It seems that there are more horrors in Spirit Halloween than over-priced costumes and cheap wigs. For anyone who doesn’t know, Spirit Halloween is a chain of pop-up Halloween stores that set up shop in available retail space year after year. For many, it has become a tradition to go to Spirit Halloween each October, whether it be to buy a costume or just get in the holiday spirit.
A teaser was recently released for “Spirit Halloween: The Movie,” and according to Entertainment Weekly, it is “giving off ‘Nickelodeon’ meets ‘Stranger Things’ and ‘The Goonies’ vibes.” The movie is about a group of kids (played by Donovan Colan, Dylan Martin Frankel, Jaiden J. Smith and Marissa Reyes) who decide to spend the night at a Spirit Halloween. They discover that there is an evil spirit who is haunting them and possessing the animatronics and products in the store. They must work together to defeat the spirit before midnight, or else it will possess one of them for all of eternity.
“Spirit Halloween: The Movie” features Christopher Lloyd in the role of Alec Windsor, a deceased man whose spirit possesses everything in the abandoned store and terrorizes the children. Rachel Leigh Cook also stars as one of the boy’s moms, Sue, who remarried after her husband recently passed.
According to Variety, “The trailer premiered at the opening of Spirit Halloween’s Flagship Store on July 30 before debuting online, with Colan, Frankel and Smith making appearances at the event.” David Poag directed the film, and Billie Bates is the screenwriter. The film is produced by Hideout Pictures, Strike Back Studios, Particular Crowd and Film Mode Entertainment. The movie is interesting in that that it was predominantly shot in the parking lot of an abandoned Toys “R” Us location in Georgia. Production lasted from the end of 2019 to November 2021.
Judging from the trailer, I think that “Spirit Halloween: The Movie” will be very cheesy but still a fun family movie. The ideas for the animatronics seem really cool, though it feels like the trailer gave away a lot of the big parts of the movie. It seems like the film will follow the same formula as a typical children’s horror movie, and there will hopefully be a good twist at the end. I think it is still worth a watch, but you just might have to have a bottle of wine before. Who knows, though — maybe it will become a Halloween favorite like “Hocus Pocus” or “Halloweentown.”
The film will debut on Oct. 11 on Video On Demand, and you can watch the full teaser trailer here.
