Every Halloween needs one movie that knows exactly what it is. This year it's a heist where the house fights back.
Haunted Heist — the horror-comedy now streaming on Starz, and airing three times today, Halloween — is Lil Rel Howery's directorial debut, and he built it like a sleepover movie with a body count. Four estranged friends reunite at a mansion, and one of them has secretly planned to rob the place blind. The target: an antique worth a fortune. The problem: the owners never actually left.
The setup is sneakier than it sounds. The reunion is real — these four have history, and the kind of old grudges that only years of not speaking can grow. But for one of them, the weekend was never about catching up. The antique is hidden somewhere in the house, the plan needs all four pairs of hands, and the rest of the crew only learns they're in a heist movie once they're already inside. That's the first trap. The house itself is the second.
Because the owners are ghosts — a pack of them, still dressed for the 1950s, still very much in charge of the house, and currently planning a demonic sacrifice. So the robbery turns into a survival movie: squash the old beefs, dodge the ritual, and get out before the house finishes the night on its own terms.
Howery directs and stars as Ron, alongside Tiffany Haddish as Shari — the exact pairing you'd cast if you wanted the screaming to be as funny as the scares. Karlous Miller plays Terrence "T", Andrew "King Bach" Bachelor is Ellis, and the bench runs deep: Brett Gelman, Ari Dayan and Tony Baker all check into the mansion, with Tara Terry and Stephen Blackwell rounding out the house party.
What sells it is the room itself. This is a cast of people who are funny for a living, trapped in one location with one escalating problem — the oldest comedy engine there is, wearing a horror costume. Howery plays Ron close to the vest, the friend whose secret plan detonates the weekend, and Haddish's Shari is the one who says what the audience is already yelling at the screen. Miller and King Bach bring the wild-card energy, and every time the movie needs the temperature changed, it just lets the four of them cook.
The pedigree is stranger than the premise. Haunted Heist comes from The Coven — the outfit behind the Terrifier phenomenon — taking its swing at horror-comedy, alongside Howery's Death Ground and Robinwood7. The film was announced in November 2024 with Howery directing and starring opposite Haddish, the ensemble filled out the following March, and cameras rolled in Detroit that spring. It was written by Carl Reid, from a story by Josh Feldman and Sean King O'Grady, and produced by Howery, Feldman and O'Grady with Feras Majid Shammami and Jesse Ford.
And it was shot fast and lean — 18 days in Detroit, inside Berry Gordy's former Motown mansion. So the haunted house at the center of the movie is a genuine music landmark, all that history soaked into the walls, which feels exactly right for a film stacked with this many comedians. The score is by Truth, the camera work by James McMillan.
Watch the official trailer:
The film premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 20, 2025, and the festival reviews were honestly divided — Bloody Disgusting's Trace Thurman came down hard, at one and a half skulls out of five. But horror-comedy was never a critics' genre; it lives or dies on the couch, in a room full of people talking back to the screen. Early audience marks run warmer — a 7.2 on TMDB — and that's the room this movie was built for.
It opened in theaters this summer from Saban Films, taking in just over half a million dollars, and arrived on Starz on October 24 — one week before Halloween, which is either perfect timing or the happiest of accidents. Starz has leaned all the way in: the film airs three times today, and the network has it parked in its November "Robbery in Progress" collection, which tells you exactly how they're selling it. If your household runs on Peacock instead, it's streaming there too.
And today, of all days, you can't miss it. Starz has the film on three times — the early-morning crowd already got theirs, with further airings at 9:30 in the morning and again in the mid-afternoon — and it's sitting on demand for whenever the candy runs out tonight. Program it as the nightcap: the one you put on after the slashers, when the room wants to laugh as much as it wants to jump.
One label, printed honestly: this is a Saban film licensed to Starz, not a Starz original — Starz is simply the house it's haunting this week. At 87 minutes and rated R, it never overstays its welcome: get in, rob the ghosts, get out. If you want one Halloween watch that plays like a comedy first and a haunting second — the rare scary movie you can put on with the whole room — this is the easiest call on the board.
