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Spirit Halloween is famous for swooping in to rent space in dying malls and desolate strip malls every year around the end of summer. It’s a one-stop shop for Halloween costumes, decorations, special effects supplies, and everything Halloween-related. David Poag (cinematographer, Painted Horses) is making his feature film directorial debut with Spirit Halloween: The Movie.
Poag has mostly been involved in short films and documentaries in a variety of roles (writer, director, producer, cinematographer) until now. Taking the helm of this upcoming horror-adventure movie, Poag has teamed up with writer Billie Bates as the screenwriter.
The movie is produced by Strike Back Studios, Hideout Pictures, and Particular Crowd, with an official partnership with Spirit Halloween. Noor Ahmed, a producer of the film and president of Strike Back Studios, stated he “immediately connected with the script,” because it reminded him of childhood adventure classics like The Goonies and Gremlins.
Filming started in late 2019 and wrapped in November 2021. Until recently, the movie has been kept a relative secret. Here’s everything you need to know about the film before it comes out!
What’s Spirit Halloween: The Movie About?
This campy, family-friendly horror movie focuses on three middle-school-aged boys, Jake, Carson, and Bo embarking on a thrilling night they will never forget. When a Spirit Halloween store opens up in a creepy, isolated area, they learn about a legend surrounding their location.
The town is supposedly haunted by the spirit of Alex Windsor, a wealthy land developer who bought out the land from beneath its inhabitants’ feet. After he mysteriously disappears years ago on Halloween, it is said that he returns each year to haunt the town for one hour on Halloween night. The three boys devise a plan to spend Halloween night inside the Spirit Halloween store after it closes, hoping to see some spooky action.
Once locked inside the store with the lights out, they begin to realize they may have made a mistake. Items in the store begin to move around, animatronics light up and make noise without being prompted, and they ask the fortune-teller prop if the ghost of Alex Windsor is haunting them, which causes the prop to malfunction.
After discovering what their plan was, Carson’s older sister, Kate, joins the boys. She’s seemingly helpful at first, as the group gets attacked by the Spirit Halloween characters that have come to life, but the trailer indicates otherwise later down the line. Will they survive the night? If they do, will they ever set foot in another Spirit Halloween again?
Where Can I Watch The Trailer for Spirit Halloween: The Movie?
The trailer was premiered on July 30, 2022, at the opening of Spirit Halloween’s flagship store in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey. It was also shown the following day in Long Beach, California, at the annual “Midsummer Scream” Halloween-and-horror-themed convention. You can watch the trailer below!
Who’s In The Cast of Spirit Halloween: The Movie?
The first time this movie was publicly announced was in April of this year when Christopher Lloyd (Back To The Future franchise) and Rachael Leigh Cook (She’s All That) were confirmed to star in it.
Christopher Lloyd will be playing the role of Alex Windsor, the greedy land baron whose ghost returns on Halloween each year to haunt the town he disappeared in. He is best known for his roles as Doc Brown in the Back To The Future trilogy, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family movies, and was most recently seen as Bob Odenkirk’s heat-packing father in the 2021 film, Nobody.
Rachael Leigh Cook will play Jake’s mother, Sue. She is a recently remarried widow, which is sure to cause tension between her and her young teenage son. Cook has just recently done a reboot of her 90s classic, She’s All That, as the mother of the girl who plans to give a makeover to a male high school friend in He’s All That.
Donovan Colan will be playing Jake, the ringleader of the group of friends, and the one whose idea it was to camp overnight in the Spirit Halloween store. Colan made his feature film debut in the 2018 movie Zoe, starring Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan Kenobi) and Léa Seydoux (Crimes of the Future). He was also in the Stephen King television series adaptation Chapelwaite, based on the short story “Jerusalem’s Lot,” and starring Adrien Brody (Predators).
Dylan Martin Frankel has been in a variety of stage performances and television shows such as Raven’s Home and Life & Beth. Spirit Halloween: The Movie will be his first feature film debut, with his role as Carson, one of Jake’s friends.
Jaiden J. Smith will play Bo, Jake and Carson’s friend. Smith has appeared in several television shows such as Faith Under Fire and Two Sentence Horror Stories. This will be his first feature film, but he is already set to star in another upcoming Halle Berry sci-fi adventure film, The Mothership.
Carson’s older sister, Kate, will be played by Marissa Reyes. Reyes has actually worked with Dylan Martin Frankel previously on the Disney television series Raven’s Home. This will also be her first role in a feature film.
Marla Gibbs will be playing the role of “Grandma G,” and it’s unclear what part her character will have in the movie, but given her age and a few quick glimpses in the trailer, it seems like she might be the one who holds the key to saving the day. Gibbs was most recently seen in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie.
When Does Spirit Halloween: The Movie Come Out?
Spirit Halloween: The Movie will be released on Video On Demand for digital streaming on Tuesday, October 11, 2022.
Until then, if you are the impatient type, you can watch some similar movies that have come out in recent years. Based on R.L. Stine’s children's horror book series, Goosebumps (2015) would be a great start. It follows a group of young teens on an adventure to capture and trap iconic Goosebumps book characters back in the manuscripts that contained them after they accidentally set them free. The movie has a sequel as well, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween, which came out in 2018.
If those are too mild for your taste, you could give Guillermo Del Toro’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark a try. Based on the terrifying trilogy of short story collections by the late Alvin Schwartz, this movie combines several of the scariest short stories into 108 minutes of teenaged terror.
Spirit Halloween stores pop up every year starting in August through Halloween before vanishing into the abyss for another year. Keep an eye peeled for any empty stores that have a “Space to Rent” sign in the window because you never know where they’ll show up next. They might be bringing some surprise scares this year.