Principal photography has wrapped on THE OCCUPANT OF THE ROOM, the narrative debut of Kier-La Janisse, director of the SXSW award-winning documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, and author of the pioneering horror memoir House of Psychotic Women. The film, a special in the tradition of the BBC’s Ghost Stories for Christmas, will be ready for markets and festivals this fall.
Adapted for the screen by Janisse, the film is based on the classic chiller of the same name by Algernon Blackwood about a schoolteacher whose late-night arrival at a hotel in the Alps without a reservation leaves him with no option but to accept the room of a missing hotel guest — leading to a sleepless night full of strange and uncanny occurrences.
The film stars multi-hyphenate Don McKellar (most recently co-showrunner of The Sympathizer with Park Chan-Wook and starring Robert Downey, Jr.), with supporting roles by Ben Petrie (BlackBerry, Dead Lover) and Delphine Roussell (The ABCs of Death 2: “Z is for Zygote”), and features cinematography by Karim Hussain (Infinity Pool, Possessor). The film was produced by Ruby Mannequin Films’ Liane Cunje (Anything That Moves) and Shannon Hanmer (In a Violent Nature), as well as Janisse’s own company, Spectacular Optical. David Gregory and Carl Daft of Severin Films and Rob Cotterill of Yer Dead Productions are Executive Producers.