The creator of Shudder’s new Christmas anthology about spooky Christmas traditions

If you’ve been wandering around Shudder looking for something to add a little spookiness to your seasonal viewing, you may have noticed this. The enchanted season—a new anthology series from showrunner Kier-La Janisse, a genre expert whose many works include a notable film theory book House of psychotic women and recent popular horror documentary. Dark forests and haunted days.

The first entry, To say goodbye you finally arriveis written and directed by Sean Hogan; It’s about a group of men carrying a coffin to be buried and being haunted (literally) by past misdeeds as they make the journey. To learn more about The enchanted seasonwhich will bring a new entry to Shudder in the coming years, we spoke with Janisse via video chat.

Cheryl Eddy, io9: I’ve read your book. Yuletide Terror: Christmas horror in film and televisionwhich offers a wonderful history of the genre and the traditions behind it. But for people who may not have read it, I’ll borrow one of the chapter titles and ask, “Why the Christmas ghost story?”

Kier-La Janisse: It’s interesting because Derek Johnston, who wrote that chapter, years ago wrote a book called enchanted seasonsfrom which my title is completely torn (laughs). When I was doing the Christmas horror book, there are hundreds of movies in it, but most of them are obviously connected to Christmas in some way. Either they’re about Christmas or they take place at Christmas, or there are Christmas decorations visible so you can justify it as a Christmas movie.

But many of the BBC programs A ghost story for Christmas (episodes) from the 1970s had nothing to do with Christmas. So when I put them in the book, I thought, American audiences aren’t going to understand why these movies are here because they’re like, “What do they have to do with Christmas?” I asked Derek if he would write a chapter talking about where this tradition comes from, of telling Christmas ghost stories and the idea of ​​Christmas programming; not necessarily the programming itself, but the fact that you choose to program at that moment.

It dates back centuries and comes from the oldest tradition of telling winter tales. (When) people gathered around the hearth or around the fire, and came up with entertainment to pass the time while trying to keep warm. Winter Tales were what they were called because they were those spooky tales told (when) the days are very short and (the season) is giving way to a new year. There is this idea of ​​liminal boundaries between one state of being and another. They told these ghost stories and then over time, once we started writing literature, we started seeing references to them in (places like the works of) Shakespeare and Marlowe.

Then, of course, in the Victorian era, there is Charles Dickens. A Christmas storywhich was hugely important, not only for the idea of ​​the Christmas ghost story, but also for Christmas in general. It was part of Queen Victoria’s mandate to repopularize Christmas. Charles Dickens, writing that story when he did, was a big part of not only solidifying this idea that Christmas is the time when we tell ghost stories, but that this is the time of year when we have Christmas, because Before Queen Victoria, there was a kind of fallen as a popular festival. A Christmas story It became important in creating a lot of these ideas and mythologies that we have around Christmas: Christmas tree ornaments and all these accessories that we associate with Christmas that came out of that period.

The Christmas ghost story became strongly associated with that period and, in addition, there were so many Victorian ghost story writers…there are tons and tons of them. And then, when radio arrived, they began to make radio adaptations of A Christmas story and other types of holiday ghost stories. Then, that became television.

So the BBC was always up and doing ghost stories for Christmas in one form or another. In the 1970s, Lawrence Gordon Clark, who was a director, proposed this idea; He didn’t foresee it being a series. He proposed a film adapting the story of MR James. The Barchester Stalls. He used an earlier adaptation of an MR James story as proof that this could be popular; Jonathan Miller had made an adaptation called Whistle and I will come to you in the late ’60s, which is fantastic. And it wasn’t made for Christmas. It was made for a different time of year, a different program.

But Lawrence Gordon Clark took it and said, “Look how good this is and imagine if we could do something like this for Christmas.” So he did The Barchester stalls. It was a huge success, so each year he got permission to continue making another one. And so it became a series; Throughout the 70s, there would be a different episode.

And that’s what my series The enchanted season is based on the idea of ​​an annual ghost story movie that is released every year. And I know that for American audiences, using the word “series” to describe something that only has one episode for a year is strange, but it builds on that tradition. It’s basically an ongoing Christmas special, where there is a new installment every year. That tradition still exists in the UK. So this series is just part of that larger tradition.

io9: How did you decide To say goodbye you finally arrive like the first entry? How did writer-director Sean Hogan get involved?

Janisse: Sean Hogan is a filmmaker, book writer, playwright… he does all kinds of things. He’s incredibly talented, really great with period dialogue. So I asked him (and he can do a lot with a little, which is important because we have very low budgets for these things) if he would do a short film originally for Severin Films’ folk horror collection. We were making our new box, All Ghosts Be Ours Volume Two. The first box had my documentary (Dark forests and haunted days) in it: I had a new movie. And we said, “We don’t have an equivalent of that for the second box.” So we asked Sean if he would make a movie about it.

I gave him a couple of instructions for this. The idea of ​​it being set on a path of corpses was something that came from one of the instructions I gave him.

But even before the movie was over, I remembered the idea Shudder’s Sam Zimmerman and I had more than a decade ago when we were working together for Fangoria magazine. At the time we were trying to get Fangoria to make a ghost story for Christmas that we could debut on the website, and the publisher wouldn’t accept it. But we wanted Sean Hogan to make that movie.

So when Sean was making this movie for me, before it was even finished, I said to David Gregory (of Severin Films), “What if we can pitch this to Shudder about being part of a series of ghost stories for Christmas?” ?” And David said, “Sure, do it.”

And then Sam and I had a conversation, and it was surprising because it was this idea that we had that wasn’t approved years and years ago. We were so excited that we thought, “Let’s do it now!” And that’s really how it happened. In a way, it was a very long-gestating project, but then it was like everything clicked, it was like this whole thing could actually work, you know? I’m so glad Sean Hogan made the first one because he was the filmmaker we were talking about doing the Fangoria one all those years ago.

I love the movie. It turned out very well. He did it with a small crew in the UK and, you can’t tell from watching the film, but it was very cold and raining while they were doing it. They were in very adverse conditions, but I think it turned out very well.

io9: To say goodbye you finally arrive It’s very traditional, very much in the style of older films. Is that something we’ll see as the series continues?

Janisse: I don’t know if they will be black and white, but they will all be, period. They won’t necessarily be from the same period, but they are supposed to relate to the past in some way. The guidelines I’ve given the filmmakers are definitely nothing after 1960. You can go back to the Middle Ages if you want, or you can go all the way to the ’50s, you know, but it has to feel (like a period piece). That was always the tradition.

It’s interesting when A ghost story for Christmas First played in the 70s, the last two episodes created modern stories; they were not adapted like the old Victorian ghost stories. They made new stories, modern stories set in modern settings. And the public of the time rebelled: many of them received bad reviews. Now people love those episodes because now they’re old, now they’re period pieces. But back when they were new, people said, “You’re ruining tradition!” So I decided I was going to keep the parameters. It is (a pretty broad time period), but they will still be period pieces of some kind.

io9: Can you tell us anything about any of the other entries?

Janisse: The only thing I can say is that I am making one of them (as my first narrative film). I’ve asked other people, they’re writing their scripts now; I will give you more details when the time approaches.

io9: I’m a big fan of Dark forests and haunted daysyour popular horror documentary. Are these Christmas ghost stories part of the folk horror tradition?

Janisse: It definitely crosses over because of that oral tradition aspect. Like many of the BBC’s Christmas ghost stories, you’d probably call them more gothic horror than folklore, but it depends. Something like A warning for the curious and Whistle and I will come to you You could call it folklore because they’re definitely unearthing an artifact from the past that carries all this baggage with it. There are definitely folk horror elements in some of them, but others are definitely more in the gothic realm. But I think Christmas ghost stories, just by the fact that they’re tied to this oral tradition, makes them a little more connected to folklore.

io9: And you mentioned a couple of titles, but for people who watch the first episode of The enchanted season and they want to see more in that sense, what do you recommend they look for?

Janisse: Well, Shudder has licensed it from Jonathan Miller. Whistle and I will come to you. Absolutely start with that. And they have licensed it from Lawrence Gordon Clark. A ghost story for Christmas since the 1970s. Those are the ones my series references, so I would recommend watching them all; there are like nine different options of what you can see. I don’t know if they have The stone ribbon in shudder (Editor’s Note: They do it!) but The stone ribbon was broadcast for Christmas. It has nothing to do with Christmas, but was aired as part of Christmas programming, like a Christmas ghost story. And that’s great too.

Look To say goodbye you finally arrivethe first episode of The enchanted seasonon Shudder now.

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