 isn’t close to settling on Eric’s 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, Anna’s 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 she’s 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’ – don’t drink, don’t do drugs, and don’t 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 son’s 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:

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Media

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

Published

3 weeks ago

October 19, 2024

Anne Joseph

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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