Spirit Halloween The Movie

Somebody somewhere was going to make this movie, so it might as well be approved of by the actual Spirit Halloween stores. Clearly made for kids, Spirit Halloween the Movie looks solid. These glimpses push all the right buttons for what scares tweens and under — and secretly thrills them. Christopher Lloyd gets top billing, though he probably won’t be in that much of the film. Still, if ever an actor was born to comedically anchor a horror film, it’s Lloyd.

The description goes as follows:

When a Spirit Halloween Store opens in a deserted strip mall, three middle school friends who think they’ve outgrown trick or treating make a dare to spend the night locked inside the store Halloween night. But they soon find out that the store is haunted by an angry evil spirit who has possessed the creepy animatronic characters. The kids will need to embark on a thrilling and spooky adventure in order to survive the night and avoid becoming possessed themselves.

As I said up top, you know a dozen (hundred) film, TV, or comic book anthology scripts are out there, riffing on people getting trapped in a Spirit Halloween analog. This tie-in feels a lot less weird than, say, if Pizza Time Theater endorsed its own Five Nights at Freddy’s-type movie. (See The Banana Splits Movie or Willy’s Wonderland.) The only thing that could make it better is if the movie were about the Spirit Halloween store taking over the haunted Toys R Us building in Sunnyvale, CA — which did happen one year. Only one. So you know there’s a story there…