Kier-La Janisse discusses adapting and directing her entry in Shudder’s The Haunted Season

It was right around this time last year that I had the chance to interview one of my favorite authors, directors, and Blu-ray set producers, Kier-La Janisse, for All the Haunts Be Ours Vol. 2. Kier-La started out programming at the Alamo Drafthouse (2003-2007) and Fantastic Fest (2005-2007), but it was her autobiographical tome on genre cinema, House of Psychotic Women that made me a fan. While the book, as expected, examines female-focused genre films, it does so through the lens of Kier-La’s own tumultuous childhood. Since then, she’s taken residence at Severin Films, first producing box sets, special features, documentaries, and now her first narrative work The Occupant of the Room, this year’s entry in The Haunted Season, a yearly series which premiered last year — and was inspired by the BBC A Ghost Story for Christmas.

Based on the the classic Algernon Blackwood chiller, the film follows a schoolteacher (Don McKellar) who arrives late one night at a secluded Alpine hotel to spend the holidays. There’s only one problem: all the rooms are already taken. Eventually, he’s offered a room—but with a condition.The previous guest has gone missing, and if she returns, he’ll be forced to vacate.

I was immediately taken with Janisse’s interpretation of the story. What stood out right away was its assured visual style and the way she slowly, confidently builds tension and atmosphere throughout. The film is now streaming on Shudder, and if you’re in the mood for some icy holiday horror, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Kier-La was kind enough to chat not only about adapting The Occupant of the Room and what drew her to the material, but also to share an update on her upcoming documentary Killing for Culture. Enjoy—and happy holidays!

Dan Tabor: It’s funny — I actually spoke with you about a year ago to the day, when you first announced you were doing this show. So first off, congrats on making it happen, and thanks for giving horror fans something new to watch during the holidays.

Kier-La Janisse: Thank you! And yes, I remember speaking to you last year when Sean Hogan’s episode was premiering.

Dan Tabor: You’re a huge holiday-horror fan — you even wrote an excellent book on it. What was it about The Occupant of the Room that made you want to adapt it and make it your own?

Kier-La Janisse: The Occupant of the Room is a story I’ve read on Christmas Eve every year. Once I first heard about the tradition of gathering to read ghost stories on Christmas Eve, I knew I needed to start doing it. I would have people over for this “alternative Christmas,” separate from family stuff, where we’d all take turns going around reading ghost stories. I would always read this story.

Originally, I chose it because it was short enough for a live reading — only about nine pages — that is why I chose the story, but I fell in love with it. It’s so me in a way that really clicked with me. It takes place largely in an interior space; it deals with identity, one identity overtaking another; it wrestles with depression. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but it has this grimness I really relate to.

So when it came time to make a film for The Haunted Season, I knew this had to be the story. It’s my favorite ghost story now. But it also posed a huge challenge — especially since this was my first narrative film. So much of the story happens inside the protagonist’s head, and I didn’t want to rely on constant voiceover over the whole movie. I had to somehow convey what he was experiencing through creating visual associations to things.

That difficulty is part of why Algernon Blackwood doesn’t get adapted as often — so much of his work is in the character’s head. But what I love about the classic British Ghost Stories for Christmas films is their connection to a long literary and oral storytelling tradition, so you have these layers of storytelling. I wanted The Haunted Season to participate in that tradition by continuing to adapt classical writers. People watch the film, then they go to seek out the short story — and that engagement with the literature is an important part of it for me.

Dan Tabor: I know you’re a fan of experimental cinema, and I found the way you visualized the literal tear in the fabric of reality really effective. It felt evocative of your documentary work. What led you to that approach?

Kier-La Janisse: In my documentary, I used paper-collage sequences — Guy Maddin created the collages, and a team of animators brought them to life. So the idea of a paper collage was something I thought of early as a way to manifest the protagonist’s inner turmoil.

But the collage in this film needed to be different from Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched. There was something more aggressive (that) I wanted to do with this animation. I wanted ripping, tearing, breaking, crumpling. I was very inspired by Peter Tscherkassky’s short Outer Space, which uses footage from The Entity. In that film, it’s like the medium itself is attacking the character. I wanted an animated version of that.

I found the animator, Anna Malina Zemlianski — a Ukrainian artist based in Germany — through Instagram. I searched for keywords describing the style I wanted, saw her work, and instantly knew she was the one. Once she agree to do it, she read the script, so that she understood it would be created out of certain types of imagery, how long it would have to be, and after we shot the film, I sent her source footage from the film: shots of the character looking out the window, or other moments I wanted to distort.

So I sent her that footage, various things, she would work on that individual image, she would basically – I think, it into still frames, and print our each frame, and work on the frames manually with paper — then photograph or scan them back into the computer to finish digitally. She’d send me batches, and I built the sequences was something I actually built choosing from the things she sent me, where to put everything, what kind of “story” do I want to tell from this mini-story.

It was a lot of back and forth, and it turned out great, I think.

Dan Tabor: The film has an obvious supernatural component, but it’s also a powerful exploration of loneliness and helplessness — feelings a lot of people struggle with during this season. Why do you think the holidays amplify those emotions and make such great stories?

Kier-La Janisse: Any holiday centered on something people feel they don’t have can be difficult. I feel like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day can bring those same emotions out of people, if they had a bad relationship with their parent, and their Facebook is full of all these people, saying “my mother is the best,” it can somehow amplify those same kinds of feelings of isolation.

Because of the superficial presentation of Christmas, it is this happy time of year, its joyful, peaceful time spent with loved ones. But if you don’t have any of that – I don’t have a family that cares about me, I don’t have money to buy things, all I have is stress. I don’t have any of the things associated with this holiday. It can feel incredibly alienating. That isolation is one reason certain times of year have higher rates of depressive episodes.

By contrast, a holiday like Halloween carries almost no emotional baggage — you just go around and get candy and you celebrate ghosts. But anything that’s associated with family, like Thanksgiving can just be alienating to people.

So, I feel like having horror and ghost story narratives set in those times of year, interacting in an ironic way with that holiday, because it’s usually the reverse or the flip-side of how that holiday presents publicly. I think those stories are of huge interest to people, because there are a lot of people that don’t connect to the holiday in the traditional way.

Dan Tabor:  Last question: Is there an update on Killing for Culture, or are you planning to pursue more narrative work next?

Kier-La Janisse: I’m definitely working on Killing for Culture next. I’ve already started interviews — we began shooting in early October; we did a shoot in the UK. We’ll be doing concentrated shoots in several cities, bringing regional interviewees to a single location. That’s actually my big project for next year.

Next year is Severin Films’ 20th anniversary — they’re producing The Haunted Season and Killing for Culture — so they have a lot planned. My hope is to finish Killing for Culture in time, so it can come out for the anniversary celebrations.

Dan Tabor: Given the current focus on dark tourism in the media, do you think the project has gained new relevance?

Kier-La Janisse: Interest in this material definitely comes in waves. And of course, the internet changed everything. When the original book was written, the internet didn’t exist. The new edition is HUGE — around 800 pages — partly because of online culture and strange forums that simply didn’t exist before.
And yes, dark tourism is absolutely a real phenomenon. I participate in it myself. I visit murder sites or locations where crimes occurred. People ask why, and I rarely have a good answer. I think a lot of people who engage in this stuff — even if they’re not “judging” themselves — still wonder what draws them to it.

There was a whole generation of “gorehounds” who tape-traded the harshest films they could find. I was one of them. Now I’m not like that anymore, but I’m still fascinated by who I was back then. Killing for Culture is a chance to explore that impulse — the why behind our morbid curiosities.

Dan Tabor: Thank you so much for chatting with me again. Hopefully we’ll talk next year when the new film drops.

Kier-La Janisse: Sounds good. Thank you!