Trailer and Release Date Revealed for ‘Slayground,’ A24’s Haunted Attraction Nightmare From the ‘Green Room’ Director
Every haunted attraction runs on a simple agreement: the monsters are pretending, and the bodies on the floor will get up and go home at closing time. ‘Slayground,’ the new film from writer and director Jeremy Saulnier, is built on the horrifying idea of breaking that deal. A24 has been teasing the project for weeks with the kind of marketing mischief that only the studio could pull off.
The film was previously known as ‘October,’ and the first sign of its new identity came in September, when a mysterious teaser played in theaters ahead of ‘Resident Evil.’ Made largely of security-camera footage inside a haunted house, it looked like an advertisement for a real attraction and carried only a vague ‘this fall’ release message. A website called runlikehell.com added a countdown, but nothing else.
Now the mystery has an answer. A24 has released the first official trailer for ‘Slayground,’ and the movie will open exclusively in theaters on January 29, 2027, the date revealed on a new poster that mimics a workplace sign counting the days since the last homicide.
What you can’t remember will haunt you. Halloween is only the beginning in Jeremy Saulnier’s run-like-hell thriller SLAYGROUND, in theaters January 29. https://t.co/tQosxpy2fd
— A24 (@A24) October 20, 2026
The trailer finally explains the story. Cory Michael Smith plays ‘Metal Mike’ Graves, a scare actor who wakes up inside a haunted attraction surrounded by the dead bodies of his co-workers with no memory of how they got there. As a statewide manhunt closes in, he races to uncover the truth, even if the trail leads straight back to him.
According to the synopsis, the story opens on the night of October 24 with a mass-casualty event inside the attraction. The title comes from the haunt itself, which also happens to be the building its prime suspect knows best. It’s also worth noting that the film is not connected to the 1983 movie of the same name or the novel behind it.
Smith leads a sizable and eclectic ensemble. Chase Sui Wonders, Sophie Wilde, Young Mazino, Stephen Root, James Badge Dale, Matty Matheson, Stanley Simons and Imogen Poots all appear, along with Chris Sullivan. Macon Blair has a small part, and the film features music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
The mix of dramatic and comedic performers hints that the movie won’t play its scares straight. Poots and Blair both appeared in Saulnier’s ‘Green Room,’ and Blair’s history with the director goes back to ‘Blue Ruin.’
For fans of Saulnier, this is the long-awaited return to genre territory. He is the filmmaker behind ‘Blue Ruin,’ ‘Green Room’ and the Emmy-winning ‘Rebel Ridge,’ and ‘Slayground’ is his first feature since the latter. After making the more methodical ‘Rebel Ridge,’ he is returning to a setup built around pursuit, survival and escalating violence, with Halloween as the backdrop.
A24 landed the project a little over a year ago following a heated bidding war that included Netflix. Reports put the runtime at about 2.5 hours, and the new title arrived in September after the film was previously called ‘October.’
The release date has an amusing twist. A movie set around Halloween will arrive three months after the last plastic skeleton goes on clearance, which fits the studio’s habit of doing things its own way. The September teaser even pointed to a real-seeming ‘Slayground’ experience rather than the film itself, blurring the line between the movie and a supposedly real haunted house.
The campaign has been cryptic from the start. The teaser’s black-and-white surveillance footage showed terrified visitors facing creatures that ranged from a werewolf-like figure to an ax-wielding masked person, set to an unsettling remix of Drowning Pool’s ‘Bodies.’
With a trailer in hand, a date on the calendar and one of horror’s most reliable stylists behind the camera, ‘Slayground’ has gone from a mystery to one of the most intriguing releases of early 2027.
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