From the producer of “The Haunting of Hill House” and Gerald’s Game comes director Ciarán Foy‘s (Citadel, Sinister 2) new horror film Eli, which will be debuting on Netflix just in time for Halloween on October 18th. This morning we’re debuting the upcoming film’s trailer right here on Bloody Disgusting, along with some exclusive insights from Foy.

For starters, here’s the plot rundown for Eli:

“After checking into a clean house to treat his auto-immune disorder, Eli, 11, begins to believe that the house is haunted. Unable to leave, Eli soon suspects that the house, and the doctor who runs it, are more sinister than they appear.”

“Eli is the story of a young boy (Charlie Shotwell) plagued with an unknown, debilitating illness that requires him to live completely sealed off from the outside world. After exhausting every option, his parents (Kelly Reilly and Max Martini) put their trust – and his life – in the hands of a doctor (Lili Taylor) whose experimental, cutting edge treatments at her clean house facility may hold Eli’s last hope. As Eli undergoes the tremendously intense process that could potentially cure him, he begins to be haunted by experiences that make him question who he can trust and what is lurking inside the house.”

As Foy explained to us, Eli isn’t exactly your typical haunted house horror movie. For one thing, the main character can’t just flee the house in terror. If he does, well, he dies.

“Straight away I loved the idea of the central character being this ‘boy in the bubble’ – a kid with a form of autoimmune disorder that meant he is allergic to the outside. One question you always have to ask of the leads in a haunted house story is “Why don’t don’t they just leave?”. It’s a simple question but it’s not always successfully addressed. Whereas here, he just can’t. He would die,” Foy explained to us. “I loved that simple conceit. He feared the outside. And now he’s terrified of the inside. I also loved the idea that he was here for a reason. It wasn’t your typical – “family moving to a new house for a fresh start”. This already had stakes. He needed a cure. It was last chance saloon. He was going to this ‘clean house’ to undergo a procedure.”

“I got sent the script two weeks after my son was born and I was a complete zombie. I really didn’t want to read anything, I just wanted to sleep when I could! But my agent encouraged me to take a look and so I read it in one sitting at 3am. The thing that really grabbed me was how surprising the story was,” Foy continued. “It was filled with tense questions – is this real or imagined? Who can you trust? Who is telling the truth? I really felt for this character. You begin thinking it’s one thing and it changes direction in a very cool and organic way. I read so much horror that I’m rarely caught so off guard. But this was an exception and so I wanted to pitch on it.”

How scary is Eli, you’re wondering? The trailer teases a few sequences that are sure to make audiences jump, but Foy makes sure to note that the film isn’t a jump scare machine.

“I’m not a huge fan of jump scares for the sake of a jump scare. They need to be organic and the best ones also result in a story twist or character moment. Pepper them in too much and the audience is just expecting them. So the key is have a few effective ones and not where people expect them,” Foy told us. “Trailers tend to give away a few, I get that, but thankfully there’s a couple more in the movie that work great. That all being said, this isn’t a horror movie full of “scares”. It’s a bit more holistic than that. I’d call this a psychological thriller, so the best moments of ‘horror’ are related to character or to the medical procedure or the paranoid mind games that build and build and build.”

“Stranger Things” fans will be excited to learn that Sadie Sink (the show’s Max) co-stars in Eli, playing a character named Haley. Foy details, “She’s not a patient but she’s seen other kids come and go. She befriends Eli and instills in him a kernel of doubt, which she cultivates and pushes him to ask questions. She also has a touch of comic relief to her character. Haley is very wry and witty. Sadie and Charlie Shotwell (who plays Eli) have a great synergy on screen together.”

Without further delay, you can watch the trailer for Netflix’s Eli below!

David Chirchirillo, Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing wrote the script, from a story by Chirchirillo. Trevor Macy and John Zaozirny produced. Melinda Nishioka exec produced.