It's that time of the year again: Halloween Horror Nights is back to take over your life with terrifying houses and unforgettable moments as guests get to live through otherworldly experiences. While Universal Studios Hollywood's event is still a few days away, Universal Orlando Halloween Horror Nights' 35th year just began this past week.
The Direct was on hand at HHN 35 in Orlando, Florida, where we got to experience all ten of the event's new mazes, which included big-name franchises like Sinners and Stranger Things, alongside a handful of original concepts centering around aliens and cannibals.
As per usual with my lists, it's important to make note of the fact that my rankings are not determined or influenced by how scary the houses are. Instead, the criteria are more focused on overall production design, the experience of the maze, and the quality of what the house was trying to achieve.
10.) Sinners
Club Juke Is Now Open—But Be Careful.
Let's get this out of the way first: Sinners is a wonderful movie. Even, it's a great one—it deserves all the laurels thrown its way. However, the moment it was announced that Sinners would be getting a Halloween Horror Nights maze, I was skeptical. After all, most of the film takes place in the same, not-so-visually-exciting barn house location, and there's also not really any set pieces for the maze to focus on.
Funny enough, arguably the biggest moment in the movie in terms of set pieces, the music through time sequence, wasn't even properly represented, which seemed like a given. Even looking at the scenes we were given in the maze, none of them were exciting. At best, there was a minor moment with the barkeep shooting over the bar at a vampire, vampire Mary turning Stack, and various vampires doing your standard corner scares.
Another clarification should also be made: there's nothing about the production value of what we got that was bad, per se. It's all clearly still crafted by a loving team of creatives. However, given what they had to work with, the end product was a tad underwhelming.
9.) Stranger Things 5
The Final (?) Stranger Things Maze Is Here.
As is Halloween Horror Nights tradition, with a new season of Stranger Things, there's going to be another maze for the now iconic, and sometimes infamous, Netflix series. This time, the the mazcuses entirely on Season 5, and the gang's final stand against Vecna.
I do want to start with the positive here—there is one room in particular that keeps this maze from being any lower, and it's the one that celebrates one of the show's best moments: Will seizing Vecna's powers and destroying the Demogorgons. The HHN house has a really stellar setup, in a very large space, that sees Will snapping the limbs of a Demogorgon midair, and it's a fantastic display to witness.
Vecna himself gets a great moment of awe as well, towards the end of the maze, with him elevated above the room. Also, this year, there are some great Demogorgan animatronics, though one can't help but wish it had been used to the extremes that A Quiet Place's maze did two years ago.
Past all of that, the maze just has a feeling that they could have done more. The Laundry scene with the Demodogs is present, but it feels like minimal effort was put into it. The maze is also brought down a few notches with its poorly made Demogorgon and Vecna suits (with Vecna's latex masks being notably silly).
Fewer screens could also have been used, as it's part of why the final stretch of the maze, when the group faces off against the Mindflayer, was extremely underwhelming.
8.) Jack & Oddfellow: Chaos and Control
The Maze for Hardcore HHN Fans.
Some will have immediately gasped when they see Jack & Oddfellow: Chaos and Control at the bottom of this list. This is a house that's clearly intended for the long-time devotees of Halloween Horror Nights, and who have been following the event and its lore deeply throughout its long history. However, that's its key problem—accessibility.
Personally, I know nothing about Jack and Oddfellow. So I had no idea what was going on in this maze. Even though, for newbies like myself, it's treated as a new original story, it's easy to get lost in what's being orchestrated to you, and it can feel like you're missing plenty of context that would make it all click much stronger.
Now, this isn't a bad maze by any means. The production value is great, with incredible, vibrant colors everywhere and insane visuals around corners. It's certainly not the most violent maze of the year, but it is one of the zaniest; it had a very funhouse vibe.
7.) Cybergoria
Waking Up In a Terrible, Horrible Future.
An original house for Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights, the story behind Cybergoria is set in a distant future, thousands of years down the line, and follows maze-goers as the many past humans who are now waking up from a cryogenic sleep to cash in on the promise of eternal life.
Obviously, that doesn't pan out exactly as it sounds, and what you witness next are countless terrifying robots and machines. As you advance through the maze, these robots begin to take on human flesh and slowly become more hybrid-flesh monsters than machines.
This maze excels in costume design and prosthetic work, and boy, is it extensive. The environments are also very well done, though they become harder and harder to appreciate as the maze goes on and the lighting gets scarcer and scarcer.
While it's a quality maze and a solid original idea, it all never clicked for me, and I found it slipping further and further away as I progressed through the maze.
6.) Evil Dead Burn
You'll Be Dead By Dawn.
I love the new Evil Dead movies, and Evil Dead Rise had one of my favorite mazes of HHN the year it was running. So needless to say, I wanted to really love this house—I ended up, at the very least, liking it.
The whole maze starts off really strong, with a neat animatronic beheaded Deadite speaking to guests as they walk through the opening of the scene, followed by a larger-than-life title card of the film—perfectly imitating the iconic title cards of the movies.
What follows is a step-by-step walk-through of the movie, which some might take issue with, but others will love. I, for one, don't mind going beat-by-beat through a movie; I quite enjoy it, actually. Several iconic moments are portrayed incredibly well, though it was strange not to have the dishwasher scene be more of a focus (it's still technically there).
The house itself is also rebuilt incredibly faithfully, and that same grimy, beaten-down, evil underlying feeling that you felt in the film finds itself present as you walk through this recreation.
As you approach the end of the maze, the quality does kind of wander off, as everything becomes a little needlessly screen-based, and starts to feel kind of empty, and as if the creative team wasn't sure what to do with the maze for the end of the story.
5.) Madlads: Caged Cannibals
A Visual Feast of Blood Guts.
Madlads: Caged Cannibals is a unique concept, and props to Universal Studios for coming up with it in the first place. The story follows factions of warring cannibals who have taken over a zoo in a post-apocalyptic future, with each group basing its identity around different animals and sections of the zoo.
The production design, from sets to displays of carnage to costumes, is incredibly exquisite and as over-the-top as one would hope for from the premise alone. One particular setup with a giant mechanical rhinossarus head coated in human carnage is a visual that will stick with me forever.
It's easy for the overall story to get lost on you as you go through the maze, but the theming of the maze is so strong that it alone keeps everything engaging and from falling into nonsensicalness.
4.) Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness
Take a Ride on a Crazy Train.
I, of course, know who Ozzy Osbourne is, but I'm not all too familiar with his library of songs outside of his greatest hits, such as 'Crazy Train.' So I had no expectations for this maze, and I honestly figured it would end up with rankings similar to those of previous musician houses I didn't love, like The Weeknd's.
Thankfully, I was proven wrong, and Ozzy Osbourne came out strong with a notably creative maze that had a strong storyline throughout and played on his soundtrack. The maze follows a cult hoping to resurrect the Prince of Darkness himself, ala Ozzy Osbourne, leading you through rooms of gothic horror and dark fantasy, with heavy metal music playing in the background.
The maze obviously couldn't turn down sending us through a literal crazy train, either, which was one of its highlights.
At the end of the day, this maze leans towards being a celebration of Ozzy Osbourne as an artist, and less about trying to scare the pants off of you. That said, the house does certainly do a splendid job of incorporating the terrifying Halloween spirit throughout its many gothic rooms.
3.) H.R. Bloodengutz: A Halloween Fright-Tacular!
Going to the Movies at Halloween Horror Nights.
When a psychopathic horror marathon host escapes prison to take over a public access station on television and put on one last show, you get this delightful maze. The framing is a familiar one, but here it takes the form of guests walking through multiple consecutive rooms, with each representing a different fictional B-movie.
The concept allowed the HHN creative team full freedom to do whatever they wanted, and the results are wonderful. With each room being a different B-movie, it allowed the theme to embrace and showcase a variety of topics and ideas, far more than any HHN house could normally do.
It's important to note that this house isn't particularly scary in any way and has far more fun sections than not, such as a werewolf dancing in a tiki bar. But the way the maze wholeheartedly embraces its concepts is infectiously exciting. Now, with all that said, this house does have one of the most unsettling rooms of all HHN 35, so be sure to keep an eye out for that one.
2.) Hellraiser
Welcome to Hell, Enjoy Your Stay.
What's crazy about this maze being so high for me is that when I watched the Hellraiser movie years ago, I notably did not like it. Unlike most horror franchises, I watched the original and decided I had no desire to continue watching the series.
So, when Hellraiser was announced for HHN35, I wasn't particuarlly exciting. However, now that I've been through it, I can say with conviction that it is easily one of the best mazes of the lineup.
The first thing to note is that you don't have to be familiar with the movie or series to enjoy this maze. The house's narrative gives you enough context to understand what you're witnessing: a journey into hell itself.
Much like the Terrifier maze from last year, this Hellraiser house is filled with various gruesome scenes. Each and every one of them is incredibly crafted and equally disturbing. The costumes for the franchise's iconic characters are also well-made and never detract from the experience by looking cheap.
1.) INVASION: Alien Abduction
Don't Look Up.
Look, the idea is a simple one—Little gray aliens terrorize a rural family in their farmhouse as they aim to abduct the entire family. It doesn't sound like anything to write home about, and that's certainly what I thought when I first heard about it. However, at the end of the day, the maze not only really works, but provides one of the most solid and consistent experiences I had at all of HHN 35.
Ahead of the press being sent out to all the houses, during a presentation, it was revealed that the creative team at HHN had had this idea for a long time but hadn't been able to get it off the ground for years. And now it's very clear that letting the house simmer over that time paid off in spades.
The story of the house has a very clear and very dark story progression, which is told not only in the narrative around you but also in the environments you walk through. There are also some really inventive and neat set pieces in the maze that had me wanting to go through a few more times to really appreciate them.
