Note: All images and videos have been taken from the HHN 31 page of the Halloween Horror Nights Wiki, a fan wiki maintained by HHN aficionados. Proper credit to all media can be found in the Pictures section.
These last few years have been scary. Actually, scratch that; they've been absolutely horrific. I had a post halfway done about how happy I was for this pandemic to finally be over when I realized there's really no point in putting out the same cautiously optimistic sentiments everyone's seen time after time. The short of it is: For the love of God let's do our best from now on so that we're not all locked back in our homes and fearing for our lives, okay? Besides, fear is an emotion that needs release. We need to feel it and then be relieved of it. We need catharsis, something like... a masked stranger jumping in front of us screaming at the top of their lungs and waving a knife around, perhaps?
Trailer for Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights event this year
I always get so excited as soon as Fall comes around; because of the magic of the internet, even if I'm not able to go to some of the most famous and terrifying Halloween haunts and events, I can still experience them on YouTube! Obviously, it's not the same experience I or anyone else would have in person, but it's becoming increasingly prevalent in these events to allow certain YouTubers to walk through the walls of their shows and share it with the rest of the world. My YouTube dashboard gets filled with this kind of content for September and October each year, so I figured: how else to open up my horror-themed blog than by talking about all the most famous and fun attractions the brave went through in 2022?
As I have actually been able to attend Universal Studios Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights in the past, I thought I might as well talk about it first! A warning to anyone reading: there will be strobing lights and disturbing images from this point on in the videos and images I am about to share.
Universal Studios Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights
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Something interesting about HHN in Orlando is that the Orlando location is where the event started, not in Hollywood which I had originally expected. After the park's disastrous opening in 1990, Universal had to dig deep to keep guests interested in coming back. In 1991, Universal Orlando held the very first "Fright Nights", a 3-night Halloween event with a fun party atmosphere and a single haunted house, all hosted by the Crypt-Keeper from Tales from the Crypt. Over thirty years later, the event now called "Halloween Horror Nights" hosts up to 10 different houses for guests to journey through per year and runs from the beginning of September to Halloween night. Last year was HHN's 30th anniversary featuring the return of many aspects of the event such as the "Icons", characters that would serve as the mascots and hosts of the event for their specific year, and multiple houses and scare zones that bombarded fans and newcomers alike with HHN history. It was an amazing event to watch unfold after what felt like the modern Dark Ages in the wake of the pandemic, and even as someone who didn't have the pleasure of going last year, it had me wondering what could be done to usher in a new era of HHN. This year felt like an extension of the last in terms of what Universal offered, but that's not a bad thing; as someone who adores all things Halloween, I'll take as many odes to my favorite holiday as I can get!
Now that I've given a tiny bit of background, I think it's time to get into the meat of this thing. Let's start with the houses from this year!
Universal Monsters: Legends Collide (Orlando 2022)
"If you thought one Universal Monster was scary, how about three? Better summon your scream squad, ‘cause you’re about to get caught in the middle of an epic battle between The Wolf Man, Dracula, and The Mummy, together for the first time ever. Their mission: To find the amulet that will break their curse. And they’ll destroy anyone who gets in their way."
If you were to ask anyone with the most basic knowledge of horror to start naming classic movie monsters, I can guarantee the names Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, and if they're feeling feisty, maybe even the Phantom of the Opera. Universal's contribution to horror movies is impossible to ignore, so it only makes sense that they would lean into their historic films for their annual horror event. They have been updating the looks of their frightful family of freaks in recent years as evidenced in their 2019 Universal monsters house, where my mom and I both came face to face with them; in 2021, for the event's 30th anniversary, they even made an "official" sequel to the Bride of Frankenstein where the titular Bride worked to revive her monster husband after the explosive finale of the film. This year, Universal created a new story where Dracula, The Mummy, and the Wolfman clash in what, according to the wiki, was "one of the longest houses in Halloween Horror Nights history".
The very first thing that came to mind seeing this house was how insanely time-consuming it must have been for the designers to hand-carve those sets laden with hieroglyphics. Oh yes, hand-carved. And it wasn't just the walls of the house that were painstakingly carved! The wiki says that the HHN creative team went through 3.78 tons of drywall mud in total creating the atmosphere of the ancient pyramid that guests travel through, all the way down to that HUGE Anubis statue in the center of the facade. I don't think they've ever done something like what they did for the sets of this house! It serves well in preparing guests for the visual spectacle of what they're walking through, from said carvings to the great use of reds/oranges for the Mummy and blue for the Wolfman whenever they pop out. Speaking of that facade, I do like that it appears to be an archeological site, a shout-out to the common set-up of mummy stories. It also provides some context on why the guests are even here, implying that we are the archaeologists going through this tomb, presumably hoping to discover the mysterious amulet that the backstory mentions. Of course, it wouldn't be a haunted house if we weren't caught up in a horrifying battle for control of this strange artifact between three of the most famous monsters of all time!
Actually, that's one of my major problems with this thing. For a house that was excessively marketed as a meeting of the three legends, this house has an inordinate amount of Mummy and Wolfie but seeing hide or fang of Dracula before the last few rooms was rare on opening weekend, as can be seen in the above video. I was actually quite annoyed by this the first few times walkthroughs of Legends Collide popped up in my YouTube feed, and apparently, guests were just as frustrated in person because the wiki mentions that more Draculas were added to earlier scenes after opening weekend. In the trivia section of that same wiki page, it is mentioned that the Orlando and Hollywood teams collaborated on making their versions of this house be two halves of the same story; Orlando's half being the Mummy vs the Wolfman, and Hollywood's half being Dracula vs the Mummy. This explains the lack of Drac this time around and foreshadows how Hollywood will handle the concept but was never addressed during the marketing or sneak peeks that Universal offered for the event this year. Orlando's Creative Team considers this house to be House of the Year, which I can understand but don't fully agree with. This house is an achievement, and those who worked on and in it have every right to be proud, but my personal favorite for this year is still coming up!
Halloween (Orlando 2022)
"Gather your friends and visit Haddonfield, Illinois, where Michael Myers is about to don his mask and embark on his first brutal spree. Silent. Merciless. Relentless. He’s the embodiment of pure evil. You don’t want to go alone as you go back to where it all began. This year, step into the original 1978 horror classic, Halloween."
You can't spell Halloween Horror Nights without Halloween! Among my and many other horror fanatics' favorite movies of all time, it only makes sense for Universal to pay tribute to the grandfather of slashers every so often. And pay tribute they have, making houses for both the original and its many sequels throughout the years. This year, Universal once again brought the classic 1978 film to life for the masses to walk through. While I am a bit confused about why they wouldn't instead dig into the recent "canon" trilogy of sequels, I honestly can't complain about seeing my favorite movie brought to real, deadly life.
It's really hard to think of anything to complain about with this house, but that goes vice versa with finding what to truly say about it that isn't shown in the video I've included. Again, the Creative Team has gone absolutely bonkers in terms of detail in this house. Going from the Myers' house to the asylum to the homes of Haddonfield is an absolute treat to see as a fan and the love that the designers clearly have for the masterpiece of a film. They've even captured the eeriness of some of the most famous scenes and made them even more terrifying to go through in person! The scene where Michael has broken out of the asylum and guests are led through a short walk around the building and accosted by the patients through the fence is simple, but genuinely terrifying. I'd go so far as to say that the beginning of the house captures the exact feeling of the beginning of the film, building up slowly to Michael's rampage and keeping the guests on edge until the real scares begin.
While not as obvious in the particular video I chose, one of the first real Michael Myers jumpscares employs an effect using mirrors that produces the illusion of a long, "endless" hallway with Michael standing at the end. To guests' shock, though, Michael is actually poised off to the side, ready to strike. It's always a cool effect and gets a crazy number of screams whenever used. Something else that stuck out to me was another pretty simple and quick room that takes the form of being in the closet that Laurie Strode hides in. The attacks from both sides in a room that is already very claustrophobic is an insidious tactic that I know would soil my pants. I also have to give a big shout-out to the actors portraying Michael; they captured his mannerisms down to the head tilt perfectly and putting so much focus onto the acting in the chaos of a haunted house is super commendable.
The Horrors of Blumhouse (Orlando 2022)
"Step inside a new double-feature of Blumhouse horror. Your scream squad will find yourselves trapped between a frantic teen and the ruthless serial killer she’s swapped bodies with in Freaky. Then, you’ll try to make a desperate escape from the dark basement of The Grabber before you become his latest victim in the terrifying The Black Phone."
If you're not sure what the hell Blumhouse Productions is, allow me to throw out a few names for you: Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Insidious, Ouija, Sinister, Tooth Fairy featuring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson... basically, some of the largest hits both in and outside the world of horror have been pumped out by this production house, helmed by a major producer named Jason Blum. HHN has worked with Blumhouse two different years before to put together houses for guests to live out their recent releases, and 2022 was no different with this double feature of Freaky and The Black Phone. Freaky was released at the tail-end of the Year Of The Plague 2020, and The Black Phone came out in the summer of this year. Both films received a lot of praise from critics and audiences alike, so it makes sense that Blumhouse would make a third return. These Blumhouse houses tend to be, to put it kindly, pretty "meh". Let's see if the third time's the charm!
The first half of this house is made up of a retelling of Freaky, a dark comedy horror retelling of Freaky Friday where instead of some teenage brat trading bodies with her mother (already a pretty terrifying concept), a teenager ends up swapping bodies with "The Blissfield Butcher"—a brutal serial killer played by funnyman Vince Vaughn. Goofs, gaffs, and gore ensue! This half of the house is pretty play-by-play in terms of what it does with the material it's based on. Guests move through the first gory scene of the movie where the Butcher breaks into a mansion, kills the inhabitants, and steals the ancient Aztec dagger through which he accidentally swaps bodies with his intended teenage victim. The movie is actually pretty scary at times with some rather extreme kills but also keeps a comedic and even occasionally sweet tone regarding the teenage girl trapped in a serial killer's body and her interactions with her friends as she tries to get her murderer-infested body back. Unfortunately, the humor of the film doesn't translate well to the shocks and scares of a haunted house, so we're basically treated to what can only be described as a live-action clip show of the kills that the Butcher pulls off in his new body. Concept of the film aside, a teenage girl just isn't scary; especially not teenage girls flapping their mouths to mimic the lines blaring out of speakers and still trying to appear threatening. Watch the movie instead. It's good!
The second half of this house is where it shines, though you may not expect so with that awkward, jarring transition into The Black Phone. I haven't seen this movie yet, but it got a lot of praise, so I'm interested in checking it out. As far as this house goes, I can't comment on the accuracy of the scenes or details they remembered to add, but I can say that they nailed the somber, thoroughly-more-scary tone for this half. The villain is unnerving with his clown-like mask, and the whispers of the children over the phone in the soundtrack are positively eerie! I can also appreciate that the mannequins that stood in for real people never took away from the experience; that kitchen set where guests sneak around The Grabber as he snores was super clever. Definitely the better of this two-for-one house.
The Weeknd: After Hours Nightmare (Orlando)
"Enter the macabre mind of The Weeknd in this haunted house as he stalks you through the surreal nightmare of his After Hours music."
What seems like an awfully strange choice to base a house on becomes more understandable when you remember that the HHN team has collaborated with a few musical artists before: Alice Cooper, Rob Zombie, and even Slash have lent their creative and musical abilities to several past HHN houses in both Orlando and Hollywood. Two of those three artists are explicitly tied to horror in the public eye, but not so much in Slash's case who instead created the soundtracks for the recent Universal Monsters houses. Nobody feels quite as out of place in having an HHN house based on him as Canada's own The Weeknd. The alternative R&B singer isn't as squeaky-clean as pop radio would want us to believe, though; his music is often a way of the singer expressing the dark underbelly of the lavish life someone like him lives. There is a disparity between how his music sounds and the actual themes and ideas that he explores in his lyrics, to the point that the music videos he put out for his album After Hours make what could be called horror shorts! The HHN team clearly recognized this, and with his help created what may be the most interesting of HHN's offerings this year.
The idea that we are going into the nightmares of the starring artist is constantly used for the "inciting incident" when it comes to musical houses; this one, however, is the first one that has guests physically seeing that we are going inside the singer's mind. Guests are greeted by a screaming mannequin of The Weeknd, who is strapped to a chair with a strange helmet stuck to his head. It's a visual and auditory assault on the senses and already pretty disturbing, especially with all the freaky videos and images projected on those screens.
That entrance to the house aside, I'm not entirely convinced that this house is scary. Interesting idea, visually really cool at times, and always eerie—but never truly scary. The horror club and grungy gross back-alley aesthetics are fun to go through and look like they make guests uncomfortable enough for the jumpscares to work, but honestly, the scariest thing encountered here are the bandage-faced women decapitating The Weeknd and making some sort of Frankenstein's monster type thing with a body. Again, this house is based on the music videos produced for the After Hours album; the scenes and ideas seen in those shorts are brought to life while also playing loosely with the story told. I particularly like the mirror maze part in the middle of the house; it's a fun shout-out to The Weeknd's Super Bowl performance a while back. I didn't really understand the bit at the end with the singer becoming a toad monster until I put together that of course in the world of the house he would lick toads to get high, and of course, that would turn him into a freakish toad creature!
Spirits of the Coven
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"They’re Bewitchingly Terrifying! A coven of beautiful flapper witches will lure you into their 1920s speakeasy, reveal their haggish true form and turn your scream squad into a witch’s brew. They’ll be cackling; you’ll be screaming."
I appreciate that for the last couple of events, HHN has been leaning more heavily into "traditional Halloween", meaning ghosts, scarecrows, vampires, evil trick-or-treaters, and yes, witches! I was excited when this house was announced. I've always felt like the prohibition era is one perfect for horror, with all the secrets, organized crime, and fear of run-ins with the law those years bring. It was a salacious and violent time with a lot of uniquely American history, making it a perfect period to throw in fictional blood-thirsty monsters among real-life ones. Speaking of blood-thirsty, well...
This house has an identity problem. The basic gist is that there is a speakeasy run and inhabited by a secret, monstrous coven of witches. We begin seeing these witches as soon as we get into the speakeasy (after a fun little tone-setter with a particularly growly voice asks us for a password) and they look like the typical beautiful flappers you would see in that period, though with indicators that these women are not entirely what they seem. The hallway scene where a flapper-witch can be seen kissing and then snapping the neck of an innocent drinker is the first time the problem I have with this house becomes evident. Without expressly knowing what is going on with that woman all up on the victim's mannequin and without paying close attention to the motion she makes, it looks like she may be biting and tearing his neck like a vampire, not a witch. Vampires in modern media are also frequently depicted as being attractive, and being ageless bloodsuckers, it makes just as much sense that a group of them could be running this bar rather than some witch coven. It makes even more sense that their forms would become more disturbing and monstrous as the witches devolve into their hag forms further into the depths of their den. There are also the contents of what the witches are truly brewing: magic potions made with the fresh blood of men. What is the preferred drink of vampires, again? I have no doubt that blood is an important ingredient in any witch's brew, but just blood? Come on, where's the eye of newt and toe of frog? Where's the wool of bat and tongue of dog? Even the men who are not dead and working with the coven are confusing, as they are frequently covered in blood and feral whenever they appear. These men are supposed to be possessed, presumably by demons that the witches summoned; they can equally be thought of as freshly turned and hungry vampires lashing out at any fresh meat. The finale scene doesn't really clear things up too well either. The head witch is performing a ritual while dancing in a rain of witches' brew, which again, is basically just blood and that could just be a scene of a vampire queen dancing in the red stuff if we didn't know better.
All that being said, I do think this is a pretty cool maze. Bars or saloons with bad things happening in the back pop up more often than you'd think in haunted houses, but often as single set pieces that we hurry through and forget about; they usually function as quick transitions rather than settings in of themselves. Thanks to the idea of this being a speakeasy, though, we never truly leave the bar setting even as we begin to learn the dark truth of this watering hole. This particular speakeasy uses a meat packing plant as a front which explains the uncomfortable amount of mutilated pig corpses for the witches to stuff their bottled potions into. Guests walk past multiple scenes of this happening and come to realize that the potions are not only for this coven, oh no, but they are also being shipped to other covens around the country! A real witchy business has been going on for a long time now, and the guests interrupting the daily goings-on are basically serving themselves to the coven on a silver platter. I really like the degradation of not only the witches' physical forms the further we travel into their lair, but the way the scenery itself becomes less "I'd totally drink here" and more "Oh God, PLEASE get me out of here"! The misgivings about the house's identity aside, I think this is a properly scary prohibition-themed house, and that finale scene hits whether I know what these evil women are supposed to be.
Bugs: Eaten Alive
"These Bugs Are Out to Exterminate YOU! While touring a 1950s home of the future, you’ll be surrounded by the slime of bugs everywhere as hordes of many-legged terrors descend upon you and your scream squad. You’ll be dropping like flies."
I'd argue that there are a handful of categories that HHN houses fall into: storytelling, gross-out, comedy, IP (Intellectual Property), and intense. While most mazes can be put into multiple categories, the focus of each individual house becomes clear based on the scares, concepts, sets, etc. With a name like Bugs: Eaten Alive, I think guests knew exactly what they were in for before they turned the first corner. I don't think I have a fear of bugs, but I've certainly never been a big fan of the squirmy, crawly, slimy, gross little bastards either. Entomophobia, the fear of insects, is a relatively common phobia in the states though, as evidenced by our gameshows' morbid fascination with making contestants eat or lay among insects as challenges. It only makes sense that the HHN team would literally maximize this fear into one of the grossest (and surprisingly funny!) haunted houses I've ever seen them pump out.
I think the thing that most excited me about this house was that it takes place in that very old-school 1950's Americana-style "house of the future". Anyone who watches horror or even cartoons enough will know that these robotic convenience-first homes never end up all they cracked up to be, and guests learn that lesson very quickly in Bugs: Eaten Alive when the fog the house sprays to cause bugs to grow and die rapidly backfires. Things spiral quickly out of control, and the screams of scientists, showgirls, and security guards join the house's soundtrack of corny automated advertisements. No nuclear family in this home, unless you happen to be a bug enjoying your newfound hunger for humans.
As disgusting and genuinely pretty disturbing as this house gets, I do enjoy the little laughs it can squeeze out of me between winces and shudders. The giant cockroach eating the man on the table is peak HHN goofs and gaffs, along with the super goofy giant fly that attacks guests in that same room. The house only gets darker and grosser, to the point that many of the scareactors are now husks of humans; holes now riddling their faces and capable only of groaning at their victims (hello, trypophobia!), these poor souls have one of the worst "victim" fates in any recent house I can think of. And yet, I can't help but uncomfortably laugh at that poor dude who has horrifically had a massive spider lay eggs inside him, only for him to announce their hatching in the hammiest way possible. I should be disturbed by the showgirl from the front of the house being driven completely over the edge, but instead, I find her axe-wielding antics delightful. And how else could this house possibly end than with an R. Lee Emery expy yelling into his walkie-talkie to blow the place sky-high?
Fiesta de Chupacabras
"Listen to Your Abuela and Beware the Chupacabras! Visit a Latin American village where the legend of the creature Chupacabras is celebrated with a colorful fiesta. And the streets are lined with the crimson blood of tourists like you and your amigos."
Ah, the Chupacabra! I've always been interested in the stories of this big goat-sucking freak, so imagine my excitement when a house based around this famous cryptid popped up! In the back of my head, I thought that this house would be one of the more straightforward ones; a house where we make our way through a few village buildings while the creature stalks us and tears apart anyone who stands in its way. While this isn't fully incorrect regarding Fiesta de Chupacabras, the HHN designers threw me for a loop with a twist!
The titular creature does indeed make multiple appearances throughout the house, but we'll get to everyone's favorite mangy mongrel in a minute. Instead, let's get the category out the way: this damn thing is intense from beginning to end thanks to those absolutely insane masked villagers jumping out in guests' faces at every possible moment. The twist of the house being that the villagers are the most present danger to guests compared to the monster the house is named after is a fun one and the story the design team was trying to convey is crystal clear. The villagers have come to a sort of understanding with the chupacabras in the past where instead of the monsters preying on the locals, the villagers themselves lure in and kill outsiders with an annual celebration to keep the bloodthirsty creatures sated. They wear these beautiful chupacabra masks to both hide their identities and as a way of revering this unspoken pact; it helps that they're pretty spooky, too, especially when they're concealing people who are practically feral in the way they attack and dispatch tourists during their fiesta. The actors portraying the villagers are on point in capturing the violent desperation of people who need your blood, and considering the sheer number of chupacabras stalking around, need your blood now. Fun fact from the wiki: an actor is actually planted in the groups of guests moving through the house, and then dragged off by a villager to convince guests of the danger they're in. The chaotic energy of this house while still telling a coherent story to everyone entering is so good!
I called chupacabras "mangy" earlier; that was on purpose, not just a dig at the big fellas. chupacabras were originally believed to be extraterrestrial, two-legged beings with thick, greenish skin and spikes protruding out their back along their spines. This image remained with the legend for years, but over time, the monster's form began to change as more scientific ideas of what this blood-sucking cryptid could possibly be. More recent sightings described the Chupacabra as a large dog-like creature that moved around on all fours, with its hind legs being larger than its front legs. This transformation may have been sparked by the belief of scientists and other experts recognizing what was claimed to be chupacabras as coyotes with mange; a skin disease caused by parasitic mites that causes severe itching, scabs, and lesions. Animals—particularly large dogs and coyotes—look extremely gnarly in the late stages of this disease, and it can lead to erratic behavior and death. The chupacabras in this house are designed around that concept, which I couldn't help but smile at. Other than the enlarged canines that make them look a bit like saber-toothed tigers, the puppets are gloriously big, disturbingly mangy, and incredibly intimidating. Fiesta de Chupacabra is fun, scary, and consistent in its quality enough to land itself in my #2 best house on HHN Orlando. But what could top this?
Hellblock Horror
"As These Monsters Escape Their Prison, There’s No Escape for You! Enter a prison whose savage inmates are monstrous creatures. If they break free from their cells, it’s a death sentence for everyone."
Not this one!
I hate to have an entry here that's going to be nothing but me whining, but this house brought me to this point. This maze is straight-up bad. Looking around, there is a rumor that this house was initially an Evil Dead house until something went wrong, and the team had to change it into an original one. I understand that things happen all the time that require changes of plans, but if this was the best they could have given us they really should have just scrapped it altogether and only given us 9 houses this year. The concept itself is uninspired; jail breakouts are such a common theme in haunted houses that not even going "but no, this time the prisoners are MONSTERS!" can help get guests excited to go through prison break #500. The monsters themselves, when they're not reused from past houses (which is almost all of them), are incredibly uninspired to the point that the only scares they're capable of are saying BOO. There's just... nothing here. It's a shame we didn't get that Evil Dead house.
Dead Man's Pier: Winter's Wake
"You’re Dead in the Water! In a New England fishing village, undead fishermen emerge from the waves to seek their revenge. You and your scream squad may have escaped their hooks in the scare zone. Now they’ll reel you in and drag you under."
Something I get weird looks for is when I describe horror as beautiful. A lot of people can't see past the axe-wielding maniac butchering horny teens in the movies, the unnervingly long descriptions of murders in books, the disturbing images put out by particularly dark artists, the superstition of folklore, or the inherent corniness of Halloween haunt attractions. To these people, calling anything to do with horror "beautiful" is ridiculous at best and cause for concern at worst; they don't see the mirrors being held up to them nor the messages within. To be fair, beauty doesn't come to horror particularly easily; the people doing the scaring have to know how to build those mirrors, and how to convey the messages they want. The movies, stories, art, and even haunted houses need someone behind them who know how to tell a story and how to let the beauty inherent in storytelling show itself; luckily for Orlando, the HHN team is very skilled at telling stories in the medium that they've chosen, and all that beauty comes pouring out in the best house of HHN Orlando's 2022.
The HHN team knocked it out of the park with this one. Everything from the visuals to the costumes to the music used creates a somber, sad mood unlike anything else that could be found in last year's event. Even the backstory of this house is tragic (albeit a common folk-horror premise), detailing the return of forgotten sailors to the fishing town that put up little effort to rescue them after their ship sank. We as guests are witnessing the very end of a fishing village being turned into a figurative and literal ghost town, and it's fairly unique in that we're not exactly going through a story in medias res, or in the middle of the story as most haunted houses tend to be. The fishermen have won, and from the looks of things, won completely. The villagers guests see have all been slaughtered by their ghostly assailants, illuminated by the amazing set-piece of the facade, the lighthouse, but there's no sense of victory from the sailors; just long-burning anger and sadness. Everything is designed to be in that sweet spot between old and rotting, even the barnacle-crusted fishermen themselves. They look like a cross between ghosts and walking waterlogged corpses, particularly in their sagging-yet-skeletal faces. I like that there isn't necessarily a distinction made on what these fishermen have become—the only thing that matters is that they haven't forgiven the poor people living around the pier, and that they are angry. I also like the way that the jumpscares are set up in this house. Guests are attracted to something distracting them, certain details or set pieces, and then attacked from an angle they don't expect once they have let their guards down. Speaking of set pieces, how about that HUGE ship that the house has you enter for the finale? How about the reveal that the violin you've been hearing is played by a ghostly siren on that ship?! I love this house!
This house is actually connected to a scarezone a few years ago, Dead Man's Wharf; I'm not sure if this house counts as a sequel or a prequel, but the connection is very clear and the style is consistent in the house from the aesthetics, story, and general feel of the scarezone. Everything about it is peak Halloween Horror Nights. It's one of the most beautiful, even dreamlike (or perhaps nightmarelike) houses they've ever produced, and it is my favorite of Orlando's offerings in 2022.
Descendants of Destruction
"Deeper. Darker. Deadlier. Careful not to leave any of your scream squad behind as you descend the subway tunnels of a deserted New York. Lurking in the dark are hungry mutants looking to feast on the last remnants of humanity."
If it wasn't for Hellblock Horror, this house would have been the disappointment of Orlando HHN 2022. There's nothing inherently bad, but it feels like a house that had the potential to be pretty cool in its post-apocalyptic underground setting. There's just not a whole lot going on, which especially stinks considering Descendants of Destruction is a sequel house to Seeds of Extinction from HHN 2018; Seeds itself was a fun house which makes Descendants particularly disappointing.
The story of Seeds of Extinction involved an apocalypse where after a meteor hit Earth, the ensuing radiation caused plants to mutate into vicious man-eating monsters. These events, in the story of this maze, have caused humans to seek safety underground. Unfortunately, humans are going under mutations too, devolving into slobbering monsters intent on killing and eating everyone they see. I think my problem with this house is that it's fairly short and straightforward, and it doesn't particularly have the element of surprise Seeds did with its plant monsters. Along with Hellblock Horror, this house has a "Spirit Halloween store" feel that it can't quite shake off, and I hate to say that about any house Orlando puts out. The way the humans devolve into mutated freaks as guests travel deeper into the subway is fun, but it happens incredibly quickly. A detailed touch I noticed after reading the wiki page for this house that really helped the theming, though, was how the lighting devolved along with the "survivors". The modern lighting of the subway tunnel devolves into dimmer, older lanterns before the only light available is coming from the mutated fluorescent mushrooms. It was an okay house, but one I'm just not particularly enthusiastic about compared to the rest.
Phew, that was a lot! I hope you enjoyed our little text-based adventure through last year's Orlando event, because my next post will be based on the Halloween Horror Nights held all the way across the country, in Hollywood! Before you go, though, here's my personal ranking of Orlando's houses last year:
1. Dead Man's Pier: Winter's Wake
2. Fiesta De Chupacabras
3. Bugs: Eaten Alive
4. Universal Monsters: Legends Collide
5. Halloween
6. The Weeknd: After Hours Nightmare
7. Spirits of the Coven
8. The Horrors of Blumhouse
9. Descendants of Destruction
10. Hellblock Horror
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