Why Office Workers Should Fear the 'Holiday Reaper'

An HR rep gets scary—more than usual, that is

Run! GET OUT! Take your holiday leave already!

U.K. Group travel outfit WeRoad harnesses grungy horror imagery, reminding viewers to “use or lose” their annual paid time off.

HR = “The Holiday Reaper” in a :50 from Dude London and Spindle director Daniel Liakh.

The tale takes place in a creepy high-rise tower. We watch skeletal claws peck at a blood-splattered keyboard. A desk-jockey struggles helplessly while chained to her workstation. She’s “tortured by the holiday posts of colleagues who got away.”

We see the pics, too. So sunny-smiley. Such ghastly sights make our heroine’s eyes run crimson—which might be a tad NSFW or triggering for some.

In fact, the whole thing’s pretty intense in a retro fright-flick-trailer kind of way:

Play

Bob from Legal’s spaghetti-fueled antics in the break-room are especially disturbing. A week off won’t do. His officemates should quit!

“When we discovered how many annual leave days were going unused each year, we were truly horrified,” says Dude creative director Tomás Gianelli O’Ryan. “So, we asked ourselves: What would happen if we made this fact even more horrifying? We hope ‘The Holiday Reaper’ scares people enough to go OOO before it’s too late.”

To reach folks in their 20s, 30s and 40s, the team strove to “create a campaign about a topic that people can relate to through the context of the Halloween theme,” while not trading in pumpkins and other holiday cliches, WeRoad marketing manager Justyna Chlopecka tells Muse.

Director Liakh adds: “Never in my life did I think I could make a trailer for a B-movie that doubles as an ad. It was a proper DIY-get-hands-dirty type of project, just like moviemaking in the old days. The breathing Tupperware of pasta—which was a rig our art director Macy built and operated—will haunt me forever.”