Written by: Sam Santiago
"SLAY DAY" is turning the slasher formula into something closer to a group hallucination, and it’s heading for a wide theatrical release in 2027, according to Variety. From the sound of it, moviegoers are going to get more than what they bargained for when this flick hits the screen.
This caught our attention immediately as the site details the film: “Can you survive prom night when the room gets a body count?” The story drops us into Belle Falls on Friday the 13th, 1987, where the annual Sadie Hawkins dance is supposed to be harmless small-town chaos. Instead, it becomes the center of something far older and far worse. This already feels like a bad episode of "Stranger Things" but we're here for it.
After the town disturbs the grave of the original Sadie Hawkins, the local legend tied to a string of murders fifty years earlier, whatever was buried does not stay buried. Six teens find themselves trapped in a night that starts with slow dancing and ends in survival math no one asked for.
The cast includes Jayden Bartels (Goosebumps), Shelby Simmons (Bunk’d), Emma McNulty (FBI: Most Wanted), Caleb Brown (Mother’s Day), Luke Mullen (V/H/S/99), Corrado Martini (Circles), and Lyndon Smith (National Treasure: Edge of History). The script comes from Andrew Matisziw (The Firm).
What separates "Slay Day" from your standard slasher is the way it refuses to stay still. If you think you like immersive shows/events, this one might just take the cake. Built using CtrlMovie’s interactive system, the film turns the audience into participants, not observers. Viewers vote in real time using their phones, steering the story through more than fifty decision points. Every choice shifts who survives, who doesn’t, and how things spiral out, with more than 8,000 possible outcomes.
Director John David Buxton, making his feature debut, leans fully into that chaos. “From the start, I wanted audiences inside the story, not outside looking in,” he said. “It’s an ’80s-style slasher at heart, but every screening becomes its own version of the nightmare.”
Producer Mark Dragin added, “It turns the theater into something alive. People are reacting, debating, second-guessing each other in real time. No two crowds will ever see the same film.”
Also in development at CtrlMovie is Nightmare Manor, a separate horror project centered on two sisters trapped on opposite sides of a cursed house, each fighting to survive while trying to reconnect across something far worse than distance.
Slay Day hits more than 1,000 interactive screens across North America on February 12, 2027.