Suburban scares: Round Lake Beach haunted house, Gurnee director team for ‘Haunt Season’

Before he had a script for his debut horror film, even before he had a story, Gurnee filmmaker Jake Jarvi had a location: Round Lake Beach’s Realm of Terror haunted house, whose owner Stephen Kristof shares Jarvi’s affinity for scary movies.

The pair bonded several years ago after meeting on a project for Jarvis’ boss, multi-instrumentalist and YouTube content creator Rob Scallon.

“I said, ‘If you ever want to make a horror film, I have a place,’” said Kristof, referring to his long-running haunted house.

“Next thing I knew, he had written a script and brought it to me,” said Kristof who also plays a haunted house owner in “Haunt Season” which opened Friday in Los Angeles and begins streaming on demand Tuesday. (The Chicago screening is Oct. 21, at the Davis Theater, 4614 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago.)

“It was weird being a haunted house owner and auditioning for the role of a haunted house owner,” he said laughing. “It was a fun experience and a lot more challenging than I thought it was going to be.”

The first-time film actor and coproducer says “Haunt Season” is not a traditional horror flick.

“It’s a smart and charming movie, despite the fact it’s dripping with blood,” he said.

Jarvi knew Kristof’s two decades of experience made him a great scare actor, but “I didn’t know he would be so good at dialogue scenes. I’m so happy he was so good because he has always wanted to do movies just like me.”

Jarvi wrote the movie — about an aspiring actor who joins a haunted house cast whose members are mysteriously disappearing — despite having never stepped inside Kristof’s haunt.

“It’s a story about people with creative aspirations,” said the Lake Bluff native. “That’s what haunters are. Even more than the spooky stuff, they love entertaining people.”

Having a working haunt in which to film was invaluable, Jarvi said. He relied partly on the expertise of Kristof and his colleagues, including makeup FX artist (and Kristof’s wife) Stevie Calabrese, for the movie, which commenced shooting in August 2022.

“We shot all the haunt interiors in August and September so we wouldn’t get in their way,” said Jarvi, who filmed several additional scenes outside the haunted house after it opened for the 2022 season.

“Haunt Season” offers a new spin on the haunted house subgenre in that the killer attacks the haunted house actors, not the haunted house patrons, Jarvi said. The film also upends the slasher film trope of characters being unlikable.

“That’s not my scene,” he said. “I don’t want to spend time with (unlikable) people … I don’t want to sit around waiting for the killer to show up. I want to be around people I want to spend time with.”

That’s what “Scream” had going for it, characters you wanted to hang out with, said Jarvi, a lifelong film fan who discovered slasher movies in high school.

“That’s what I wanted to populate ‘Haunt Season’ with,” he added.

Scallon and fellow YouTube creator Craig Benzine — a video producer, musician and vlogger known for his WheezyWaiter channel — helped finance “Haunt Season.”

Both men appear in the film and Scallon composed music for the soundtrack.

“Rob and Craig said ‘OK, if you’ve always wanted to do this, we’ll be the first investors. We’ll also put our names behind it and point our audience toward it,’” said Jarvi, who raised more than half of the roughly $200,000 filming cost online.

Kristof said making the movie offered him and his fellow scare artists an opportunity to share their art with a larger audience.

While he has no intention of leaving the haunted house biz, “if Jake came to me with another project, I’d have a hard time saying no to him.”

Jarvi hopes at the end of the film, horror lovers sit back and say “that was a good time.”

As for those who aren’t really into bloody slasher films?

“They only have to close their eyes a few times,” he said with a smile.