Blood in the Snow Film Fest: 9th Annual Edition of Horror... for Fans Who Can Hack It
By Thom Ernst
The Blood in the Snow Film Festival (BITS) has been running largely beneath the festival radar for nine years.
The event began in Toronto in 2012 after founder Kelly Michael Stewart discovered that the appetite for Canadian-made genre films was too much for his once-a-month horror film series to handle. From there, Blood in the Snow was born, and film enthusiasts, diligent about where to find their next horror fix, responded.
BITS became somewhat of a private playground for genre fans in the know. But it has grown into a festival too good to leave to the, ahem, “madding” crowd.
In past years, BITS championed productions that lived in the realm of minuscule budgets and large-scale passions. But as the festival grows, the films grow too. It's as if the platform Stewart provides helps push independent Canadian genre films into stronger focus.
If so, then the heavy lifting that BITS began is far from done, but the effects so far are evident in this year's selection.
Films like The Family, Flee the Light, Peppergrass, and Woodland Grey delve into themes more potent than just fear and disruption, offering less definable shades of horror than in traditional genre movies.
Director Dan Slater’s The Family proposes the terror of tyranny and abuse, while Alexandra Senza’s Flee the Light and Adam Reider’s, Woodland Grey work along themes of mental illness. And Peppergrass, directed by Steven Garbas and Chantelle Han, redefines the stalker-in-the-woods oeuvre.
But wisely, BITS maintains a hold on the unique power of homegrown madness, with titles to appease the unholy in all of us.
Cody Calahan's Vicious Fun is an audacious send-up of the genre, making full use of the horror tableau by tossing a horror-specific film critic (with an unproduced script) into a serial-killer support group. The film's first half is an outrageous comic breakdown of the genre, while the second half falls in line with expectations.
Director Michael Pereira's The Chamber of Terror is less subtle than Vicious Fun (not that Vicious Fun scores much for subtlety). Pereira's characters are primarily one-dimensional templates of character types from similar movies. The film works well within the context of the festival context and can be enjoyed chiefly for its broad performances and excessive gore.
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
What is likely to surprise filmgoers are the festival's short films. There is a long list of titles, offering varying degrees of themes and moods, and suspense. And yes, tension can be maintained within the limits of a film 15 minutes or less.
The shorts are divided between features and offered in three separate short film programs: Funny Frights (Fri. November 19, 6:45), Dark Visions (Sat. November 20, 6:45), and Emerging Screams (Sun. November 21, 6:45).
There were several standouts for me in the short film category.
Caitlyn Sponheimer's I Want to Be Like You is a treatise on the fleeting assumptions of perfection and self-image. The impact of Sponheimer’s story, and that of the film’s final scene, last far longer than the film's (almost) five minutes.
In Break Any Spell, director Anton Josef charms with a surprisingly poignant tale of a young girl whose fantasy cosplay provides a talisman for a family tragedy.
And director Brad Bangsboll's Moore's Void, featuring a woman bargaining to talk to her deceased son, is a haunting tale of longing and grief.
Dance Dance, Kill from director J.K. Robinson is a story about a giant Canada goose attacking a group of spandex wearing dancers. It wasn't available for screening but I suspect I would have loved it.
The Blood in the Snow Film Festival runs from Thursday, November 18 to Tuesday, November 23. Most screenings are held at the Royal Theatre in Toronto.