It’s officially September and that means it’s officially the Halloween season, as fans will spend the next two months gearing up for All Hallow’s Eve. One of the significant events that ushers in the spooky season is the opening of Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando Resort, which opened last weekend and brought in thousands of horror fans to celebrate all things horror for a 33rd year. Much like previous years, this year’s event not only honored beloved and well-known franchises but also unleashed all-new terrors on audiences, ensuring that horror fans of all varieties could find something to send a chill down their spines.
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The biggest established properties being celebrated this year were Insidious, A Quiet Place, and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, though fans were also given a fresh spin on the Universal Monsters in the all-new Eternal Bloodlines haunted house. Six entirely original experience honored Latin American monsters, goblins, and Major Sweets, a figure who previously appeared in Scare Zones at Halloween Horror Nights and has now earned his own house.
While some fans might be able to experience all ten houses and all five scare zones when booking an R.I.P. Tour, for those who want to know how to prioritize their time at the experience, we’re here to rank all ten houses to give you insight into how to spend your time immersed in terror at this year’s event.
Scroll down to see how the Halloween Horror Nights haunted houses at Universal Orlando Resort for 2024 and head to the event’s official site to grab your tickets.
Honorable Mention – Scare Zones
The haunted houses aren’t the only ways to be surrounded by terror, as fans can experience five different Scare Zones throughout the park as you travel from one destination to the next. In some ways, the Scare Zones are more frightening than the houses, as you never quite know what will sneak up on you as you hope to make your way throughout the park.
This year’s Scare Zones include Duality of Fear, Demon Queens, and Torture Faire, but it’s the Enter the Blumhouse and Swamp of the Undead that are the most chilling of the Scare Zones. With Enter the Blumhouse, you’ll come across The Black Phone‘s Grabber, the killer doll M3GAN, and more of the studio’s most iconic threats as they sneak up to startle you. Swamp of the Undead features alcohol bootleggers coming back from the dead, with the Scare Zone’s fog, set design, and sound effects transporting you to a spooky swamp.
10) Triplets of Terror
The nature of any ranking means that something has to come in last place, and even while there’s nothing outright poor about Triplets of Terror, it stands out least from the pack of other thrilling houses at the 2024 event.
The premise is that a batch of triplets bizarrely killed their family during a birthday party and, years later, they seem to have returned to continue their carnage. Between the premise, setting, and characters themselves, Triplets of Terror brings together a lot of components scene in virtually all stories about backwoods killers, which includes dilapidated homes, household tools used as murder weapons, and seemingly innocent masks used as unsettling disguises.
Even if there’s nothing outright bad about the experience, it ultimately feels somewhat uninspired, given how many similar stories we’ve seen unfold in movies, TV, and even professional wrestling. Fans of these concepts will likely connect more strongly with the Triplets of Terror, but it won’t win over any dubious guests.
9) The Museum: Deadly Exhibits
A museum has brought the mysterious “Rotting Stone” into its collection, only for the relic to begin infecting other exhibits in the gallery. From paintings to statues to desks, the rot has overtaken everything in its vicinity and brought them to life, even rotting away the building itself to unearth something even more deadly underneath.
Museums can be creepy places, depending on the types of exhibits you’re looking at, with this haunted house realizing those fears. The house is quite creative in how it puts a sinister spin on so many mundane artifacts, earning points for the diversity of ghouls it has created, though that creativity doesn’t translate directly into fear.
8) Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Any story inspired by the hunt for ghosts has an inherent spookiness, and while the Ghostbusters franchise has had its fair share of startling moments, it is more beloved for the silliness it offers audiences.
The Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire house largely follows the events of this year’s film, going from an Adventurer’s Club to Ray’s Occult Books to Ghostbusters HQ. The set design is quite impressive in how it has replicated the environments of the movie Frozen Empire, as well as how it manages to find ways to honor other corners of Ghostbusters lore. It’s so effective at replicating the movie, though, that there is an emphasis on the sillier components of the story over anything particularly scary.
Also impacting the experience is the sheer size of each room of the house, which makes for an immersive encounter, though these wide-open spaces allow you to see much further in front of you than other houses to witness the long lines of guests also traveling the house, which also results in seeing others be startled as you make your way through. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire makes for an experience more similar to passing through a movie-inspired activation as opposed to something meant to scare you.
7) Major Sweets Candy Factory
Serving as a prequel to the fan-favorite Scare Zone, the Major Sweets Candy Factory goes back to the beginning of the twisted candy maker’s machinations of poisoning children.
There’s a lot of inherent creepiness when it comes to going back to the spirit of the ’50s, as the cheerfulness of the figures found throughout the factory is juxtaposed by the unsettling visuals found in the Candy Factory. Whether it be blood or vomit, there’s lots of gross bodily fluids to be found throughout the house, and the inclusion of young victims in Major Sweets adds another macabre element to the whole house.
The old-timey vibe of the house and the inclusion of many gruesome visuals that represent Major Sweets’ victims make it a disturbing experience, with the connections the house has to the former Scare Zone being sure to delight longtime fans of the annual event.
6) Slaughter Sinema 2
Guests who attend Halloween Horror Nights get to live out the excitement of walking right into the worlds of their favorite franchises, and while Slaughter Sinema 2 might not feature any established properties, it delivers a wide variety of thrilling experiences.
Whether it be zombies playing hard rock, twisted holiday icons, or unexpected monsters delivering exotic dances, the entire Slaughter Sinema experience has something for everyone. While many Halloween Horror Nights haunted houses have a combination of vignettes mixed with mundane hallways to build anticipation, Slaughter Sinema 2 feels like a “greatest hits” of horror. Guests see a poster for a B-movie in one hallways and proceed into a room where that frightening movie has been brought to life.
The true highlight of Slaughter Sinema 2 is the diversity of the terror it brings to life, as it manages to both honor the history of the horror genre while also delivering some unexpected concoctions, feeling almost like doing a speedrun of an entire Halloween Horror Nights experience just in one house.
5) Universal Monsters: Eternal Bloodlines
Halloween Horror Nights doesn’t only feature contemporary creations, as some of their most thrilling houses bring to life iconic figures from Universal Pictures’ past, with few being as iconic as the Universal Monsters.
Universal Monsters: Eternal Bloodlines puts female characters at the forefront, as Saskia Van Helsing forms an unlikely connection with the Bride of Frankenstein to take down Dracula’s daughter, who has her own unexpected partnerships up her sleeve.
As soon as you walk into the house, you witness a female character weeping at a grave in a snow-covered cemetery, as snow falls from the sky, making for a startling transition from the Florida climate. This is only the start of the excitement, as each setting you walk through feels immersive and honors the more gothic components of the Universal Monsters, whether you’re passing by wooden wagons in spooky woods or if you’re transporting to castles filled with candles.
Similar to Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, this house is one of the less outright scary experiences at this year’s event, but the design of the sets and of the monsters themselves are impressive, with its references to the roots of horror cinema evoking some of the spookiest vibes of this year’s event.
4) A Quiet Place
As any fan of A Quiet Place can tell you, the louder you are, the more you’re at risk of being attacked by deadly monsters, and as any Halloween Horror Nights fan can tell you, screams often fill each and every house. This presents a unique experience for fans walking through the house, as you’ll find yourself being far quieter walking through this house, even if you know nothing can really hurt you.
This house brings to life multiple sequences from both A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place Part II, taking fans from the Abbott farm in the first film to the underground pipes and radio station of A Quiet Place Part II. While the movies themselves are already unsettling enough, the house honors the real-life scale of the otherworldly creatures, shedding new light on just how frightening these beasts are.
Even though guests can understandably scream to their heart’s content, the much quieter ambiance of this house adds an unexpected element of fear to the experience, while the layout itself features disorienting twists and turns, making it feel as though the monsters can pop up anywhere, anytime.
3) Goblin’s Feast
Guests will find themselves inadvertently walking into a traditional celebration in a goblin village, only to discover that humans are set to be the main course in Goblin’s Feast.
As implied by the title, Goblin’s Feast leans a but more into the absurd than the actual terror of some of the other haunted houses, and even while the experience isn’t outright upsetting, the house evokes an off-putting and engaging tone while you’re inside of it. The production design of the house is one of the most extravagant of any house this year, as every nook and cranny is highly detailed, passing from cabins to homes to village streets in the bizarre locale. Even if an area isn’t intricately detailed, well-timed scares distract you from the drab elements, making for a strange and bewildering experience.
The creatures themselves look as expected, honoring all the features you’d expect from goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, and witches. The overall feeling of the house feels akin to witnessing the orcs and goblins argue over who gets to eat the Hobbits in The Lord of the Rings movies, so while it might not be the most intense house of this year’s event, it’s one of the most fully realized, effective, and entertaining.
2) Monstruos: The Monsters of Latin America
A lot of the best haunted houses at Halloween Horror Nights are the ones that manage to find the right blend of delivering something fresh yet somehow familiar, and that’s exactly what Monstruos: The Monsters of Latin America accomplishes this year.
In your trip south of the border, you’ll encounter three legendary creatures from Latin American folklore: Tlahuelpuchi, La Lechuza, and El Silbón. Tlahuelpuchi is described as a shape-shifting vampire, while La Lechuza is known as a witch who can transform into an owl, and El Silbón is considered a “lost soul” doomed to walk the planet as a 12-foot monster that carries around the bones of his own father.
Much like Slaughter Sinema 2, what really works so well about Monstrous is the pacing of each vignette. By breaking the haunted house into three sections, one focusing on each monster, we’re not only given a variety of beasts to be afraid of, but the escalation of tension throughout each area builds quickly and leads towards effective payoffs.
The setting of these towns will make many guests feel like outsiders and like we’re witnessing things that we, as foreigners, shouldn’t be witnessing, and the relatively human appearance of some of the creatures won’t immediately alarm us. The further we get into these villages, the more grotesque the monsters become, resulting in a highly successful experience full of massive beasts, no matter how familiar you might have been with them before embarking on your journey.
1) Insidious: The Further
Since the first entry in the franchise was unleashed back in 2010, the Insidious series of movies has experienced ups and downs in the effectiveness of its storylines. Regardless of how you feel about the cinematic franchise, Insidious: The Further is undeniably the most effective haunted house at this year’s Halloween Horror Nights.
The film series is a supernatural exploration of the realm known as “The Further,” which is home to a variety of spirits and demonic presences that are all attempting to infiltrate our reality. The Further is represented by fog-covered locales that all seem to disappear into the pitch blackness, making it the perfect premise for a haunted house.
Fans of the series will notice how accurately the haunted house replicates The Further and brings to life how unsettling such a location can be, but it also features iconic figures from the movies themselves, from The Bride in Black to Key Face to, of course, the Lipstick-Face Demon. In the movies, The Further doesn’t have to adhere to the rules of logic or physics, with the haunted house authentically replicating those elements by making guests feel like anything can happen anywhere and at any time. This means that, compared to other haunted houses where you might be able to anticipate a scare or a jump, you truly can’t predict how Insidious: The Further will frighten you, making for an alarming and disorienting experience.
In addition to the house being organically eerie, there’s also multiple elements from all five films that audiences will recognize, as important moments are replicated throughout the house, including the required usage of Tiny Tim’s “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” No matter how familiar you are with Insidious, the core premise of the house makes for a terrifying journey, which is only amplified by any connection you might have to the films, making Insidious: The Further the most thrilling house you can enter at this year’s Halloween Horror Nights.
You can head to the event’s official site to grab your tickets for Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando Resort, which runs select nights now through November 3rd.
What house are you most looking forward to? Contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!
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