Following Werewolf Santa, writer/director Airell Anthony Hayles returns to the festive season with a creepy shocker in which a social media streamer obtains a supposedly cursed advent calendar. We caught up with the busy indie filmmaker to learn more about Advent…

STARBURST: Could you tell us a little bit about the film?

Airell Anthony Hayles: Advent is a ghost story. It’s about an advent calendar that, when you open the doors, you undertake certain challenges in the build-up to Christmas. The folklore behind this advent calendar is that you invoke the devil to take your soul on Christmas Day. And where this came from was in 2016 and 17, there was the ‘blue whale’ game, which was a suicide cult thing that really freaked me out. It began in Russia, I believe, and it was taking teenagers who were emotionally vulnerable and depressed and leading them through these challenges and to commit suicide on the 50th day of those particular challenges. It scared me so much that I wanted to put that idea into an advent calendar at Christmas but add a supernatural element because it seemed to me to be an evil and demonic process anyway. It seemed like it’d be more digestible as a ghost story to take that idea and examine just the evil behind that, behind tasks like don’t sleep tonight and don’t talk to anybody all day. How people were becoming cut off from anything good in life to the point where they took their own life at the end of the 50 days, putting that into the 24 days in our case of the advent calendar, because there’s no 25th day because you don’t live to see it, it seemed to me to be a very freaky idea.

There’s an element of Krampus in there as well.

I love Krampus. There’s the idea of a ghost, unseen Krampus. We don’t give too much away, but more of an idea of the notion of shadowy scratches on the door. Kind of like the calendar bringing this demonic Krampus spirit. Krampus was associated often with the devil as the idea of Krampus being the devil himself being invoked or invoked or over the buildup to Christmas. It used to be called The Krampus Calendar. We changed the title because you don’t have any title with the word calendar in it. It sounds like you’re at school. Well, there’s Calendar Girls, but that was a different genre [laughs]. And I thought it’s a very big mouthful, whereas the distributors rightly thought Advent kind of says the thing, and that means arrival. So it’s the arrival of a Krampus spirit through the calendar that’s going to take your soul if you go through these tasks that slowly give your soul over to him in this very nasty game that the girl in the film plays.

How did Nicholas Vince get involved?

I always try to work with Nicholas. He’s got the best voice in the world and the best person in the world. We needed an authority figure because it was a faux documentary. He plays a professor of folklore who’s taking you through it. I felt that he was doing two things here: he was talking about the narrative unfolding as he had seen it online with so many people, or having heard about what happened to Haley, our character in the film, but he also felt really guilty that he didn’t step in and help because he was very busy the Christmas that these things happen to her. So you get this double-edged sword where Nicholas is portraying the documentary side and trying to tell the narrative as clear cut as he can, but there’s this emotional weight underneath it, and I think that’s where it became really exciting for me to see Nicholas dive into the acting side, rather than being just present at this time, two aspects of the film, the documentary part and watching the documentary.

What was it like making another Christmas film after Werewolf Santa?

I love these! We’ve got one coming up called Grotto set in a Santa’s grotto. I love watching Christmas movies. That’s why I love Terrifier 3. It’s so great because you got the Christmas tree esthetic, the lights, the music. You’ll see that I used a lot of that in the film, because you don’t get this really rich visual, audio world that you get with Christmas. And I think that’s why these films work great. I love Gremlins and stuff like that. I think when you turn it into a nightmare. I think Love Actually or something would be much better with more murder, ghosts, and blood! [Laughs]

Finally, what would you want if you could have one little treat in the last box of your advent calendar?

Well, it would be a voucher for a lifetime supply of chicken madras!  I live off curry. In fact, the guy who runs the Indian restaurant I love in Kings Cross, came to the premiere of Advent. I don’t think many people bring their restaurant manager with them! That’s how much I love curry. Lots of horror movies work great with a midnight curry.

ADVENT will be available on digital platforms starting November 25th.