The Houses October Built

The film begins in medias res to a dazed and bloodied Brandy being put in a trunk and driven off. Days earlier, a group of friends from Ohio—Brandy, her boyfriend Zack, cameraman Jeff, Bobby, and Mikey—decide to take a trip to visit some of America's scariest haunted house attractions in the days leading up to Halloween. They plan to record their experiences and interview the actors who work there. This leads to disturbing revelations about the establishments' operations, such as failure to perform background checks, utilizing criminals and disturbed individuals as actors, using real corpses as props, and performing dangerous stunts for the sake of scares. The group begins with well-known haunted houses first, though their main goal is to locate an extreme haunt called "Blue Skeleton," a mysterious group that moves to a different, secret location every year and is said to employ real torture to elicit scares. Zack grows agitated with what he views as pedestrian scares. The group also antagonizes haunted house staff by filming and being disruptive but the staff's animosity grows sinister when the friends are followed by a clown and a young actress from an earlier house, despite the group's having traveled over a hundred miles. Jeff is chased by a man in a bunny costume brandishing an axe though the man turns out to be an actor. Zack meets other guests who inform him that they experienced Blue Skeleton and that it is in Louisiana this year; they also tell him of a bar where they can find a man who can take them there. Later that night, an actor breaks into their van and films the group while they sleep. Bobby finds the video uploaded to haunted house forums but Zack tells him to keep it a secret, as he does not want the rest of the group getting cold feet. A cow heart is also left inside their refrigerator, making Brandy and Bobby grow reluctant to continue. At the bar, the group finds themselves surrounded by actors and are confronted about filming. While Brandy is in the bathroom, two male actors take the camera and film themselves cornering her; she escapes and informs the group. They confront the two and reclaim the camera. That night, the group finds their RV surrounded by dozens of actors; one of them cuts the lights. After getting the lights back on, the actors are gone. The next morning, they find instructions on how to meet with their connection to Blue Skeleton. The group arrives at the rendezvous point at a Halloween festival. In the commotion, Jeff is lured to an alley and finds himself cornered by the clown, the young actress, and the actor in the bunny suit. The masked group attacks and abducts him. The rest of the group tries to call him, but only get a message of another location. There, they are approached by a bus and receive a text telling them to leave the RV or else Jeff will be killed. Zack complies, while the rest of the group is dragged out by attackers. The friends are hooded and bound before being driven off in the bus. While the rest of the group panics, Zack insists it is part of the Blue Skeleton experience. The men are dragged out at one location, while Brandy is driven to a second location. She is given a camera and told to film everything she sees. The group members wander through their respective rooms. Zack, in a dark room, is bludgeoned by an actor. The rest of the group is terrorized before being buried alive in coffins by the Blue Skeleton members.