Spirit Halloween (The Movie) is the kind of family Halloween flick that makes you respect other similar movies like The Curse of Bridge Hollow and even *gulp* Hubie Halloween. This is a pretty low effort, low originality, low budget film that is secretly about the death of brick and mortar retail. Shhh… or maybe it’s just mercenary, opportunistic capitalism at work.

The flick is about a bunch of kids who have to fight off an evil curse at an empty Spirit Halloween store. It’s that deep.

In case you aren’t aware, Spirit Halloween is a pop-up Halloween store that takes over abandoned storefronts to sell candy and costumes during spooky season. Which means that they had a perfect low-cost filming location full of already existing props and costumes. I can respect making use of the filming opportunity.

If only they’d made a good movie. It’s such a generic plot and so basically written that I had nothing better to do with my time but to think of better premises for their gross abuse of capitalism.

I mean… how about the plot being about a bunch of kids who vanished during the Halloween season. And they only reappear if the Spirit Halloween store they shopped at returns the following year in the same location. Has a good mystery that trades on the fact the store only exists for short periods of time every year.

Or, hey, how about making it about the death of brick and mortar retail since each Spirit Halloween takes over a dead storefront. They could make a comment about the zombification of the physical retail market or how the store brings retail back to life temporarily.

The Spirit Halloween corporate suits would probably interpret those premises and themes as negative to cooperate synergy. Oh well. Nobody asked me. But, then again, nobody asked my opinion of the stupid Spirit Halloween movie in the first place.

Score: 56