Multi-Studio
Halloween Season 2025
ACCOUNT LEAD // Jessica Babila
PRODUCER // Eric Kleifield
CREATIVE PARTNERS // Kyle Gálvez, Peter Fahnestock, Ryan Eytcheson, Deeana Lee, Angela King, and Mike Gratton
AGENCY // Trailer Park Group
ROLE // Associate Creative Director
YEAR // Fall 2025
Rumors of horror’s demise were greatly exaggerated
Halloween in Hollywood is a quiet time for studios waiting to drop their tent pole holiday films, but a full-sprint, money-making, hand-over-fist opportunity for the last bastion of mid-budget entertainment: the horror genre.
I had the supremely excellent opportunity to lead marketing endeavors for the biggest horror films of 2025 – The Conjuring: Last Rights, Scream 7, Huluween, Primate, Black Phone 2, Obsession, The Strangers Chapter 3, and The Bride! – engaging audiences who were primed to jump, and ultimately stringing together a series of #1 hits that will be hard to top in the future.
The Clients
After a lukewarm 2024 horror season, there were rumblings of worry throughout the studios: Do audiences want to feel scared in today’s world? Are mid-budget features bound to fail against $300m+ behemoths? Do horror sequels still matter?
Uncertainty was the word heading into Halloween Season 2025, and it was my team’s duty to provide a plan for success that would satisfy stakeholders, filmmakers, and above all else: the fans.
The Audience
Halloween is bigger than Christmas in Hollywood, so my perspective may be skewed, but the number of people going all-out for October’s biggest day has been growing at a rapid pace over the last decade. Surely lovers of all things haunted still love haunted movies too, right? They didn’t last year, so we set out to tackle our initial challenge.
The Initial Challenge
“Cash-grab” is a home base for a - rightfully so - cynical theater-going audience who rarely get original IPs anymore. The horror genre relies on sequels and retreads, so it was up to us to define these stories as more than the lowest-common-dominator. We had strong material at our fingertips, it was just a matter of packaging it up in compelling ways.
Our Real Challenge
Timelines and budgets are always shrinking in Hollywood, while expectations are always rising. We had to find unique, never-been-done ways into a crowded space in order to stand out. Our competition was always trying to get one step ahead of us, so our real challenges started the second pen hit paper to sketch out the spark of an idea that could go the distance.
Our Approach
We took the expected and made it the unexpected. Common iPhone interfaces came alive and began breaking in unsettling ways as if haunted, entire legacy titles were stacked one-scene-at-a-time on top of each other to recreate the perfect thirty-second recap for vertical screens, and finally, we focused on bringing our love of the genre to every piece we made, hiding little Easter Eggs throughout that would delight fans when they found them.
Our Output
Ultimately, my team contributed to seven horror films plus Hulu’s seasonal “Huluween” reskin, aiding in three of them (The Conjuring: Last Rites, Black Phone 2, and Scream 7) reaching #1 at the box office.
Campaign Results
3
#1 Films
The Conjuring: Last Rites
Black Phone 2
Scream 7
Wins
The genre was deemed, “saved.” Critics were champing at the bit to declare horror a dead genre, but Halloween Season 2025 proved them wrong. The genre thrived, bringing in new fans to new IPs as well as attracting legacy fans to highly-regarded sequels.
2m+
Organic Impressions
Meta Platforms
Learnings
Campy won out over premium. The horror genre took a cleaner turn post-pandemic, as audiences seemed to shy away from ickier subjects. That wasn’t the case this year. Campy, nostalgic, rougher imagery performed the best, indicating a shift in consumer sentiment.
1
Very Nice Compliment
From Director Maggie Gyllenhaal
Final Takeaway
Audiences still want to FEEL something. We focused on subverting expectations throughout our work in 2025, and in the end the only expectation that remained was the desire to feel.
We’re confident our work did so.
