On Halloween night in Carbondale, Illinois, roommates Harper and Bailey attend a party together where they meet up with their friends Angela and Mallory. The group befriends two guys, Nathan and Evan, and they all decide to take a ride together. Throughout the night, Harper suspects she is being stalked by a man in a devil mask. The group soon encounters a haunted house attraction which they decide to attend. Before they enter, they are forced to surrender their cellphones and signliability waivers. The group soon becomes separated after entering a maze; Bailey, Nathan and Angela encounter a series of armholes. However, as Bailey sticks her arm inside, it is slashed with a straight razor. Meanwhile, Harper, Evan and Mallory are crawling through a series of tunnels when Harper and Evan lose Mallory. They meet back up with the others and soon find they are locked in the room. The group then witnesses a performer in a witch mask impale Mallory through the head with a hot fire poker before disappearing. The group, now believing they are in danger, sends Nathan through the rest of the house to find an exit. He encounters a man in a ghost mask who calls himself "Mitch", who agrees to help the others. They travel back to the tunnels, where Mitch tells them they need to crawl back one by one in order to avoid activating a trap door. Evan and Mitch go through first, although Mitch bolts the exit shut as Nathan is crawling through. Meanwhile, the man in the devil mask from earlier attacks the girls and kills Angela. Bailey flees into the tunnels while Harper escapes into another section of the house. Bailey accidentally activates the trap door, dropping Nathan into the house's operation rooms. He saves Harper with a nail gun after she is attacked by the Devil before finding the group's phones in another room. Meanwhile, Evan and Mitch make it outside, but Evan becomes suspicious after his friends do not return in a while. Mitch then kills him with a hammer before ripping off his face. Mitch goes back inside where he finds Nathan attempting to contact help. Nathan manages to give the location of the house to Harper's abusive boyfriend Sam before escaping to the roof, and making it out of the house. Meanwhile, Harper escapes a room full of sharp objects before entering an escape room very similar to her childhood bedroom where she witnessed her father abuse her mother. She solves the puzzle just as the Devil enters, although she encounters another trap with a rigged shotgun. As the Devil attacks her, she tricks him into falling in line with the shotgun's trajectory, and he is killed. She then encounters another performer in a ghost mask, and quickly kills them, but is horrified to find that the person in the costume is Bailey, who was previously captured by the other performers. Meanwhile, Sam arrives at the house, and wanders inside, where he is promptly killed by the attraction's ringleader, a man in a clown mask. Nathan goes back inside, and begins breaking down a wall for Harper to escape, but he is attacked by Mitch, while Harper is attacked by a man in a zombie mask wielding a chainsaw. Harper defeats her attacker with the shotgun before helping Nathan kill Mitch. They then encounter a man in a vampire mask, who agrees to help them, and explains that the performers are part of a cult that make extreme modifications to their faces to look like real monsters, and like to rip the faces off their victims. He is then shot to death by the man in the zombie mask, who no longer has his mask. Harper and Nathan use the opportunity to escape the house, killing the performer in the witch mask in the process before reaching a fence. The man with the zombie mask attacks them, but Nathan kills him with a baseball bat before the two escape in Sam's truck. The man in the clown mask then proceeds to burn down the attraction. Harper and Nathan reach a hospital, where the nurse asks Harper to write her address on a release form similar to the one they were asked to sign before entering the house. Sometime later, the man in the clown mask arrives at Harper's house with the intent of killing her, but he becomes stuck in a trap perpetrated by Harper, who emerges with a shotgun, and kills him.
In July 2017, it was announced Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, would write and direct the film. The film would be produced by Eli Roth, Todd Garner, Mark Fasano, Ankur Rungta, Vishal Rungta and executive produced by Nick Meyer, Marc Schaberg, Josie Liang, Jeremy Stein and Tobias Weymar. In October 2017, Katie Stevens, Will Brittain, Lauryn McClain, Andrew Caldwell, and Shazi Raja joined the cast of the film. Principal photography began in October 2017 in Covington, Kentucky. Production concluded in November 2017.
Release
The film had its world premiere at Popcorn Frights Film Festival on August 8, 2019 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and its international premiere at FrightFest in London, England, on August 23, 2019. The Los Angeles premiere for Haunt took place at the Grauman's Egyptian Theatre on September 7, 2019. The film received a limited release on September 13, 2019, by Momentum Pictures. Haunt later premiered on Shudder, where it was ranked the #1 most watched movie premiere of 2019.
Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 71% based on 45 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Haunt is spooked by the spirits of its obvious influences, but still packs enough thrills and chills to satisfy horror fans up for a haunted house excursion". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 69 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "generally positive reviews".
