When a Halloween store opens in a deserted strip-mall, three friends, thinking they've outgrown trick or treating, decide to spend the night locked inside. But their night of spook-filled fun soon turns to outlandish survival.
When a new Spirit Halloween store appears 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 embark on a thrilling and spooky adventure in order to survive the night and avoid becoming possessed themselves.
On October 31st a long time ago, ruthless businessman Alec Windsor callously forecloses on the Sacred Hearts Home for Wayward Children. With a little girl at her side, the angered orphanage matron casts a spell that causes Alec to drop dead.
In the present day, a Spirit Halloween store opens on the site where the orphanage previously stood. Meanwhile, Jake, a boy on his last year of grade school, is disappointed to discover his friends Carson and Bo think they've grown too old for trick-or-treating, one of the Halloween activities Jake cherished with his dead father. Jake takes out his frustration on his mother Sue, who moved on with a man named Frank and his young daughter Joanie, whom Jake blames for changing their holiday traditions.
The day before Halloween, Jake, Carson, and Bo attend a 'Fright Night' event that includes a puppet show that tells 'The Legend of Alec Windsor,' which is about how Alec disappeared mysteriously and supposedly cursed the town. Jake becomes jealous when he sees a popular football player flirting with his crush Kate, who is Carson's teenage half-sister.
To compromise between Carson's insistence on doing something more adult and Jake's desire to do something scary, Jake proposes spending Halloween night inside the Spirit Halloween store. Jake brings along his treasured 'Encyclopedia of Shadows' book that his father gifted him. Jake, Carson, and Bo hide in the store, wait for the manager to lock the doors and leave, and then play with the props as paranormal activity starts occurring.
Realizing that Carson left his phone behind, Kate goes to Jake's house to give it to him. From Jake's mom Sue as well as Bo's Grandma G, Kate puts together that the boys lied about their Halloween plans, but Kate covers for them. From Jake's Instagram photos, Kate concludes the three friends went to the Spirit Halloween store and she sets off to find them.
Vexed by the paranormal activity in the store, Jake shows Carson and Bo the Encyclopedia of Shadows entry about Alec Windsor, who they later confirm died on that exact site. The boys then ask a fortune-telling Zoldrana machine if it is Alec's ghost haunting them. Alec's spirit emerges from Zoldrana to possess a grim reaper animatronic. The reaper chases the boys until they finally knock it apart.
Kate enters the store through a skylight on the roof. After she finds the boys, Alec possesses a giant teddy bear that menaces all four of them. Jake's book reveals that for one hour on the anniversary of their deaths, tortured spirits can possess objects or people, although a person needs to be asleep or unconscious.
Kate, Jake, Carson, and Bo search for a way out of the store in the basement. The four of them discover a tunnel leading to a massive subterranean cavern where they find Alec's skull. Inside a witch's shack in the cavern, the quartet also finds a note detailing what is happening and what they need to do. The note reads, "Burn three things he haunts with glee, seal with a sacrifice to set him free, if by midnight he inhabits thee, your body he'll take for eternity."
Alec attacks everyone by possessing a spider like creature prop. Bo kills the monster by burning it with a flame and bug spray.
Still suspicious from her earlier conversation with Kate, Sue sets off to find out where her son really went. Flashing lights in the distance draw Sue toward the Spirit Halloween store.
To satisfy the sacrifice component of banishing Alec's spirit, Kate offers her grandmother's necklace. However, Alec possesses a skeleton and secretly picks the necklace out of Jake's pocket.
With the necklace suddenly missing, Carson proposes that Jake sacrifice his keepsake photo of his dad. Jake's refusal to do so sparks an argument and then a physical fight as Carson accuses Jake of being unable to let go and grow up.
Alec possesses Kate after knocking her unconscious with prop eyeballs rolling on the floor. Through Kate, Alec creates chaos throughout the store by supernaturally puppeteering multiple props and animatronics that the boys battle.
Jake eventually stops Alec by capturing Kate with a rope. Jake then sacrifices his Encyclopedia of Shadows, which was inscribed by his father, to be burned alongside the fortuneteller, reaper, and teddy bear props. Alec's spirit leaves Kate and vanishes. Jake, Carson, Bo, and Kate escape outside where they reunite with Jake's mom Sue, who takes everyone home. The manager arrives the next morning to find the store in total disarray.
One year later, Jake happily takes Joanie trick-or-treating prior to spending Halloween evening with Carson and Bo. Meanwhile, Grandma G, revealed to have been the little girl who witnessed Alec Windsor's death, casts a spell over Alec's skull inside the subterranean shack. Grandma G suddenly disappears and the skull begins to glow. (thanks to culturecrypt)
