School Spirit

"School Spirit" is the eleventh episode of the first season of Hulu's horror anthology streaming television series Into the Dark. The feature-length episode was directed by Mike Gan, who co-wrote the episode's teleplay. It was released on Hulu on August 2, 2019. The holiday for this episode is the first day of school. Synopsis The film opens with the brutal murder of two teenagers who have broken into their high school, Helbrook. It then cuts to a video of Erica Yang, a senior hoping to attend Harvard and the student body president, advising her graduating peers to take their final days to take chances while they still can. She is then shown going to school to attend Saturday detention, something that she hides from her former boyfriend, Jason. Erica also hides the reason she received detention from the other attendees, Lizzy, Russ, Vic, and Brett, despite their interest and disbelief. The school's Vice Principal tasks the students with the cleaning of the library before leaving for his office. Once he's gone the teens relax and smoke pot, with the exception of Brett, and they discuss the urban legend that the school is haunted by the ghost of a dead teacher who slaughtered misbehaving students. As the day progresses the students are picked off one by one by the same killer seen earlier in the film. Erica's ex Jason is also killed after he snuck into the school to persuade her to resume their relationship. The group's dwindling numbers are initially attributed to the missing teenagers escaping from detention, but they soon realize that something more sinister is at hand.