There are few spooky season activities as beloved – and as culturally important – as Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood. The event, which runs through the first weekend of November, is the ultimate Halloween experience – between the haunted houses, scare zones, specialty merchandise and food and overall vibe, it’s hard to imagine the holiday without HHN.
And this year is no different. With a combination of original and IP-based houses, HHN is back and better than ever. We attended the Hollywood version of Halloween Horror Nights (there’s also an even-more-expansive version at Universal’s Orlando resort), did all of the mazes and are here to rank them.
One note: both the “Purge”-based water show (which takes over the Waterworld outdoor auditorium) returns this year but is very much the same show as last year. And there’s another “live” experience, Late Night with Chucky, which puts your favorite killer doll in a late-night talk show scenario, which isn’t technically a maze, so it isn’t included here.
Ready to get scary? Here are all the Universal Studios Hollywood Halloween Horror Nights 2024 mazes, ranked.
Last year, the Terror Tram was our very favorite experience at Halloween Horror Nights. This year? Not so much. Instead of having an original idea, it is based around Blumhouse IP, so you’ll see The Grabber from “The Black Phone” hanging around the Bates Motel and, where the downed airplane from “War of the Worlds” is located, a bunch of characters from the world of “The Purge.” It’s all perfectly fine, but feels more like you’re walking through a bunch of commercials than actually having a singular, horrifying experience. Perhaps scariest of all was, when we were there, they played a trailer for “Speak No Evil,” a movie whose trailer has been playing before virtually every movie in existence for what feels like the last eight months. The Terror Tram takes a while to fully get through, so if you’re pressed for time and are looking for something to cut, this is a good candidate.
One of this year’s new original houses is Dead Exposure: Death Valley. The idea is pretty cool – it has something to do with a desert military outpost, where whatever secret experiments they are working on get loose and cause havoc. There are lots of barrels of toxic waste, liquifying zombies and the like. Sadly the concept is more compelling than the execution, which seemed oddly empty and weirdly dependent on animal abuse and torture. (If you’re sensitive to that kind of thing, you might want to skip.) But hey, we love HHN original houses, even if they are a bit of a letdown.
It’s not every day that an original haunted house gets a sequel, but last year’s Monstruos returns this year with a compelling follow-up. This year’s house features a crazy wolfman-like creature, a soul-stealing rider and a child-eating ghoul. The way that you are brought into the world and then guided through the mythology is fun and inclusive; even if you have never heard of any of these characters, their archetypes are identifiable, and the stories behind them are easy to latch onto. This is one of the few houses that felt overlong, though, and by the time you get through it, you’re likely to have had enough. Still: we wouldn’t be mad at a third house next year.
Okay, so the name of this house is a bit odd. The “trilogy” it refers to is meant to evoke the three most recent Weeknd albums – “After Hours,” “Dawn F.M.” and “Hurry Up Tomorrow.” The only problem is that the third movie (and its associated iconography) have yet to be released. There have been two singles from this new album, one of which featured a video partially shot in this house, but the vibe still remains a mystery. And this house features some Weeknd lore – him in the red jacket, old man Weeknd and other assorted weirdness. There’s a DJ in the queue, too, and depending on when you’re there, it is one of several iterations of the artist. Still, Nightmare Trilogy is the only maze you can dance through and the only one that features Jim Carrey monologues booming over the sound system. Maybe by the time next year’s HHN rolls around, the album will be out.
There have been several “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”-based HHN houses before, but this one is new, taking a multiverse approach to the franchise. Most of the maze is built around the Sawyer family slaughterhouse, which is referenced in the 1974 original but never seen. As the fulcrum, there are Easter eggs from the entire franchise (including the 2022 Netflix reboot), most notably the inclusion of Chop Top from “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.” (We were kind of hoping there’d be a scene based on the iconic “Excalibur”-indebted teaser trailer for “Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III,” maybe the most iconic horror movie trailer ever.) Considering this year the franchise is celebrating its 50th anniversary, this is a good – and extremely gruesome – ode to the series. And it’s a new house that feels like an instant classic. The saw is family.
The most charming (and family-friendly) house at this year’s HHN is the one dedicated to “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” the sequel to “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” that arrived in theaters earlier this year. Most of the movie’s most memorable scenes are created – the flashback to an explorer’s club turning to ice, the little Stay Puft marshmallow men causing havoc, an encounter with classic “Ghostbusters” spirit Slimer. (That one is cleverly achieved with the proton pack’s beams stitched into the wall.) There’s an air of fun and whimsy to go along with the terror, which adds for a nice change of pace. This one is an unmissable marvel.
This is an original house that Universal was so proud of that it arrived in both parks – Hollywood and Orlando. But only Hollywood has a soundtrack by Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash. The storyline follows Van Helsing’s daughter Saskia, who is tracking down and battling the Bride of Frankenstein, the She-Wolf of London and a female Mummy. The storyline takes place after two other HHN houses, continuing a loose, original storyline that is fun to revisit. And there is so much more than scares in this house, with compelling tableaus of female heroes and villains battling it out. Original HHN houses are always a ton of fun, especially when they’ve built up their own mythology over the years into something that tells a great story while also scaring the hell out of you.
This feels like something of a no-brainer – a house based on the first two “Quiet Place” movies. (The most recent entry, this summer’s “A Quiet Place: Day One,” is not included.) And while the idea is cool enough, the execution is everything – this is a house full of incredible, fully articulate puppet versions of the series’ villainous alien creatures. They do not disappoint. What’s also really cool is that this is the first HHN house – in the history of the event – to feature actors using American Sign Language. This is another level to the house, which serves to deepen the experience and enrich the scares. Putting aside the fact that this took so long to come to HHN (the first movie came out in 2018), “A Quiet Place” is a welcome addition to the roster of properties that really come to life in this format. HHN is a magical place where you can face your fears and meet your favorite monsters. It’s always a blast, especially when the marriage of property and experience is so terrific.
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