Strike Back Studios has released the first trailer for Spirit Halloween: The Movie.
The upcoming kid-friendly horror film follows three middle-school friends who, thinking they've outgrown trick-or-treating, make a dare to spend Halloween night locked inside the new Spirit Halloween store which has just opened in a deserted strip mall. Unfortunately, the friends soon find out that the store is haunted by "an angry evil spirit who has possessed the creepy animatronic characters," reads the film's official synopsis. "The kids embark on a thrilling and spooky adventure in order to survive the night and avoid becoming possessed themselves."
Spirit Halloween is set at one of the chain's titular pop-up shops, which appear in abandoned buildings every fall across the United States and Canada. The stores sell everything from costumes and fake blood to Halloween decorations and gifts and apparel. The film's main antagonist will seemingly be wealthy land developer Alec Windsor, played by Christopher Lloyd of Back to the Future fame. The trailer establishes that his character's spirit is said to haunt the town every year for one hour and can possess animatronics, stuffed animals and even human beings.
Spirit Halloween is the Latest Family-Friendly Horror Movie
Spirit Halloween looks to be the latest family-friendly horror movie, joining the likes of the Halloweentown and Goosebumps movies. The Halloweentown franchise consists of four Disney Channel original movies released between 1998 and 2006. The films focus on the lives of the Cromwell–Piper family as they save the titular town and its inhabitants from angry warlocks and those who mean to cause them harm. 2015's Goosebumps stars Jack Black as a fictionalized version of author R. L. Stine, the creator of the Goosebumps series of novels. After the monsters from his book series are released into the real world, Stine teams up with his teenage daughter and their neighbor to save their hometown and trap the monsters back into their respective books. The film received a sequel in 2018, titled Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween.
In addition to Lloyd, Spirit Halloween stars Marissa Reyes (Raven's Home), Dylan Martin Frankel (Life & Beth), Jaiden J. Smith (Two Sentence Horror Stories), Billie Roy (Candy), Donovan Colan (Chapelwaite), Katherine Dudley (The Longest Ride), Marla Gibbs (The Jeffersons), Brad Carter (Yellowstone) and Rachael Leigh Cook (She's All That).
Directed by David Poag in his feature directorial debut, Spirit Halloween will be available on-demand on Oct. 11. The film will also receive a theatrical release this fall.
Source: YouTube