The Christmas TV movie director who wanted to make horror

Justin G. Dyck is a Canadian director from Barrie, Ontario, who made his name on Christmas TV movies while trying to make a horror film. By his own count he directed about 30 Christmas, romance and family films before he got his horror film, Anything for Jackson, made in 2020. The Austin Chronicle counted 29 feature credits in six years.

His timing matters. Hallmark announced a record 40 new Christmas movies for 2019, up from 38 the year before, and Lifetime ordered a record 28. Networks needed directors who could deliver a warm, snowy romance on schedule, and Dyck became one of them. Relay has 11 of his films. Ten are below, and his family fantasy A Witches' Ball is in the witch movies list.

How did a horror fan end up making Christmas movies?

Dyck and Keith Cooper, a screenwriter he has worked with for years, wanted to make a horror movie together. The first script they were handed was about a kid who played soccer with a monkey. Dyck has said he had no feature to his name, so he made the monkey film first. That led to a talking-animal film, and then to Christmas movies.

He calls the work "a really weird day job" and is candid about it. The films were repetitive and somewhat predictable, he told PopHorror: "We were really making a product." He sums up the formula as "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back," and says he has made so many that he has a good handle on it. Family and romance films, he told Daily Dead, seem to be in unlimited demand, and directing so many in a short time made him a significantly better filmmaker.

It took him eight years to get the horror film made. Anything for Jackson, written by Cooper, is about an elderly couple who kidnap a pregnant woman in a Satanic ritual to bring back their dead grandson. It premiered at the Fantasia festival and was released on Shudder, the horror streaming service. Dyck said he could bring "the organization from my day job" to horror.

What are his films on Relay?

A Very Country Christmas (2017)

Greyston Holt plays a country star in hiding and Bea Santos a busy single mother who finds him. It premiered on UPtv on 12 November 2017, from a screenplay by Cooper based on a Harlequin romance novel. It became a series: A Very Country Wedding followed in 2019 and A Very Country Christmas Homecoming in 2020.

Drama

Christmas Wedding Planner (2017)

A wedding planner, played by Jocelyn Hudon, has her cousin's lavish wedding upended by a private investigator, played by Stephen Huszar. It went to Netflix, and critics were harsh: Pajiba called it wildly bad and Common Sense Media gave it 2 out of 5.

Romance

Best Friend from Heaven

The strangest film here. Kris Kristofferson, the country singer and actor, voices Gabe, a dog killed before his owner's wedding who comes back as a ghost to get it back on track.

Drama

Christmas with a View (2018)

Kaitlyn Leeb plays Clara, who works at a ski resort that has hired Shane Roarke, a celebrity chef played by Scott Cavalheiro, for Christmas.

Romance

More from Dyck

Leeb returns in Christmas with a Prince: Becoming Royal (2019), a sequel in which a doctor plans a royal wedding. A Christmas Village (2018), also written by Cooper, sends a public relations expert to save a failing Santa's Village. Operation Christmas List follows a 12-year-old scheming for a bike. My Perfect Romance (2018), Art of Falling in Love (2019) and Love, Alaska (2019) are his romances away from Christmas.

What to watch first

A Very Country Christmas is the natural first pick: it is the one that grew into a series. Best Friend from Heaven has the oddest premise of the 10.