From the Office to the Basement: How a Last-Minute Change Shaped Stephen Graham Jones’ Episode

Some shoots go exactly as planned. This was not one of them.

As Director Philip Gelatt recounts, the team arrived knowing they’d have Stephen Graham Jones read Father Son Holy Rabbit, a story as unsettling as it is unforgettable, and had planned to shoot it in Stephen’s office (you can see bits of it in the episode). But once they were there, Stephen casually mentioned that Dear Final Girls was always a fan favorite. A slasher story. A love letter to horror’s last survivors. It needed a proper stage.

Enter: the basement.

The team hadn’t planned on it. But the moment they saw it—that dimly lit, vaguely menacing, "oh shit, someone might have been murdered down here” basement—they knew it was perfect. It only took an hour to shape the shadows, adjust the lights, and navigate a few interruptions from a particularly opinionated water heater.

And then, in the edit, Dear Final Girls didn’t just become part of the episode. It became the guiding story of the whole piece.

Good to be malleable. Good to follow inspiration when it knocks (or creaks open a basement door).

First Word On Horror is filled with moments like this—unscripted, unexpected, but entirely meant to be. Watch the episode now and step into the dark with us.