Note: All images have been taken from the Hollywood HHN 31 page on the HHN wiki, a fan wiki maintained by HHN aficionados. Proper credit to all media can be found in the Pictures section.
The videos used come from the YouTube channel Sharp Productions.
Universal Studios Hollywood's Halloween Horror Nights 2022
As someone living in the southeastern United States, I am definitely less versed in the history of Universal Hollywood's HHN. I do know that Hollywood began their annual Halloween event in 1992, a year after the first Fright Nights over in Orlando. There was a precursor to both parks' Halloween celebrations back in 1986 that was canceled after the tragic death of a scareactor working on the Terror Tram. Universal decided to try Halloween again 6 years later, and the HHN tradition finally took hold of the park.
I may be spoiled by the grand, ultra-theatrical approach to HHN in Orlando, but earlier houses offered by HHN Hollywood were, to my shock considering where the park is sitting, kind of lame. The few videos of past Hollywood houses I've found have shown me uninterested actors and scenes taken from Orlando houses that lack the luster of its younger sister location's event, which is frankly kind of upsetting. I wish I could speak to what problems could have possibly plagued the poor creative team that they had to result in putting the infamously bad "black hallways"—which were exactly what they sound like: featureless hallways painted black—in so many houses, but unfortunately, I can't. There also tended to be fewer houses than the Orlando event offered, which was equally disappointing considering the quality of some houses. It is a relief, then, that for many years the event has been practically re-energized by endorsements and collaborations with big-name horror directors and celebrities, resulting in many more creative ideas for houses and sets being used in recent years.
2022 was a bit of a strange year for Hollywood's HHN; the quality of the houses continued to be quite good when scrutinized with other recent years, but it also was a year with only one fully original house. I'd normally consider this a reason to harshly criticize the event, but the thing is... None of the houses are particularly bad. I can look at last year's HHN and pick out my favorites, and least favorites, but all-in-all it was a decent event with some genuine peaks. That being said and keeping in mind the differences between Hollywood and Orlando, let's dive into it!
Terror Tram (2022)
"Terror Tram is back and taking a disturbing new turn, ending with a walk-through visit into the world of Jordan Peele’s films Us and NOPE."
You may be a little shocked over the Terror Tram continuing to be a large part of Universal Hollywood's HHN tradition after I just told you about the tragedy of a worker dying after being hit; don't worry too much, scareactors no longer jump in front or onto the trams. Instead, the trams are simply what move guests into the back lot of the park where they disembark and walk through a good handful of sets to be scared in, including the Bates Motel and even going past that infamous Psycho house! It's fun to watch and I can only imagine the excitement when physically going through it. I did frankly begin to get bored after watching the same thing just with people dressed in different costumes, though, so I was pleasantly surprised when this particular attraction began to lean into heavier theming and even a bit of a storyline.That leads me to Hollywood Harry and how he was a majorly needed shot in the arm of the Terror Tram.
Introduced in director Eli Roth's iteration of the Terror Tram in 2016, the character of Hollywood Harry is a disgruntled clown who was originally beloved by children and the public alike. As time wore on, clowns, in the eyes of the public, became less associated with being funny and entertaining children. Depictions in the media twisted them into monsters, and this greatly angered the man Hollywood Harry once was. His psyche grew even worse when he was asked to leave Universal, the park where he had been the unofficial mascot of. His behavior worsened until he was kicked off and banned from the property entirely, and Hollywood Harry escaped far into the Hollywood Hills before making his presence known in the backlot of the studio years later. He is now embracing the stereotype of a killer clown, with all the tropes that role comes with.
Terror Tram had never really had an original character to it, to my knowledge; many licensed characters like Jigsaw and Chucky would serve as hosts in on-tram videos that play during the trip to the backlot, but an original "icon" character hosting and then reappearing in subsequent years was unheard of for a long time. My fear of clowns aside, I think that it's about time Hollywood HHN got their own "mascots" of sorts, which Hollywood Harry opens the door for in the future. He also opens the door for Terror Tram to have a more consistent theme to it, and 2022's tour mostly succeeded in that. I love how it was designed around a deadly Halloween party that Hollywood Harry was throwing! The party atmosphere in the Bates Motel set is fun to see, and it started the checklist of classic Halloween tropes that would inhabit the different sections of the tour with from freaky-looking sheet ghosts. After a run-in with Norman Bates at the Psycho house, guests are corralled into Black Cat Alley, where they are attacked by monstrous forms of the titular felines. Skirting around the site of a plane crash, they are then terrorized by a vampire baseball team (vampire "bats", get it?) followed by a skeletal biker gang backed up by Hollywood Harry and his murderous goons. This "party" concludes with a stroll through a pumpkin patch, where someone or something has attacked the children on a school field trip and transformed them into what appears to be living pumpkins. It's overall fairly consistent and enjoyable to watch, and it seems like even people who were repeat Terror Tram riders from earlier years appreciated the tighter storytelling and theming. The very last part of the tour is super cool, because guests passed through the Jupiter's Claim set from Jordan Peele's recent film Nope, which had been invaded by the Tethered from Us! It's an amazing addition to the list of sets guests go through, and I absolutely love that timed moment where all the power in Jupiter's Claim shuts off and the Tethered look to the sky—a nudge to the people who have seen Nope already. This may be my favorite Terror Tram so far!
La Llorona: The Weeping Woman
"When La Llorona Weeps, You’ll Scream! You and your scream squad remember the tale of the woman who drowned her children and then herself. Once a childhood fable, she’s back to terrify once again. This is no nightmare. This is La Llorona."
La Llorona, the Weeping Woman! One of the creepiest and among my personal favorite stories from Hispanic-American folklore in an HHN Hollywood maze, and for the third time no less! Normally I'd see this as a total negative and question the "creativity" it takes to continually recycle a haunted house, and trust me, we'll get there; this house has been a reliably solid and scary offering by Hollywood, though, and remains relatively fresh due to not being seen for several years between events. Universal has a penchant for mythologically themed houses, and the story of La Lllorona has had quite a run in American pop culture over the last 3 or so years in films like Coco or The Curse of La Llorona, so it seemed like a good time for this gem to return.
If you don't know what La Llorona even is, I'll give a little bit of background—just keep in mind that as I am not a Hispanic person, I haven't grown up with this story and the best I can do is give a short version I've gathered through research. The story changes depending on the country and culture of the storyteller in question, so there are different versions of the legend, and Universal Hollywood's depiction of the story goes along with one of the more popular versions I've seen. The gist of this legend is that a pretty peasant woman named Maria attracts a rich man who adores and practically spoils her even as she becomes pregnant, but after their two children are born, Maria's husband changes. He leaves for up to months at a time and returns to his previous womanizing and alcoholic ways, and Maria becomes increasingly upset by his behavior. One day while Maria and her children are out, Maria's husband and a woman that he was cheating on her with pass by them and Maria sees the two together. Overcome with anger and grief, it's said that Maria drowns her children in a nearby river before downing herself as well but is unable to pass on into the afterlife. Maria's spirit then walks the Earth as a wailing ghost, dressed in her white clothes, searching and crying for her two children: the wailing woman, La Llorona. It is a legend that families from Mexico down to Venezuela and Guatemala tell their own children as a way of scaring them into behaving and not sneaking out at night.
That's essentially the version that Universal's HHN House is based on, down to being used as a "boogeyman" story being told to children, according to the running narration guests hear as they brave the house. Speaking of that narration, it absolutely rules. I wish I knew the name of the woman doing it, because the tone of her voice and cadence as she tells the story adds so much to the terrifying atmosphere of the house! She actually returned last year to re-record her narration, an update to the house I agree with wholeheartedly. The operative word to this house is "updated", as really none of it has been changed other than updates to the costumes and puppets used. Like I said earlier, I'd find the lack of significant changes to the house very lazy if it weren't a) a house that has not resurfaced for years and b) if it wasn't such a great house in the first place. The atmosphere that is established immediately with that church facade that is based on the front of a real church: the Mission San Francisco de la Espada. This church was specifically chosen by the director of Hollywood's HHN because according to him, the front of it looks like a face. Going inside this facade to what appears to be a funeral service for La Llorona's children while the titular spirit can be seen looking in is a suitably grim tone-setter, and things only get grimmer (and more horrific) from here. Guests are swept away and never let go by this house, dodging La Llorona every turn of the way and being battered by her screams. La Llorona's look has been updated and even scarier than before, especially in those horse head forms later in the house. The only bit of this house that doesn't seem to have been given a face lift—and this is a testament to how disturbing this set piece is—is the scene where guests travel over a bridge and see the drowned bodies of her children below. It is a striking visual, and I'm glad to see the team has left it to stand on its own time after time. I'm also consistently blown away by the finale of this house every time I see it; those large La Llorona puppets devouring naughty children in their beds are utterly horrifying and have become infamous on the internet for being used as GIFs supplementing "scary" content all over the net.
This house has a history of being one of the best houses offered by HHN Hollywood, and I think it's fairly easy to see why. The costumes are frightening, the set pieces incredibly well thought out, the narrative is sensitive to the cultures it belongs to, and the theming even stretches out into the Pueblo Del Terror scarezone that the house empties out into. It's just a really, really well done house and it's no surprise to me that La Llorona: The Weeping Woman was named HHN Hollywood's house of the year for 2022.
Scarecrow: The Reaping (Hollywood)
"Fear is About to Be Sown! At an abandoned Depression-era farm, vengeance takes root. The scarecrows are avenging the ravaged land. In this all-new haunted house, the only harvest that will be reaped is your scream squad."
I've never been particularly frightened of scarecrows, but I can certainly understand why others would be. There is something inherently ominous about a vaguely human shape hanging limply on a post in the middle of a cornfield, so maybe crows and other birds do have it right when they stay away. This house made its debut as an original house in Orlando, where it was widely considered one of the best offerings of 2017. I never got to see that house unfortunately, but in the lead-up to Hollywood’s 2022, the team made it pretty clear that they would be putting their own spin on it. So, I’m in a bit of a pickle here in that this technically isn’t a fully original house, but I’m going in without any prior knowledge other than knowing that Orlando did do it before.
There is no mistaking what this house will be the instant you hear that twangy Depression-era music emanating from that spooky overgrown farmhouse! This house was designed to take place during the Dust Bowl, with a theme of nature reclaiming the land with a vengeance. As I mentioned just a paragraph ago, I've not been one to get spooked by scarecrows, but this house has me rethinking my stance; the scarecrows are designed in decidedly Horror Nights ways to specifically scare the hell out of guests not only with their appearances, but with what they do. Being turned into a scarecrow is a terrifying concept alone, but the HHN team pushes that into the extreme by forcing guests to face every gory detail at damn near every turn! The victims are sliced open, their insides pulled out and their corpses stuffed to bursting with corn and then either strung up by vines to the walls of their homes or even maliciously posed with their families around the table, making it clear how much of a threat these monstrous creatures are. I'd go as far as to say that this is the "gross-out" maze of Hollywood's 2022 season; the victim mannequins are so detailed in the face, so clearly showing people who've gone through intense agony, that I can feel their pain through osmosis.
Scarecrows, farms, crows, etc. all tend to be common iconography used for haunted houses, so I'm glad that the HHN team decided to go balls-to-the-wall with it and combining it with the historical backdrop of the Dust Bowl. The devastation that the land went through at the hands of the people attempting to dryland farm incorrectly, followed by the damage of wind erosion on the already ruined topsoil, is infamous and the consequences are still being felt today. When looking into what seems to be going on in the world of Scarecrow: The Reaping, it's not just a gross, disturbing nightmare of corn and burlap. It's also a story of nature itself enacting justice against humanity. The vines covering the facade stretch throughout the entire house, finding a new home while choking out the man-made forms of the buildings. The scarecrows completely take over every space they are in, efficiently wiping out the families that long ago had taken the corn's home away. Even the crows thrive, using the rookery as their personal toilet. To nature, everything is back to the way it's supposed to be. 
1. La Llorona: The Weeping Woman
Halloween (Hollywood 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."
I don't think I could count the number of times HHN Hollywood has fallen back to the Halloween franchise for a house slot. It's a security blanket at this point, and I hate to say it, but too much Michael Myers is a bad thing. There's only so much the franchise itself can do, and only so many liberties to be taken in the house before they diverge too much from the "going through the movies" experience these IP houses aim for. I will applaud most of the actors in this year's Halloween though, they are keeping up the intensity and boosting the entertainment factor.
I'm annoyed at this house. Other than showing up yet again and rehashing the original film in ways it's done over and over again, the sound design around the jumpscares is atrocious. You don't have to listen too intently to the video above to notice the film's iconic scare chord used almost every single time Michael pops out. I tried to shrug it off as the sound from other rooms bleeding into each other, as this is a common happening in both parks' HHNs and basically unavoidable considering the layout of the houses and the way sound works. By virtue of the conga-line way the parks let guests into the houses, sounds in the individual scenes will constantly repeat so that everyone going through has nearly the same experience as those around them. Unfortunately, when the same sound in most of the rooms of the house is repeating every time there is a jumpscare, that sound not only loses its power but also becomes extremely grating. That's what we see in this house. That synth sting plays an inexcusable amount of times in an inexcusable amount of same-y jumpscares room by room and I can't imagine it makes for an enjoyable experience for the actors or the people trudging through the house.
This house is just not as good as the Orlando version. The scenes and kills have been moved around out of order, already a problem when you consider this is less of a house where HHN does something fun with the IP it's based on and is presenting as a "walk through the movie" house. Of course, they had to make this one different from the park across the country, but even in the shared moments, Hollywood's offering just doesn't hit the same sweet spots in my brain as Orlando's. It's jumbled and faster-paced, with what I assume to be not as much space for the more atmospheric moments in its sister location's house. At the very least, the actors are giving it the gold old college try. All in all, I'd call this one of the weakest of Hollywood HHN 2022.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space (Hollywood 2022)
"Send in the klowns! an all-new Haunted Maze of Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights in an all-new side-splitting haunted house. The crazed klowns are back to wreak havoc and remind you why you were afraid of clowns in the first place."
I hate, hate, HATE clowns. Pennywise haunts me in every shadow in my room, waiting for my little toe to pop out under my covers so he can snatch me up and pull me down into a sewer drain. The circus is equivalent to psychological torture to me. And if the Killer Klowns from Outer Space are somewhere out there in our galaxy, well, then I say we nuke their planet until there's not even a smear of make-up left.
Obviously, my coulrophobia won't ever let me watch the movie this house is based on; somehow, though, I managed to go through Orlando's Killer Klowns house back in 2019 with my mother and only hid behind her with my eyes closed for about half the house! I'm still proud of myself for that. That same year, the Klowns landed their circus tent spaceship in Universal Hollywood with a house that was much darker and focused more on good old-fashioned scares as opposed to Orlando's more comedic house. It was effective, too. I'm not sure how well this gets across in the video, but those Killer Klowns costumes are HUGE and intimidating as all hell, even in Florida where they were used more for "fun" klownish antics. It's a more basic approach to just have them pop out at people walking through, but I like to think creative was just super confident in how scary the Klowns' designs are. I'll give them props for that, despite the far-lamer "finale" of the house compared to Orlando's version. Black hallways, ugh.
What I will NOT give them props for is bringing the exact same maze as last time, with many very minute details changed in 2022 that are highlighted in the wiki, except mirrored. Where guests would typically go left in this house, now they go right! Absolutely fascinating! This is the second time in the same year that Universal Orlando has brought back a maze with minimal change, potentially the third where the Halloween house is concerned and maybe even fourth depending on what the Orlando scarecrow maze was like. That's not even mentioning the return house of Hollywood HHN's 2021, The Exorcist. I don't want to be harsh and call this outright laziness but come on; Orlando makes multiple original concept houses every year to boost/balance out the number of houses every year! If you can't equal Orlando in house number, fine, but this isn't the way to do it. Give guests a reason to return every year and see something new.
Universal Monsters: Legends Collide (Hollywood)
"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."
Picking up where Orlando's house left off, guests find themselves in a shipping company's warehouse where The Mummy's amulet holding the power to break Dracula and The Wolfman's curses has arrived. As awesome as Legends Collide was in Orlando, I personally prefer this house; it's arguably not quite as frightening (though, the placement of the jump scares here is pretty unpredictable), but it has such a sense of fun to it that part 1 didn't. The introduction to the house guests get rules. It's relatively unassuming as guests travel through the check-in area, except for the deranged giggling of Dracula's henchman, Renfield, whose role in the house I can totally get behind. His voice line "Master... We're heeere!" ups the tension immediately and serves as a warning to passersby that things will get bad for them very quickly.
Something I enjoy about Hollywood's version of the story is that even though the major conflict is Dracula vs. The Mummy, this house incorporates The Wolfman way better than Orlando's did Drac. This version even has dedicated rooms for Wolfie, the first showing him mid-transformation and not having a very fun time of it. It's this dedication to not forgetting that this house is advertised as a three-way fight that sets part 2 ahead of 1 in my mind. Any fans of a particular monster will come out of this one satisfied.
I'm excited for what could be next in the Universal Monsters HHN universe. I'm hoping for more 2-part stories between the parks as it serves as such an interesting way to tell stories through haunted houses. The Universal Monsters brand has been hitting home runs lately in terms of houses, and it's clear the HHN teams in Orlando and Hollywood have a lot of fun thinking up new scenarios to put these legendary monsters in. If they can keep up this quality, I'm all for them sticking around the way they've been.
The Weeknd: After Hours Nightmare (Hollywood)
"Prepare to enter the macabre mind of The Weeknd in this haunted house as he stalks your squad through the surreal nightmare of his After Hours music. A slasher carving a smile at an otherworldly rave. Bandaged maniacs performing extreme plastic surgery. A grotesque mannequin masquerade. His nightmare is now yours."
There isn't a whole lot for me to say about this house as it's pretty much identical to Orlando's version, with some minor changes and different emphases placed on certain rooms. I will say, this one's a bit more gross than Orlando's; every set is caked in dirt and grime and blood, giving a filthy and heavily unsettling feel even to those cornered hallways with the railings. I assume said hallways are due to the specific soundstage it's constructed in, because I'm pretty sure previous houses have had to build around them as well. I also have to shout out that scarier intro, where The Weeknd's mannequin is clearly in agony, thrashing in his chair and screaming. To Hollywood and Orlando's credit, these Weeknd mazes have the coolest mirror maze rooms in event history hands-down.
The Horrors of Blumhouse (Hollywood 2022)
"Shriek through two Blumhouse masterpieces. Face a frantic teen and a serial killer who’ve swapped bodies in Freaky. Then in the terrifying The Black Phone you’ll find yourself kidnapped by The Grabber."
I can say a bit more about this one!
The biggest offender in using black hallways of the year, and it's still easy to tell which half of the house Hollywood's team put real effort into. I don't know if it's by design that Orlando's The Black Phone section was the best of theirs and Freaky being the best of Hollywood's or if it's just a major coincidence. I guess you could go to one and watch a video of the other, kind of like with the Universal Monsters maze? I think I'm giving them a bit too much credit, considering that these Blumhouse houses tend to not be among the best of any year.
The Freaky section is fittingly spooky and even a bit more of the humor comes through in this version. The actors' and actresses' performances are well done, despite the predictable scares. I really like that scene where the switch happens, where both characters find out what's happened as they awake in a blended set. It's a creative way of establishing the conflict, and wasn't done in Orlando's house. Other than that, the first half isn't too different from Orlando's version but with more energy.
That The Black Phone section is just awful. A plague of black hallways with The Grabber popping in and out of boo-holes, sometimes wearing a different mask, and sometimes holding an axe! Scary! And listen to that audio that's mostly just The Grabber yelling! Absolutely embarrassing. They should have just chopped off the weaker halves of this house in both parks and expanded the better halves into full houses; better yet, they could have just... made both halves good in both parks. It couldn't have been that hard.
Universal Horror Hotel
"Welcome to the Hotel from Hell! A 1920s Hollywood hotel, once the hunting ground of its infamous serial killer owner, has been turned into a modern-day haunted hotel. Now he’s back from the dead. Your first stay will be your last."
Luckily, we get to end this (longer than I had intended) review of HHN Hollywood's 2022 on a positive note. The only truly event-original house to grace last year's event, Universal Horror Hotel comes with an HHN Orlando-style exhaustive backstory and serves as the year's "storytelling" house. I won't get into the nitty gritty of the whole story, as it's freely available on the house's wiki page. Give it a look! It does technically serve as a spoiler for pretty much the whole house, but considering you're here reading my rambling and I've supplied a video of it above, I'm assuming you don't care too much about spoilers.
HHN Hollywood really knocked it out of the park with this one. Not a single black hallway in sight, for one. The sets are deceptively amazing; you don't really get to see this effect in the video I've shared here (sorry about that), but the walls in one room fade away into a second layer of set to show an overlay of newspaper clippings talking about the backstory of the house. I don't know how they do this particular effect, but it's just SO damn cool and it's done to varying degrees in a lot of HHN houses. I also applaud the sound design in this house. The jittery, worn-down old-timey muzak being played adds such an unsettling touch to the hotel setting, a location I've always felt a little uneasy about anyway. There's just something about walking down a quiet hotel hall that makes me speed up my step, and that feeling is captured well. I also like the progression from moment to moment of the story, and the ending confirming that the antagonist of the house very much was part of a murderous, satanic cult.
All in all, 2022 was a decent year for Universal Hollywood's Halloween Horror Nights. There are annoyances I still have about Hollywood HHN, and I'd argue some of the houses from 2021 had more effort put into them, but they are moving in a good direction. I hope there will be more houses like what they did with the Universal Monsters, and more original houses the caliber of Universal Horror Hotel.
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