Pay the Ghost

A professor, Mike Lawford (Nicolas Cage) frantically searches for his son Charlie, who was abducted during a Halloween parade. As nearly a year goes by, the parents are still looking for their son and starting to hear and see their son reaching out to them from the other world—Mike sees his son on a passing bus, but upon chasing the bus down and gaining access, his son is not there. He disembarks and notices spray painted on a building, "pay the ghost," the phrase his son uttered before vanishing. He enters the building and finds homeless people living there. Unearthly screams of a woman are heard, and a blind homeless man calls for the others to mask their fires, explaining to Mike that the screams are heard every year before Halloween. Mike asks about the phrase, and is taken to a wall with more of the same phrases written on it. Engrossed by the wall and the homeless man, he does not notice the wall behind him shift into another world, and a demonic figure briefly appears behind him, then vanishes. The homeless man explains nothing, but quickly tells Mike to leave.

His wife Kristen, later sees their son's scooter move on its own, and calls him. Later that night while pouring wine, the power in their home goes out. Mike looks out the window to see three children appear and burned at the stake, then turns and sees his apartment crowded with figures of children, standing lifeless and pale. They call a psychic to investigate. Standing in their son's room, she senses nothing, but then abruptly walks to the window, looks at the approaching storm, and says, "It's here... it has all the children." The psychic is then thrown against the wall and strangled before collapsing, burn scars all over her hands. A later autopsy shows her internal organs were burned to ash.

Later, Mike walks upstairs to his wife's room, and she addresses him with their son's voice, pleading for help and saying "She's coming, Dad. I'm scared." He walks closer, and sees his wife cutting herself. Cleaning the wound, they find a symbol, which leads them to a Celtic Halloween celebration. A participant explains—the children are burning dolls to pay the ghost, so they won't be taken. Hannah calls Mike and she says: In early New York, on Halloween night of 1679, because of her Celtic worship, a young widow living on the first New York settlement was burned alive with her three children by an angry mob of settlers suspecting her to be a witch, and she takes revenge every year on Halloween, when the border between the spiritual world and the physical world dissolves for a short time. Since then, every Halloween the ghost of this woman takes three living children from their parents and puts them in an alternate world. The borders solidify until next Halloween, and the children taken are able to reach out and be rescued. But if the children cannot escape this alternate world within the first year, they are stuck in this world forever.

After Mike and Kristen are injured in the taxi by a flock of black vultures, Hannah while trying to leave the institute, she's killed by the ghost being thrown out the window. Mike returns to the same building and finds the blind homeless man again, he gives him his watch in exchange for helping him find his son Charlie, he shows Mike the hazy road and that he has until midnight until Halloween ends, otherwise he will be trapped forever. Mike arrives at the widow's cabin and goes down to the basement where he finds the souls of many children, who were locked up many centuries ago at Halloween time, Mike finally finds Charlie along with two other children from today and they are escape with him.

When they escape, the ghost widow appears upon learning of this, and stops Mike from trying to take the three children away in finishing him off. The children's souls are free and they kill the ghost widow by surrounding her, Mike and the children manage to get out when the portal closes. At dawn, Mike and his son Charlie finally make it home by reuniting with Kristen, then seeing Charlie having fun on Halloween night, and not remembers what happened last night and outside a black vulture is seen flying away.

In a scene mid-credits, three black vultures appear surrounding Hannah's corpse, and she awakens being possessed.

• Nicolas Cage as Mike Lawford
• Sarah Wayne Callies as Kristen
• Veronica Ferres as Hannah
• Lyriq Bent as Detective Jordan Reynolds
• Lauren Beatty as Annie Sawquin
• Sam Velasquez as Professor Oak
• Kalie Hunter as Ghost Annie
• Jack Fulton as Charlie
• Stephen McHattie as Blind Man
• Susannah Hoffmann as Jane
• Caroline Gillis as Priestess
• Janet Lo as Jai Wen
• Erin Boyes as Emily (Sexy Coed)
• Juan Carlos Velis as Morales (Cop)
• Alex Mallari Jr. as EMT
• Darren Frost as Ice Cream Vendor
• Matteo Ghazni as Pablo

On May 15, 2014, Nicolas Cage joined the cast.[1] On August 25, 2014, Sarah Wayne Callies joined the cast.[2] On September 5, 2014, Veronica Ferres joined the cast.[3] On September 4, 2014, Lyriq Bent joined the cast.[4] Principal photography began in September 2014.

On August 6, 2015, it was announced RLJ Entertainment had acquired distribution rights to the film, and set a September 23, 2015, limited release and video on demand release date.[5] The film was released on September 25, 2015, in a limited release, and through video on demand.[6]

Pay the Ghost received negative reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 10%, based on 30 reviews, with an average rating of 3.62/10.[7] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 23 out of 100, based on 9 critic reviews, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[8]

Andrew Barker of Variety wrote: "This somnolent supernatural thriller is a low-energy wash from start to finish."[9] Brian Tallerico of Roger Ebert.com declared it a "new low" for Nicolas Cage, and branded the movie a "lazy, boring retread of Insidious.[10]

• Pay the Ghost at IMDb