The BBC’s anthology series A Ghost Story for Christmas turned holiday-themed horror tales into a TV tradition that built on the paranormal legacy of literary greats such as Charles Dickens and M.R. James. Once a year, viewers would get a self-contained adaptation of a ghost story that tapped into the cold atmosphere of the Christmas season, where lost spirits and macabre hauntings would afflict people navigating loneliness and depression in the jolliest time of year (allegedly).
Shudder’s The Haunted Season is honoring this tradition with new horror stories of its own running one the same once-a-year release schedule, in the month of December. Last year saw its first episode in the form of a tale called “To Fire You Come at Last,” a formidable debut that succeeds more than it stumbles in setting the tone for the series. This year’s entry is far more impressive. It’s an adaptation of an Algernon Blackwood story called “The Occupant of the Room,” directed by documentarian Kier-La Jannise. While a bit uneven script-wise, it is a moody treat that conjures up some terrifying imagery.
The episode centers on a man called Minturn (Don McKellar), a lonely man that arrives at an isolated hotel in the Alps late at night looking for a room. He’s told they’re all booked up, but a last-minute decision by the staff nets him a spot that belongs to a woman who’s been missing for two days. He has to agree to vacate it if she returns. Minturn accepts, but then the room doesn’t feel all that inviting, or all that empty. Eerie sounds, the potential return of the original occupant, and the man’s troubled past all converge for a stay that’ll result in an especially dreadful memory after the night’s done.
Clocking in at some 33 minutes, “The Occupant of the Room” is quite economical with its storytelling, wasting little time in putting Minturn through the gauntlet the night has in store for him. Don McKellar plays the character with a sense of fragile calm, as if Minturn is trying hard to keep his personal torment in check. There’s an unease about him that hints rather explicitly at some form of melancholy coursing through his thoughts. It’s a feeling that slowly builds until the character has no choice other than to confront it or be consumed by it.
Kier-La Jannise does an excellent job capturing this inner turmoil on a visual level. The room Minturn is staying at drips with dread, aided by a clever use of opaque greens and inky blacks that give just enough definition to the surroundings. The idea isn’t to put the character in a void, shapeless and disorienting. It’s to allow the room to represent his state of mind and how he fills it with ghosts of his own.
There’s a particular sequence, an emotional point of no return, that unfolds in a series of scratched out images and abstract shapes that is perhaps the episode’s crowning achievement. It’s a payoff well worth the time spent trying to get a read on Minturn and the reasons why he happened to be at a hotel way off the beaten path on a dark winter night.
Jannise, who also wrote the script, showcases a deep understanding of pacing and buildup here. She knows when to dial up the horror to push viewers further into mystery, hopefully conjuring new questions about the main character in the process.
If there’s one thing that warrants criticism from the episode it’s how closely guarded the script keeps Minturn’s personal struggles. From the beginning, it’s clear that the character is in a state of melancholy. That he arrives at the hotel by his lonesome feeds this, especially in terms of the heaviness that accompanies his presence. Unfortunately, there’s not much else given beyond this to get the wheels turning on who Minturn is and what he might be running away from (literally or figuratively).
We do get more on the character later on, but the revelations are all kind of dumped on us suddenly when they could’ve been sprinkled throughout. It’s not bad enough to bring the episode down, but it is noticeable. As it stands, “The Occupant of The Room” is a much sharper mood piece than it is a carefully structured narrative experience. It’s such an excellent mood piece, though, that its shortcomings barely dampen the experience.
The Haunted Season is two episodes deep now in establishing a new chapter in the storied holiday horror tradition. Jannise’s “The Occupant of the Room” is certainly the more interesting and visually arresting of the two. It’s a sign of greater things to come, a firm foot forward in the process of guaranteeing there are also a few nightmares wrapped up under the Christmas tree.
Episode 2 of The Haunted Season is now playing on Shudder.
