Curses! Alum Jeff Dixon on Gateway Horror and His New AppleTV+ Show

Courtesy of AppleTV+

A horror-inspired family show may seem like an oxymoron, but for writer and UofU Department of Film & Media Arts alum Jeff Dixon (BA 1999), it’s about time for a family television show to lean into scarier territory.

Jeff Dixon (BA 1999)

Enter Curses!, Dixon’s new animated television show premiering today (October 27th, 2023), on AppleTV+. The show follows the Vanderhouven family, who, when dad Alex gets turned to stone due to a multi-generational curse, must return the magical artifacts stolen by their ancestors in order to keep the family together.

Curses! began with Dixon’s desire to write gateway horror like the stuff he loved when he was a kid; things like Gremlins and E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial and Goonies. “The reason I thought gateway horror was something I really wanted to do was because when I was a kid, growing up in Utah, I would test myself by watching horror things,” Dixon said. “I watched them and I’d be scared, and then the credits would roll… and I’d have this sense of accomplishment. And then I’d watch something maybe a little scarier.” Dixon found that watching scary movies gave him a huge boost of confidence, and that watching people overcome their fears on the screen helped him overcome fears himself. “I actually found a lot of growth that way as a kid.”

So when Dixon his and friend Jim Cooper were walking their kids to and from school, it was natural that the subject of “gateway horror” would come up. Cooper, also a writer, wrote primarily family and comedy stories, and Dixon had a horror/thriller background. How could they combine their two expertises into a new gateway horror that the whole family could enjoy? They soon landed on a concept and began writing.

Courtesy of AppleTV+

Writing for animation was a new thing for Dixon, but as a writer, he’s always been prepared for anything. This started when he was a student at the U. Dixon remembers his F&MAD educational experience as having a strong independent filmmaking ethos. “Everything there was kind of a run and gun mentality,” he recalled. “When you’re forced to do all the different roles, you learn all the different roles a lot better.” This sort of scrappy attitude had him prepared for all kinds of experiences, and taught him to view challenges as opportunities to learn.

For example, earlier in his career Dixon spent some time writing for the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). “One of the things that I would do is write for very specific wrestlers,” he recalled. “Writing for live television you have to time everything… and there were certain wrestlers that literally couldn’t say big words. So I had to make my dialogue very succinct to both meet the timeline and to get it so they could say it.” He’s carried this throughout the rest of his career: “Whenever you need three lines of dialogue… it’s better served in one.”

Courtesy of AppleTV+

So while animation presented a challenge, it also presented an opportunity: Dixon wasn’t constricted by the budget and feasibility of live-action filmmaking. “When you’re writing for animation you can actually set that aside a little bit.” And having a writing partner helped a lot; Dixon found that he and Cooper’s sensibilities balanced each other out. “Anytime I had a tendency to go a little more dark and scary he’d pull me back,” he said. And anytime Cooper leaned more zany, Dixon would reel him in. “We just found that sweet spot.”

Additionally, coming from outside the world of animation and children’s entertainment meant that Dixon didn’t have preconceived notions of how things should be. “There was something we discovered a little bit later in the process… we are one of the very few kids entertainment shows that has the parents involved. Most kids entertainment has a reason that the parents are away, and the kids go on the adventures themselves,” he said. “Later, a lot of people in the animation world were like ‘you realize how strange this is, right?’” However, for Dixon and Cooper, having the whole family involved was the only thing that made sense. After all, Dixon said, “This is a family curse! The kids are going to want the mom there, and the mom’s going to want to the kids there. They’ve got to work together.”

Courtesy of AppleTV+

This went hand in hand with another key part of the shows sensibility: never to talk down to kids. “Kids can understand,” Dixon said. “Kids know when you’re talking down to them. They can follow a storyline over the course of an entire season… They can handle some scares.” And, Dixon emphasized, they can handle the social issues addressed in the show. Specifically, the theft of cultural artifacts.

“Our joke was always that [Curses!] is ‘Indiana Jones in reverse,’” Dixon shared. “That instead of going around and getting artifacts, we had all the artifacts and we had to bring them back…[Indiana Jones] would always say ‘That belongs in a museum!’ But even that sentence is so dated now.” Dixon pointed to increasing cultural awareness that sometimes museums aren’t where artifacts truly belong— from the Elgin Marbles to the Rosetta Stone, many believe repatriation is long past due. While writing the show, Dixon said, “a week did not go by where there wasn’t another article about some museum returning a collection… so we knew we were tapping into something other people really cared about as well.” Additionally, Dixon wanted the show to make it clear that “it’s never as easy as just returning something. You have to realize that when something was taken, something in that culture was damaged.” The show focuses on practicing empathy for the cultures shown, and making reparations for the harm caused by the characters’ ancestors.

What started as pushing himself to watch scarier and scarier movies has led to Dixon pushing himself intro trying—and succeeding— in creating an animated family show. So, his advice? “Try everything.” For Dixon, at least, trying everything— from horror movies as a kid to writing for the WWE— has paid off.

You can watch Curses! on AppleTv+. And if that’s not scary enough for you, Dixon shared some other recommendations:

Suspiria (1977) - “My favorite horror movie of all time.”

Frailty (2001) - “It’s a really fantastic movie that I feel doesn’t get the love it should.”

If you’d like more horror movie recommendations, Dixon publishes recommendations on his blog Scary Horror Writer.