Exclusive Interview: Emma Jean Sutherland Talks ‘Letters To Satan Claus’

‘Tis the season to be frightened! Later this week SyFy is premiering their all-new holiday film Letters To Satan Claus. The film is a holiday-themed horror-comedy that is sure to bring plenty of holiday cheer to anyone that watches it.

Ahead of the film’s release this week, we were lucky enough to sit down with the director of Letters To Satan Claus, Emma Jean Sutherland, to talk about her inspirations in making the film and her time in the holiday movie industry!

You can check out our full exclusive interview below!

Geek Anything: Can you tell us a bit about your new movie Letters To Satan Claus? 

Emma Jean Sutherland: So ‘Letters To Satan Claus’ is a SyFy original film. It follows Holly Frost who is going back to her hometown that she had avoided for most of her adult life because of a tragedy that had occurred when she was a child. She had accidentally written a letter to Satan instead of to Santa, and when she gets back to town as a hardened city girl, Satan comes back and starts a killing spree! 

GA: That sounds fantastic! What attracted you to this particular project? 

EJS: I had met with Sam Levine, she is a producer on the project. I just think she is outstanding and we have some mutual friends, so we were trying to find the right project to work on together. I love horror, and I love-love horror-comedy. One of my favorite films and a big inspiration for this movie is ‘Gremlins’. I think that tonally, Ann Tipper (the cinematographer on the film) and I took a lot of beats and looks from ‘Gremlins’ in a big way. We are both big fans!

GA: That actually brings me right to my next question! Were there any other major films that you would say inspired your work on ‘Letters To Satan Claus‘? Besides ‘Gremlins‘?

EJS: I mean I am just nutty for ‘Gremlins’, I love them so much. But there are some amazing holiday horror movies around! I try to track them down every Christmas and try to find some new obscure ones. For this film, in particular, I watched ‘Rare Exports’. ‘Krampus’ was a big influence from a production company side of things. I know I watched ‘Krampus’ quite a few times. ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ for sure, for some of the aesthetic. There is an abundance! And there is an abundance of Canadian films, like ‘Black Christmas’. The original ‘Black Christmas’ was filmed in Canada. We have kind of a legacy of weird camp here. 

GA: Canada is just great for that! There are so many fun projects that film up there. On top of being much cheaper than filming in the U.S., there is just something about it that really captures the magic. It’s like “New Hollywood,” basically. 

EJS: Yeah we call ourselves “Hollywood North” for sure! And I’m eternally grateful that our government subsidizes film in a big way. They have a number of tax credits, and a number of amazing films are made way far north because the tax credits get even bigger and it helps those communities. Like I went up to Sudbury not that long ago and they have programs there to help locals learn how to work in film! Although most of them are pretty accomplished in their own right.

GA: Would you say that ‘Letters To Satan Claus‘ is more of a horror movie with Christmas themes or a Christmas movie with horror elements?

EJS: Oh that’s tough! I would say that it’s a comedy. Like, the forefront is comedy, and there is not a single frame in the film that you are looking at that doesn’t scream “Christmas.” That was part of our mandate. But what a tough question! 

GA: So it’s a healthy balance of both horror movie and holiday movie?

EJS: The monster is amazing! It was built by The Butchershop and played by Jana Peck, and all of the kills in the film are either Christmas or winter-themed. 

GA: I love when holiday horror films really stick with the holiday theme rather than just traipsing the holiday around a bunch of random violence. It seems to happen quite a bit. 

EJS: I mean, I don’t mind because I get to put them on my Christmas list. Like we watched ‘Maniac’ the other night. The original ‘Maniac’, not the Elijah Wood version. And it mentions Christmas like once in passing, so I don’t really mind Christmas being a backdrop. But this movie has definitely got Christmas in the forefront! 

This movie is really a parody of a Hallmark film. We’ve been calling it a “Hellmark”! I’ve had the opportunity to work on a ton of Hallmark-y harlequin style films. Not as a director, but as a first assistant director in the Christmas genre. So everything is built around that. All of our production design, our camera movements, our lighting choices, our score; it all pokes fun at it, but it’s done from a place of love and parody.

GA: That actually once again brings me to my next question! You’ve worked on a number of Holiday-themed films in the past, making Letters To Satan Claus your sixth! Is there something specific about holiday films that reels you in or is it just coincidence? 

EJS: You know, there are just so many of them! The market for holiday-romance films is massive. I was working with a company just north of Toronto, and they had made maybe ten Christmas movies that year. They were dropping them off to places like UpTV and SuperChannel. Some of these stations are like “we will take as many as you can physically make in a year”. Everybody who worked on this film has done at least one. Or two. Or a billion. Christmas movies are made up here quick, dirty, and cheap. But I think that is what makes this movie special! 

We follow the rules of what a Hallmark movie wardrobe is allowed to be. Kendra Terpenning is our wardrobe designer and she nailed it! If you take a close look at our Aunt Becky, who is the town baker, you’ll notice that all of the buttons on her shirt and sleeves are all gingerbread men. Everybody really took it to eleven because we’ve all worked on them! We all know the genre, so it’s a side of tongue-in-cheek respect for it because a lot of us built our careers on them. 

GA: So it’s kind of like a chance to poke fun at the industry you love working in?

EJS: Yes! 

GA: Moving right along, you both act and direct. What is your process like for approaching new projects? Which do you prefer to do? 

EJS: Oh, I haven’t been an actor for a very long time! I definitely wanted to be an actress when I started working in film, after I had made it onto a couple of sets, I realized how much I loved the process. As soon as I got a real glimpse into the process, I really wanted to get behind the camera. I do think that it is helpful to have done a few projects in front of the camera in my process of talking to actors because I have some understanding of what their process is like. But I am by no means what I’d call a “professional actor”! I’ve been behind the camera for the majority of my career. 

In terms of picking projects? All I really want to make is horror movies. It’s all I’ve ever really wanted to make and this is my first horror movie! And although it’s a horror-comedy, I am over-the-moon excited about it! SyFy is the quintessential place to start and I’m just so grateful! But I got to cut my teeth on a lot of other stuff! Like I did two seasons of  ‘Ponysitters Club’ for Netflix, and I did ‘After The Storm’ which is like a Hallmark harlequinny romance film. I feel like each little piece is the next stepping stone.

EJS: You absolutely will laugh if you love horror-comedies or if you love Hallmark movies. That’s my number one hope; that people that love the straight-up holiday romance made for TV movies take a watch. I feel like they’re incredibly represented there. 

The other reason people should check it out is that we did a big push for representation in this film. Mike Zara, who is the snappy, smart, writer behind this film, is a gay man and wanted to see that represented on film. So we have a ton of representation all throughout the film! I’m non-binary. Satan, we decided to make non-binary, and I think it’s important to see these things on screen! We have trans actors and queerness both in front of and behind the cameras, and it was incredibly important to us to have that representation. 

GA: Of course! Representation is huge! Especially in film, representation is super important and it’s fantastic to hear that it’s such a big part of this movie!

Be sure to tune in later this week for Letters To Satan Claus which is set to premiere on Saturday, December 19th, 2020 on SyFy! It is also going to pop up for streaming on the SyFy website on Sunday, December 20th, so if you miss the first airing you’ve still got an easy way to watch it!