Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being Scared
I’ve always had a complicated relationship with “scary.” Now, me and spooky, we go way back. I think somewhere in her basement, my mom still has drawings I did in preschool of characters from the Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World. I loved fun Halloween stuff — bats and witches and those decorative ghosts that hung from a string on your porch and just sort of shook around for ten seconds making a very electronic “OOooOOooOOoo” noise when you walked by them. And Halloween itself was maybe my favorite night of the year (though admittedly, that may have just been because I liked wearing costumes, because even before I started dabbling in acting as a child, I was just a theatre kid waiting to happen). So spooky was great. But scary? Scary… scared me.
Depending on my mood, I was either totally fine with this or completely against it, and often both at the same time. I devoured Goosebumps books throughout most of elementary and middle school, even trying my hand at my own Stine-ian scary stories with unearned twist endings. I was fortunate enough to live in a school district that, given the demographics of the town, surprisingly had not gotten the memo about the decade’s number one most frequently challenged book series, Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, all three of which I frequently checked out of my elementary school’s library in spite of (or because of) being terrified of Stephen Gammell’s infamous illustrations.
Hi! No!
And yet, rare was the day that I would actually watch a scary movie. Every Friday, my family would take a trip to Blockbuster Video (RIP), and every Friday I had to contend with the “Horror” section that was conveniently located right next to the new releases and comedies, guaranteeing that I would catch a glimpse of VHS boxes displaying the likes of Hellraiser, Pumpkinhead, and Killer Klowns From Outer Space. I vividly remember fleeing the room when I happened to catch a giant demon emerging from a closet at the climax of Poltergeist (a movie I refused to watch until last year at age 30).
So my lifelong relationship with “scary” may have been complicated, but not so my relationship with fall. Fall is the best season: the season of cooler weather, changing leaves, football, and of course, Halloween. Now, growing up in central Florida meant that I mostly missed out on those first two. We had the third in spades. But just because the traditional depiction of Halloween invoked seasonal gourds and crunchy leaves and crisp air didn’t stop Florida from doing Halloween right. And every year, I knew spooky season was approaching when its herald appeared in the form of advertisements for Halloween Horror Nights. Every September without fail, the commercials began, showcasing Universal Studios Florida’s imminent overtaking by monsters, mummies, and murderers. The most memorable one in my mind (ubiquitous on TV, in print, and most unavoidably, on billboards): a closeup of a bloodshot eye, the eyelid being held open by a tiny, demonic imp (whose name, I have just learned, is “Eyegore”). Reader: these ads scared me. A lot. I was even changing the channel when they popped up on my TV while I was in college (in my defense: Bloody Mary was SCARY). Surely Halloween Horror Nights was an event that I would never attend. It was clearly not for me.
I’ve been wrong about a lot of things, and I’ll be wrong about many more, but that stands as one of the things I have been most wrong about.
(A quick primer on “haunts” like Halloween Horror Nights, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept: it’s basically a collection of scary walkthrough attractions and/or outdoor “scarezones” where people dressed as scary things [called “scareactors,” because portmanteaus and puns are delightful] jump out at you. Depending on where you live, the indoor attractions may be called “mazes,” “haunted houses,” or just “houses,” even if the theme of the attraction isn’t a literal house. I’ll be using “house” throughout this, because that seems to be the terminology of choice on the east coast.)
The year is 2012, and Universal has just announced that this year, one of the houses at Halloween Horror Nights will be based on the hit show The Walking Dead. Now, for reasons I’m not 100% sure of (peer pressure), I had gotten into this show. My friends were determined to see it in real life, and dammit, I wasn’t going to miss out on fun times with friends, so for the first time ever, I decided to purchase a one-night ticket to Halloween Horror Nights.
I loved it.
Now, The Walking Dead house was actually pretty disappointing (just like season two, am I right?). It may be because it was the first house we did. The sun was still up, and the location of the house itself (the old Disaster! queue, for those of you who remember it) meant that the sunlight was bleeding into the house. But in spite of the underwhelming first impression (or maybe helped by it, given my initial trepidation), I realized something over the course of the night: I was having a blast. Two houses in particular stood out to me. Gothic, set in an old cathedral haunted by gargoyles come to life, was an atmospheric masterpiece, and included a great scare involving a gargoyle on a bungee cord flying towards its unsuspecting victims (i.e., me). Dead End was simple enough: the rare Universal haunted house that was actually “just” a haunted house. But it terrified me. It was the only house that year to get a legitimate scream out of me (though to be fair, it was my own dang fault for foolishly stammering “A g-g-g-g-ghost!” at the sight of a projected phantom, only to shriek “A GHOST!” when a scareactor popped out immediately after).
That night, I decided that I would be buying the season long “Frequent Fear Pass” next year (and did so every subsequent year until I moved out of Florida). Over the years, I got my then-girlfriend, now-wife Angela to attend the event as well. That first visit was fun. As we walked in for the first time, surrounded by disturbingly masked scareactors, she shot me a look that screamed “What have you gotten me into?” By the end of the night, she was very glad to have (on faith!) gotten the Frequent Fear Pass as well, and we now plan a yearly pilgrimage to Orlando in the fall to spend a weekend being scared.
If you ask me what I miss the most about Orlando, my immediate answer is the people (awww). But if you ask me what OUTSIDE of all my friends I miss the most, I will answer just as immediately “theme park Halloween” (which these days lasts from approximately September 1 to November 2). A big part of that is the experience of being a Frequent Fear Passholder. Your first few trips through a given house, the fear comes just as much from the unease of not knowing what’s next as it does the scares themselves. But for me (and maybe this is just me speaking as a theme park nerd who likes to spend his free time discussing the craft of effective attractions), subsequent visits, while still scary to a degree, become about appreciating the set design, the costuming and makeup, how the casts of the respective houses have grown into their roles, and the way the scares themselves are constructed to catch guests off guard. While I look forward to my yearly weekend immersed in Horror Nights, I miss getting to be a regular visitor whose experience evolves over the course of the event.
With all that being said, it’s time for everyone’s favorite internet pastime: a subjective ranking of a group of artistic endeavors!
As stated above, this is after only one weekend spent at Halloween Horror Nights (just two nights, in fact). I was only able to go through most of the houses twice, and three of them I was only able to do once. This was also the second weekend of the event, so I’m certain things have changed since my visit. Furthermore, I’m rubbish at ranking things, so I’ll be dividing the ten houses into tiers, and also doing a brief overview of all of the non-house offerings. Let’s go!
NOT HOUSES
I’ll start with a bummer: I wasn’t all that enamored with the scarezones this year.
- Anarch-Cade, the first zone you see as you enter the park, had a fun idea (monsters and enemies from arcade games have escaped their cabinets) and a cool neon aesthetic, but its location (the main drag between Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem and Shrek 4-D) doesn’t lend itself much to atmosphere (a drawback the scarezone in that spot has to deal with every year). I can’t complain too much about a scarezone that utilizes dubstep remixes of Castlevania and Street Fighter music for its background music, though.
- Zombieland: Double-Tap was the largest scarezone, set in the New York section of the park. Compared to other years, the area felt really lacking in terms of the number of scareactors present, which was surprising and disappointing, particularly as last year’s Vamp ’85: New Year’s Eve was a high-energy highlight of the event.
- In the San Francisco area, Rob Zombie HellBilly Deluxe was… something. Taking iconography from Robert Zombert’s classic horror/metal album, it wasn’t exactly scary. There were a couple robots, and lots of scantily clad gogo dancers, and you could get a picture with the Dragula, the titular car from the only Rob Zombie song I know, which I have recently learned was Grandpa’s car on The Munsters.
- Vanity Ball was located in the Hollywood section of the park. The theme of this zone was that avant-garde fashionistas were letting “artists” perform reconstructive surgery on them to turn them into “living works of art.” There was a constant fashion show happening on a runway in the center of the area, while there were periodic “public surgeries” performed by doctors on two other stages at either end of the scarezone (I apparently missed these shows). Throughout the scarezone, models who had already gone under the knife wandered around. It was an interesting concept, but not quite as scary as it could have been. Given the soundtrack of ’80s music, it had more of a party atmosphere than I was expecting.
- Finally, Vikings Undead took over Central Park. This spot in the park is usually home to my favorite scarezones. The setting lends itself perfectly to a scarezone, as it is surrounded by trees and darkness, and the fog envelops you as you walk through, making it that much easier for scareactors to catch you off-guard. The past few years have been especially great, as the area has taken on a classic Halloween theme, with jack-o’-lanterns hanging from the trees. This year, the area was overtaken by brutal undead viking warriors. The creatures were frightening enough (and the decor surprisingly gory, as there were multiple “off the path” areas where scareactors could be seen torturing victims who had been torn to pieces), but for me, I really missed that classic Halloween feeling we had gotten there before.
New this year was Halloween Marathon of Mayhem, a nighttime spectacular taking place in the park’s central lagoon. An ’80s-themed montage of music and video (projected onto buildings and sheets of water) taking guests through scenes from some of the properties represented in this year’s houses (including Ghostbusters, Stranger Things, and Killer Klowns From Outer Space), this show was a lot of fun, and I’m really glad we took a little bit of time out from our first night there to catch it.
I didn’t see Academy of Villains: Altered States, which is a stage show featuring theatrical dance company “Academy of Villains.” I hear it’s great! It’s just a casualty of only having two nights to fit in as many houses as I can.
HOUSES
“STINKY” TIER
Nightingales: Blood Pit
Nightingales: Blood Pit stands alone as the single worst house this year, and one of the most unpleasant houses I’ve done in my eight years attending the event. Not that the house had a bad concept. A prequel to the Horror Nights 21 house Nightingales: Blood Prey, a World War I-set house in which demonic beasts called Nightingales descended upon battlefields to consume the weak and dying, Blood Pit took those same creatures and unleashed them upon Ancient Rome, where gladiators and soldiers alike became their victims. The setting had a lot of potential, and admittedly led to a couple decent scares, but unfortunately, that was all overshadowed by what might be the worst creative choice I’ve ever seen in a Horror Nights house: the decision to have the entire house smell like… well, poop. Literal feces. I don’t know if it was supposed to be rotting flesh or disemboweled corpses or what, but it was so ubiquitous (you could smell it even while in line) and so obnoxious that it completely overshadowed any positives that the house might have had (and guaranteed that it would be a house I only visited once).
“NEVER SAW/WILL NEVER SEE THE MOVIE BUT THE HOUSE WAS FINE” TIER
House of 1000 Corpses
I don’t really have much to say about this one. I did it because in the years I have been attending HHN, I’ve never skipped a house, and I wasn’t about to start now. I’ve never seen Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses. I know it’s not my kind of scary movie: grimy and gory and gross above all. But near as I could tell, it translated pretty well to a haunted house (fitting, given that, according to an unsourced item on Wikipedia, Zombie apparently got the idea for the film while working on a maze for Universal Studios Hollywood’s own Halloween Horror Nights). It definitely delivered on creepy scareactors, unnerving set design, and loud music. I didn’t get a chance to count all the corpses, though, so I don’t know if it delivered on that.
“THE HOUSE I WILL PROBABLY MOST HAVE TROUBLE REMEMBERING WHEN REMINISCING IN FUTURE YEARS” TIER
Depths of Fear
First things first: I have wanted a house based on the video game Bioshock for as long as I can remember. The art deco-styled undersea city of Rapture, along with its litany of frightening inhabitants, would make an EXCELLENT theme park experience, and a particularly great haunted house. So when Universal announced a house set in an underwater research base, a part of my mind held out hope this would fill the Big Daddy-sized void in my Horror Nights-loving heart (the Vanity Ball concept also gave me some Bioshock vibes, before I actually saw it in action). Alas, it was not to be. Depths of Fear was Alien if it had been set underwater and if instead of an H. R. Giger-designed terror, the alien had been a monster from Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. Again, it was fine, if not exactly memorable. And there was a controversial scene (not even a scare, just an easily missed scenic element) involving a dead dog, so that was kind of a bummer!
“SHOULDA SAVED HALF OF THIS FOR NEXT YEAR BUT YA GOTTA STRIKE WHILE THE SYNERGY’S HOT” TIER
Stranger Things
The sequel to last year’s Stranger Things house (which retold the story of season one of the popular Netflix series) combined seasons two and three into a single experience. I understand the business behind it: Stranger Things 3 premiered this summer, and of course Universal and Netflix wanted to take advantage. But trying to fit two seasons into one house just left both seasons feeling underserved. There were still a few great moments in the house, particularly the puppets used to portray season three’s Mindflayer both in the cabin scene and the climactic “Battle of Starcourt,” and just like last year, I was impressed with the subtle effect of the floating “ash” in the scenes set in the Upside Down. But overall, if they weren’t even going to give us any Scoops Ahoy-themed snacks in the park this year, they may as well have just focused on season two and concluded their trilogy in 2020.
“COULD HAVE BEEN RANKED HIGHER IF I HAD GOTTEN TO DO THEM MORE” TIER
Yeti: Terror of the Yukon
One of last year’s greatest houses was Slaughter Sinema, a parody of/tribute to schlocky horror picture shows, the kind you might have caught at a double feature at a drive-in, with titles like Amazon Cannibals From Planet Hell, The Cult of the Beast Baby, and Midnight Snack 2: The HouseSwarming. The house’s finale took guests through “the undeniable true story” of Attack of the Swamp Yeti (“Attack of the Swamp Yeti! Attack of the Swamp Yeti!”). It proved to be so popular that this year, Universal devoted a whole house to the yeti (relocated to more traditional, snowier climes, albeit in Canada as opposed to its folkloric Himalayan roots). I wish I had more to say about this house. It made great use of the cold as a way to set the scene (and there was falling snow as you entered!), there were yetis aplenty (including one that was memorably chowing down on a dude in a cabin), and the set design was excellent. Unfortunately, I was only able to go through this house once, as it closed mere seconds before I got to it at the end of my final night. It is my greatest regret from that weekend, as it felt like a house I could have truly grown to love.
Universal Monsters
Universal, more than any other big Hollywood studio, has a rich legacy of horror. Our modern perception of characters like Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the wolfman can be traced back to the horror films that Universal produced starting in the 1920s. This year, the Horror Nights team paid tribute to that legacy with its Universal Monsters house, bringing together the wolfman, Quasimodo, the Phantom of the Opera, the Frankenstein family (doctor, monster, and bride), Dracula, the mummy, and the creature from the Black Lagoon (Gill-Man if you’re nasty). This house was a lot of fun, and I think that if I had gotten to do it more than twice, it would probably have wound up as one of my favorite houses of the year. It had some top-quality scares: the wolfman charging straight at you from off to the side (and quickly retreating via bungee cord) was excellent, because he was moving with such speed that you honestly felt like he was going to tackle you. During my second run through the house, I watched a mummy scare a girl so much that she collapsed to the floor. Not five seconds later, the same mummy gave me one of my biggest scares of the night, even though I had literally just watched him and knew he was right there. THAT takes talent. (I think his secret was that he had an excellent sense of timing and space and knew exactly when he could pop out to get right in your face without actually bumping into you.) The set design was also outstanding. I would have loved to have seen more of it.
“I LOVED IT BUT MAYBE I’M IN THE MINORITY BECAUSE OF HOW MUCH I LIKE THE MOVIE IT WAS BASED ON” TIER
Jordan Peele’s Us
I was a big fan of the Jordan Peele movie Us. It was super creepy, was full of stellar performances (give Lupita Nyong’o another Oscar, please), and had great music (both in terms of score and needle drops). I was predisposed to enjoy the house, and loved getting to step into the Shaman’s Quest funhouse, the Wilson and Tyler vacation houses, and the underground lair of the Tethered. A choice I found interesting in this house was that in addition to the usual litany of jump scares, some scareactors were primarily there to be creepy and unsettling, like the “Jeremiah 11:11 guy” and, notably, Red (evil Lupita), who can scare you just by walking in an unnervingly straight line. While I really enjoyed the house, though, I do wonder how it would play to someone who hadn’t seen the movie, especially considering that the hook of the film (actors playing dual roles) is a lot harder to pull off in a live setting. Still, it was a lot of fun to actually witness in person the best climactic dance-off in a film since Guardians of the Galaxy.
TOP TIER
Ghostbusters
First of all, I’m old enough to remember the original Ghostbusters show that once occupied the space now inhabited by *checks notes* a motion simulator based on The Tonight Show? That can’t be right… Anyway, I was very excited when I heard that Ghostbusters would be revived as a haunted house for Halloween Horror Nights. Even a temporary Ghostbusters attraction is better than no Ghostbusters attraction. And then they went and knocked it out of the park. I have a theory that you can always tell which houses the design team is most excited about. There seems to just be an extra layer of attention and love from top to bottom. An American Werewolf in London in 2013 was one such house, as was 2014’s Halloween. Add Ghostbusters to the list. Being based on a comedy, it wasn’t the scariest house ever (though the surprise last Slimer [AKA Onionhead] got me good), but it was FUN. In addition to the scareactors and puppets that have become staples of any good Horror Nights house, Ghostbusters made use of some great “Pepper’s ghost” effects (just as the old permanent attraction had in the ’90s), which gave it a unique feel compared to the other houses. Plus, the climax smelled like roasted marshmallows! More than a haunted house, it almost felt like a walk-through version of a Ghostbusters dark ride, which I am now sad doesn’t exist.
Graveyard Games
The scariest house by far this year, with perhaps the simplest storyline: unruly teens mess around in a graveyard, and the ghosts get mad. This house had a surprising amount of backstory, which was only accessible through, of all things, Facebook Messenger. While in line, messaging the Halloween Horror Nights Facebook account started a “conversation” between you and some of the aforementioned teens, along with the grandfather of one of said teens, who somehow knew about every ghost that haunted the graveyard. But not to worry if chatting anonymously with teens online didn’t sound like a great idea to you (and if you found this page by googling that phrase: gross, please leave): this house was plenty scary even if you didn’t know the backstory of the cursed vines or the Glowing Mother. From the moment you passed through the gates of the cemetery and saw the vandalized gravestones, it was unrelenting. Dark. Claustrophobic. I felt ill at ease throughout the whole house. Beyond the scareactors and incredible sets (probably the best set design of the year, or at least the scariest), there were several practical effects throughout the house, including self-extinguishing candles, rattling urns, and… stretching… child… skeletons? Whatever they were, they were creepy. And that was followed up by one of the scariest rooms in perhaps the whole event: a soundproof, pitch black hallway. No scareactors, no puppets, no sets, just some black curtains and the sound of children giggling all around you. This was another house I feel like I could have gone through over and over, so densely packed with detail it was.
Killer Klowns From Outer Space
And so we come back to one of those horror titles I used to avert my eyes from as a child roaming the aisles at Blockbuster Video. Back then, I wasn’t really sure what to make of this one. Was it supposed to be funny? Scary? Was it even possible for it to be good? The only thing I knew was that I was in no way brave enough to find out for myself. I finally watched it this year in my preparation for Horror Nights, and now the truth can be told: I LOVED this movie. I think it’s going to become a Halloween staple for me. It’s not so-bad-it’s-good. It’s just GOOD. An affectionate parody of old 1950s B-movies, it takes the trappings of horror movies like The Blob and asks the question, “What would happen if the monsters followed the rules of cartoon characters?” One Klown delights a crowd of passersby with elaborate shadow puppets, before his T-rex shadow devours them. Another creates a balloon dog that he uses to track down the scent of the heroes. Yet another dons boxing gloves out of nowhere and literally knocks someone’s block off. Not to mention the poor guy who gets pied to death. This movie is, to put it plainly, goofy as hell, a labor of love made by some talented special effects artists/brothers who were clearly just trying to amuse themselves. And the house lives up to that, featuring all of the best scenes, bright colors, and comically grotesque creature designs from the film. Try not to smile as you walk through the Klowns’ circus tent-cum-spaceship, surrounded by victims wrapped up in cotton candy cocoons (“Nobody stores cotton candy like this!”) while the pop-punk title theme from the movie blares around you. I couldn’t help myself. Much like the movie, the house was light on terror, opting more for funhouse scares. But there were plenty of capital-S “Scary” experiences elsewhere in the park. Sometimes, you just want to share a laugh with friends after being startled by an alien clown popping out of a pizza box.
Overall, this was a pretty solid year. I’d say it’s not quite as strong across the board as last year’s event (one of my favorite years ever, as eight of the ten houses ranged from good to excellent, the two weakest houses weren’t at the level of Nightingales: Blood Pit, and even the scarezones were uniformly memorable), but still a good one. I’m excited to see what happens next year. It’s the 30th year, which definitely raises the expectations surrounding the event. It’s my understanding that this will be the first year where planning began 18 months ahead of the event itself, so clearly Universal wants to prove that they’re ready to meet (and hopefully exceed) those high expectations.
I think what really makes Halloween Horror Nights special is its ephemerality. Unlike the big budget rides that are built to last for years, new houses are designed, enjoyed for two months, and then torn down, usually never to be seen again. It’s unique, and in a twist that would surprise even my Goosebumps-loving childhood self, it’s what keeps me coming back year after year.
The Mystic Fishstick 