Sarah Michelle Gellar has been running from monsters, demons, and masked killers on screen since the ’90s.
And according to Barbara Roche's Reel360, this Halloween, she’s back in the final-girl spotlight—this time turning the everyday nightmare of car shopping into a campy horror short.
The new campaign, called 10 Days of Slay, pairs Gellar—who’s been married to actor Freddie Prinze Jr. since 2002—with Turo for a spooky mini-movie where a dealership transforms into a haunted house of hidden fees and endless paperwork. The mini-movie was envisioned by SixTwentySix, along with director Nolan Goff, who have worked with Gellar several times in the past.
Just when it looks like the horror will never end, Gellar does what she’s always done best—she finds a way out. It’s a wink to the countless chase scenes that made her a scream queen icon in projects like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Scream 2, and I Know What You Did Last Summer.
But even after decades of outrunning villains, Gellar says there’s still one thing that rattles her: buying a new ride. “I grew up in New York City, so cars were never really on my radar,” she said. “Even now, I find the whole process a little terrifying. When the idea came to me about treating it like a horror story, I thought, well, that makes sense.”
The timing couldn’t be better. Halloween is the season when Gellar’s horror legacy always resurfaces, and the campaign with Turo lets her lean all the way in.
She gets to play with the genre that helped make her a household name, while also giving it a clever, modern twist. “It’s always easy to lean into a good story,” she said. “If you’re telling a good story, it doesn’t matter if it’s a commercial, a television show, or a movie—it’s all storytelling.”
That storytelling is something fans have seen evolve over her career. Gellar has been in the spotlight since she was a child actor on All My Children, but she became a generational touchstone when she stepped into the role of Buffy Summers in 1997.
The character was brilliant, strong, and flawed in ways that resonated deeply with viewers, cementing Gellar as the kind of actress who could balance camp and heart in equal measure. “Buffy’s very similar to me when I was growing up,” she once recalled, per Parade. “A child in an adult world, sort of trapped between the two.”
She’s carried that approach into every phase of her career, and her latest projects show she’s not slowing down. Next spring, she’ll return to the big screen in Ready or Not 2, a sequel to the 2019 horror hit.
Around the same time, she’ll also debut a new animated series, Breaking Bear, alongside Brendan Fraser, Josh Gad, Elizabeth Hurley, and Annie Murphy. “It’s really out there for me, and I think people are going to love it,” she teased.
Even with decades in the industry and plenty of iconic roles behind her, Gellar says she chooses projects based on whether they excite her now, not on what they might prove to anyone else. “If I’m going to leave my family to go work, it has to be something I want to be a part of,” she said. “I don’t feel like I have to prove myself anymore. It’s more about enjoying the people and the stories I’m working on.”