A schoolteacher’s 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.

Based on the classic chiller by Algernon Blackwood, The Occupant of the Room is 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, 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.