When Dentsu Creative, Burger King’s social media agency, began brainstorming Halloween ideas for the chain this year, it first looked to TikTok to see what kinds of horror content Gen Z is seeking out these days.

“It’s the M3gan dance. It’s Mia Goth screaming ‘I’m a star!’ from ‘Pearl.’ It’s those super campy moments, which became a north star of inspiration—like, oh my gosh, that’s something that sticks that we can jump on,” said Andrew Pattee, associate creative director at Dentsu Creative’s Social Creative Lab.

The resulting 60-second horror short—fittingly unveiled on Friday the 13th—certainly has elements of camp, particularly toward the end. It also brings some real chills, thanks to director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, whose horror credits include the slasher film “The Town That Dreaded Sundown” and much of FX’s “American Horror Story: Coven.”

Running online and in cinemas, the Burger King spot opens with a young woman watching TV alone at home (a BK commercial is playing the familiar “Whopper Whopper” jingle) when she gets a call from a blocked number. When she answers, a creepy voice—very “Scream” like—warns her: “It’s back! It’s coming for you!”

Panicked, our heroine rushes to her car—maybe the call is coming from inside the house!?—but as you’ll surely guess if you’ve seen any horror at all, there’s really no escape in these types of situations.

What’s “back” is the Ghost Pepper Whopper, first introduced at BK last Halloween. The burger has been resurrected and joined by a new limited-time item, Ghost Pepper Chicken Fries.

The film drives to an interactive part of the campaign: visitors to thecall.bk.com can sign up to receive their own personalized phone call similar to the one in the film. Made with sister Dentsu agency Merkle, the interactive piece integrates with ElevenLab’s Text to Voice API and Twilio’s Communication API to make the calls.

Bridget Jewell, executive creative director at Dentsu Creative’s Social Creative Lab, said the entire project—the film and the phone call—are designed to be audience-first rather than brand-first, in keeping with BK’s “You Rule” positioning.

“While Halloween has always been a thing [for BK], the approach this year was a lot different with their new brand tone of voice,” she said. “We really approached it as, ‘What is Gen Z interested in when it comes to Halloween and horror?’ That’s what ended up inspiring this idea.” 

Eeriness meets camp

Early on in development, the agency learned the campaign would include a cinema buy, which kicked things into a higher gear. To direct what had now expanded from a 30-second spot to a :60, they chose Gomez-Rejon—whose work on “American Horror Story” had been a reference point all along.

“It’s campy, there’s clearly jokes in it, but there is this sense of eeriness—versus going so hard into horror and the scare/scream factor,” Pattee said of the tone of “Coven.” “Whenever [Alfonso] directs anything, from the get-go there’s a sense of eeriness that’s immediately alleviated by camp.”

Gomez-Rejon, repped by Wild Gift Content, told Ad Age he approached the horror element of the project seriously from the start—even though the film does morph into camp.

“I didn’t want to lead with parody,” he said. “I felt the reveal of the Ghost Whopper could be really funny if you believe all the moments that come before it. Some of my favorite moments in horror are when the camp is taken seriously—when there’s a commitment to the part, and to the genre, from everyone involved. It was important to me not to tip our hat from frame one.”

A lot rested on the lead performance, and Gomez-Rejon chose Katherine Smith-Rodden from over 100 actresses who auditioned.

“She felt like both an iconic and a modern scream queen,” Gomez-Rejon said. “She committed to it in the audition. She did a number of variations. And then on set, she seemed genuinely terrified of seeing a cheeseburger in the backseat. It’s hilarious even just to talk about, but she really committed to the part.”

Gomez-Rejon said he and his team—including cinematographer Michael Goi, production designer Gerry Sullivan and costume designer Jennifer Eve—looked to Italian horror masters Dario Argento and Mario Bava for inspiration. 

“I don’t want to sound pretentious, comparing a 60-second spot to the greats, but we were paying homage,” he said. “It has the kind of strong lighting sources you might see in [Argento’s] ‘Suspiria.’ It’s about color temperature and very precise camera movements and compositions. It wasn’t cinema verité, ‘shoot a lot of footage and figure it out in the cutting room.’ It was a shot stack that came together like a puzzle.”

Another nice touch is the creepy music-box version of “Whopper Whopper” that plays during the product reveal—which was actually recorded using a real music box.

“That wasn’t my idea, but I thought it was a really fun, spooky way into that melody,” said Gomez-Rejon. “It’s so playful and it brings you in, like we’re all in this together.”

BK and Halloween

For Burger King, the film is a worthy addition to the chain’s legacy of Halloween content, which has included black and green buns, as well as a “ghost detector” on the BK app and a memorable stunt when BK dressed up as McDonald’s for Halloween.

“While our menu innovations are at the forefront of these efforts—like Ghost Pepper Whopper and Ghost Pepper Chicken Fries—we are always looking for new ways to make spooky season even more fun and memorable at BK,” said Zahra Nurani, VP of marketing communications for Burger King North America. “Our horror brand film is the perfect example of this and brings these menu innovations to life in a unique and creative way while also engaging our fans in some playful fun.” 

A 60-second horror film is more elaborate than usual and might seem more a job for its TV agency OKRP than its social-media group. But Jewell said this was an inherently social idea—teased, hosted and amplified across social platforms—and that the Social Creative Lab’s work tends to be defined less by the shape of the content than by how social-centric the idea is.

“Our vision of what social is goes beyond content—it’s any work that starts or ends on social platforms,” she said. She pointed to an experiential activation the agency led for BK last November, which involved airdropping Whopper coupons in Times Square, or its work on this year’s content and influencer partnerships for BK’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” tie-in.

The interactive piece, one of the final elements to come together, makes the effort even more social. 

“We asked ourselves, ‘What’s the thing that’s going make them want to share—beyond just sharing the content itself?’” Jewell said. “We’re excited to see the reaction to it. Maybe they experience it and then encourage a friend to do it—and record their friend doing it. That shareability outside of the main piece of content is something we were looking for.”

The phone call also allows BK to experiment with AI, Pattee added. The backend tech uses AI to read the recipient’s name in the caller’s voice.

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“AI is obviously very hot right now and in the news,” Pattee said. “This felt like a fun, brand-safe way for our brand, specifically, to dip their toes in the water.” 

All of which again shows the range of the Social Creative Lab’s offering, Jewell added, calling limited-time products “fodder for social gold, if you do it right.” 

“Our work on this is everything from being reactive—watching for people talking about it, engaging with them and finding moments to amplify that—all the way to our evergreen content that’s planned,” she said.