Directed by Andrea Schmitz and Andrea Sparacio
Art by Andrea Sparacio
Animation by Andrea Schmitz
Script adapted and narrated by Andrea Schmitz
Title Design by Andrea Sparacio
Sound Design by Andrea Schmitz
Music by Travis Knauss
Based on “The Mistletoe Bough” by Thomas Haynes Bayly

Co-director Andrea Sparacio and I are both horror fans, and when Sparacio decided to make a short film based on T.H. Bayly’s poem “The Mistletoe Bough,” I wanted in. Andrea Sparacio has been participating in my anthology Things Took a Turn for years, so I was very familiar with her style of art and humor. We exist on a very similar wavelength of beautiful spooky things. This is our first collaboration, and we are frankly psyched.

The poem "The Mistletoe Bough" is, in any form, the chilling tale of a game of hide and seek gone horribly wrong. A new bride flees her Christmastime wedding to hide in a trunk – either playfully, or overwhelmed from the party – and locks herself in by accident. Her family, friends, and husband search for her to no avail, only for her corpse to be discovered moldering there after many years have passed.

As we sought to reinterpret the text by T.H. Bayly, we noticed that the story always frames the bride at fault for the mistake. What of her husband, who searched for years and could not find her? In our research, we found that mistletoe – a holiday plant famous for its kissing tradition – is by nature a parasitic and poisonous plant, and asked the question: to whom did the title refer?

As women in horror, we know true fear extends beyond blood. We know that oldies-but-goodies always have another side to them, and perhaps it’s our job to look closer at what could have been. We hope to make the audience look closer in the same way, and that maybe it wasn't “just the wind” that caused the chill up their spine.

For this project, Andrea Sparacio created the initial boards, which I translated into an animatic. We updated it several times as our narrative changed and twisted into a new form. Andrea Sparacio created all of the assets in her unique style in Photoshop, and I would rig the characters, and composite and animate everything in AfterEffects. By the time we neared the end, I looped in my regular composer Travis Knauss, who delivered the beautiful score, and I took on sound design duty myself. Andrea Sparacio designed the amazing title card and credits. We’re so, so proud of how this turned out!