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Pro-Biden PAC launches $1 million campaign to pay social media influencers – POLITICO

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LaToi Storr, a 42-year-old content creator and lifestyle blogger based in Philadelphia, normally posts Instagram and TikTok videos of local restaurants and skincare tips, mingled with some community-focused material on Black mental health care.

Last fall, she started posting a new kind of message on her feeds.

In an
Instagram reel
in October, she urged her 16,500 followers to register for a Pennsylvania election for state judges and district attorneys. She posted the same
video on TikTok
. Then, she posted
another reel
reminding people to get out to vote.

For her political posts, she was paid by Priorities USA, a super PAC supporting President Joe Biden’s reelection.

The influential Democratic PAC is spending $1 million for its first-ever “creator” program, enlisting Storr and 150 other influencers to post on social media in the 2024 election cycle, according to details first shared with POLITICO.

The effort is part of a larger Democratic strategy to lure young voters in battleground states, who
polls show
are
increasingly critical
of Biden, whether over his age or issues like his
stance towards Israel
. Biden’s reelection campaign itself is amping up its
work with social media influencers
in 2024, though those partnerships are currently unpaid, Daniel Wessel, a Biden campaign spokesperson, told POLITICO. The White House team separately is also flexing its creator game, throwing its first-ever influencer
Christmas party
last December.

Other liberal PACs, including
NextGen America
and
American Bridge
, deployed paid influencer campaigns in the 2022 midterms. But Priorities USA’s creator campaign amounts to a stamp of approval from one of the most influential partisan political action committees — with a new approach using both local and national influencers — and part of a sharp shift in how campaigns are pivoting online to reach voters.

The investment highlights just how much social media has changed from previous campaign cycles when the platforms were newer and candidates like Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders could enjoy free support from young voters. Democratic PACs’ move to pay directly for backing also underscores just how much Biden is
struggling
to go viral with the young voters
and influencers
whose support is crucial to the party in 2024.

Priorities plans
to transition all its spending to digital communications
in 2024, and sees the influencer campaign as key to reaching people who don’t see typical campaign ads on TV. As it does, however, it is running into platforms’ at-times confusing guidelines on political ads — and appears to have violated some policies banning paid political content on TikTok.

With few federal regulations over campaign advertising on social media, each platform sets its own rules. TikTok has the strictest policy —
banning political advertising
entirely, including
branded political content from creators
. Instagram and Facebook, owned by Meta, allow for paid political ads and
sponsored political content
from creators as long as the group is registered in its ad library. (
Priorities is listed
.) And X, formerly Twitter,
lifted its political ads
ban last year.

The policies appear to be poorly enforced. After POLITICO shared five TikTok videos from August and October from national creators paid by Priorities, TikTok removed four of them for violating their branded content policies on political issues.

Similarly, Storr said one of her TikTok videos she posted on Oct. 27 encouraging people to vote in last November’s Pennsylvania election was removed by TikTok for violating its branded content policy.

However, the same video she posted
on Instagram
remains — showing how far platforms’ rules can diverge around paid political content.

Jack Doyle, a Priorities spokesperson, said the group is committed to following guidelines from TikTok and the other platforms it’s using. “If content is taken down, our general practice is to work with the social media company to understand why,” Doyle said. “We look forward to working with TikTok throughout the cycle.”

When asked about how it’s following TikTok’s branded content requirements, the group said its paid creator content is “storytelling focused,” and the group works with creators to “talk about their lived experiences.”

***

Social media is a far more fragmented landscape than traditional media, and “micro-influencers” like Storr — small creators with fewer than 100,000 followers — can be important in reaching highly targeted, and often very local, younger voter groups.

Priorities’ current strategy mixes micro-influencers with bigger, more expensive national influencers to spread messages in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, Danielle Butterfield, Priorities’ executive director, told POLITICO.

Storr has been paid approximately $1,000 in total for the several TikTok and Instagram posts she’s made so far. She says she supports Biden’s reelection because he aligns with her “personal values the most,” and wants to use her videos to talk about Black maternal health issues and encourage people to get politically involved — taking their conversations “from the platforms to the polls.”

To political action committees, that kind of connection offers a unique opportunity to directly reach young voters — especially since polling shows a third of people under age 30
get their news on TikTok
. In the coming year, Priorities says it plans to pay for creators to make videos on TikTok and Instagram — and eventually YouTube — to discuss topics like the economy, abortion access and democracy.

“As we looked to 2024, we felt like it was important to reach voters where they were spending their time,” Butterfield said, and that was increasingly on TikTok.

“We’re going to have a ton of success in marketing Biden’s accomplishments when we can anchor it in terms of impact and real people and putting some personality behind what Biden’s accomplishments are doing,” she said.

Patrick Kelly, 24, a content creator who works in government affairs in Washington, D.C., for his day job, is also part of Priorities’ creator program. Kelly is originally from Philadelphia; ahead of the Pennsylvania elections, Priorities reached out to pay him in the 4-figure range to
create videos on TikTok
and
Instagram
to reach his network.

Like Storr, he sees the political posts as organically connected to his own beliefs, and wants to use his large TikTok presence — with 67,500 followers — to motivate his generation to vote for Biden. “[A]nything that I can do to help out with the upcoming elections, I want to take advantage of that opportunity,” he said.

Priorities is also paying larger amounts to bigger influencers, those with 100,000 or more followers, in order to amplify voices from local community leaders and expand messaging on key Democratic issues like education and voting access to national audiences.

Priorities says that it does not script the videos or give creators like Storr and Kelly direct talking points — but it does brief them on internal polling and the group’s messaging, as well as best practices. “It’s however abortion is impacting their life or however they kind of want to talk about democracy. We’re gonna leave it up to them to do that,” Butterfield said.

***

Each influencer puts his or her own spin on the Priorities videos. Alex Pearlman, a comedian and content creator in Philadelphia with 2.3 million TikTok followers and 70,000 Instagram followers, deployed his wry humor in his rant-style video reminding people to vote in the 2023 Pennsylvania election. (Priorities said it paid Pearlman as part of its program; his agent didn’t respond to a request for comment.) “You’ll be surprised by how much change you make right here at home, and then we can all get back to doomscrolling,” he said in an
Instagram Reel
for Priorities last October.

Other influencers share how political events impact them personally. Priorities recruited Raven Schwam-Curtis, 25, a Gen Z content creator in Chicago who discusses race, religion and politics for her 101,000 TikTok followers. Priorities paid Schwam-Curtis to create a TikTok
video last October
after Rep. Mike Johnson was elected as the House Speaker. (Her follower count qualifies her as a “macro” influencer, though she declined to share how much she was paid.) Her video criticized his anti-LGBTQ+ stance and support of the “big lie” that Trump won the 2020 election.

“I don’t think you realize how dangerous it is to have someone this right, this conservative, this MAGA-affiliated in that kind of position of power,” she said in the video. “As someone who is queer, black, Jewish and a woman, this literally flies in the face of my entire world view and violates my religious freedoms.”

Butterfield said Priorities is particularly targeting young people and people of color this year, and their internal research has found black voters are more than twice as likely to have used TikTok in the past week compared to all voters. Based on their internal data, Priorities found TikTok was better at reaching younger audiences — under age 44 — with its paid creator videos than YouTube, where it ran paid ads last in the platform’s search function last August.

So far, Democratic groups appear to be pursuing paid partnerships more aggressively than Republicans in the 2024 election cycle.

Currently, the Trump campaign doesn’t pay for influencers or posts, according to a Trump campaign adviser who was granted anonymity to speak about campaign operations. The adviser didn’t say if it planned to change that strategy after the primaries.

Trump’s super PAC — MAGA Inc. — did not respond to a request on whether it’s paying influencers.

Trump spent
over $1 million
in his 2020 presidential campaign to social media influencer firm Legendary Campaigns to drive online engagement,
according to his FEC filings
, although the filing didn’t specify whether creators were directly paid.

Currently, the Republican National Committee told POLITICO that its RNC Youth Advocacy Council, made up of millennial and Gen Z individuals, is working with nearly 40 influencers to promote RNC initiatives, including messaging surrounding the GOP debates. However, the RNC said it has not paid influencers for this campaign cycle.

***

Few federal guidelines regulate social media influencer paid partnerships in politics.

The Federal Trade Commission revised a
regulation last July that required endorsements
by social media influencers to “clearly and conspicuously” disclose their paid partnerships. The Securities and Election Commission has said its current regulatory scheme covers social media influencers involved in endorsements of financial products, even
charging Kim Kardsahian
in October 2022 for not disclosing payments for promoting a crypto asset.

But the Federal Election Commission recently punted on an opportunity to regulate social media influencers in the political realm. In a
December rulemaking
that modernized its regulations related to internet communications, the agency decided not to require paid social media influencers to disclose they’re paid by another group to post election-related content. Two Democratic FEC commissioners issued a
separate joint statement
saying the agency missed a “golden opportunity” to address this increasingly significant form of paid advertising.

Butterfield said Priorities’ campaign is following current federal regulations. But when it comes to social media companies, she said their policies can change “on a whim.” She added, “We’re in the business of making sure that we’re always following the rules as best we can.”

Priorities says it follows existing guidelines on TikTok and Instagram for disclosing partnerships and directs creators to include “#PrioritiesPartner” on their video captions. All of the videos POLITICO reviewed that were posted by creators on TikTok and Instagram included the #PrioritiesPartner disclosure.

Ishan Mehra, the director for media and democracy at watchdog group Common Cause, said he was disappointed the FEC decided not to require paid influencer disclosures. He said regulations on paid social media political content should be the same as those for political television and print ads, which are required by the FEC to include disclaimers.

“The ability to pay influencers to carry their message on behalf of a campaign is a loophole,” he said.

In the political landscape of 2024, Mike Nellis, a Democratic digital strategist who was a senior adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, said Democratic groups paying social media influencers is a smart way to reach voters who have lost trust in cable TV news and media, and are getting their news from social media.

“There’s a lack of trust in political leaders. There’s a lack of trust in the media. There’s a lack of trust in the parties. Where there is high trust is in individuals,” he said. Content creators have niche audiences that Democrats can tap into, “so we can reach them with a great deal of efficacy and trust this way,” he added.

Some Republicans worry about what happens if Democrats successfully discover the trick to reaching divergent voter groups online. Eric Wilson, a Republican digital campaign strategist, said that while he thinks influencers will play a large role in the 2024 election — for Democrats and to an extent Republicans as well — he stopped short of calling it an “influencer election.”

“But in December 2024, if we’re looking at a landslide for Democrats — it will be because they have cracked the code for reaching voters in a fragmented media and technology landscape,” Wilson said.

Meridith McGraw contributed to this report.

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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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