After a first edition entitled "Fright Nights :Blood in the Snow Canadian Film Festival weekend", Stewart shortened the name and re-imagined the construct of the festival, bringing on a programming team and sharpening its focus with the aim of promoting, spotlighting and helping to develop the independent contemporary genre filmmaking community across Canada.
The festival has branched off in its efforts to become visible all year round with a public access television interview show and a podcast.
[4] The festival fine-tuned its prime-time shorts program and promptly sold out the screening, held a preview screening event to introduce their new surroundings on October 10 featuring the World Premiere of The Basement, started an interactive media day for press and filmmakers and created a vendor village of genre-themed merchants in the lobby.
The lineup expanded to 8 features along with 15 shorts, and included the first educational Industry Panel from the festival, furthering its commitment to the genre community.
Continuing at the Carlton in its third year on November 28 to 30, 2014,[5] the festival screened the world premieres of Teddy Bomb[6] and Heinous Acts along with Canadian and Toronto premieres of Berkshire County, Queen of Blood (starring Skinny Puppy's Nivek Ogre), Ejecta, Bloody Knuckles, Black Mountain Side and Kingdom Come.
The move meant the elimination of the traditional midnight show that had been part of the programming since year 1, but saw the festival stay at 4 days in length, running Nov 23–Nov 26, 2017.
Films hosted included World Premieres of Red Spring[21] and Blood Child[22] as well as critical darlings Fake Blood[23][24][25] and The Child Remains[26][27] along with Best Picture winner Buckout Road,[28] Art of Obsession,[29] Kill Order (aka Meza),[30] Darken[31][32] and holiday themed slasher Once Upon a Time at Christmas.
Its guests for season one included Ryan M. Andrews, Brigitte Kingsley, Chris Alexander, Justin McConnell, Tricia Lee and Christopher Grioux.
Season 2 featured a couple/group interview dynamic as opposed to the solo interview style of season 1 with guests including Bea Macapagal and Larica Perera, Greg Kovacs and Darren Hutchings, Gabriel Carrer and Ry Barrett, Cody Calahan and Chad Archbald, Richard Powell and Zach Green, Kat Threlkeld and Lance Fernandes along with Greg and Colette Jeffs.
The DVD featured 7 shorts from previous festivals including Dead All Night, Lively, Uncommon Enemies, Greater Than, One More For The Road, Tasha and Friends and Seiren.