It's that time of the year again: Halloween Horror Nights (HHN) 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 as of writing, Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights 35th anniversary began on August 28.
The Direct was on hand at HHN 35 at Universal Studios Orlando, Florida, where we experienced all 10 of the event's new mazes, including big-name franchises like Sinners and Stranger Things, as well as a handful of original concepts centered on aliens and cannibals.
It's important to note that my rankings are not determined or influenced by how scary the houses are. Instead, the criteria focus more on overall production design, the maze experience, and the quality of what the house was trying to achieve.
All the Houses at Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights, Ranked
10.) Sinners
Club Juke Is Now Open—But Be Careful
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 are no other main set pieces for the maze to focus on.
Arguably, the biggest moment in the movie in terms of set pieces, the music through time sequence, wasn't properly represented, which seemed like a given. Even the scenes we were given in the maze weren't 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: there was nothing about the production value of what we got that was bad, per se. It's all 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 focus is entirely on Season 5 and the gang's final stand against Vecna.
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 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 has a great moment of awe toward the end of the maze as well, when he is elevated above the room. Also, this year, there are some great Demogorgon animatronics, though one can't help but wish they 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.
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 underwhelming.
8.) Jack & Oddfellow: Chaos and Control
The Maze for Hardcore HHN Fans
Some will immediately gasp when they see Jack & Oddfellow: Chaos and Control at the bottom of this list. This is a house that's clearly intended for longtime devotees of Halloween Horror Nights who have followed the event and its lore closely throughout its long history. However, that's its key problem—accessibility.
I know nothing about Jack and Oddfellowe. 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 for you, and it can feel like you're missing plenty of context that would make it all click much more strongly.
Now, this isn't a bad maze by any means. The production values are great, with incredible, vibrant colors everywhere and insane visuals around every corner. It's certainly not the most violent maze of the year, but it is one of the zaniest; it had a 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 they encounter many former humans now waking from 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 well done, though they become harder to appreciate as the maze goes on and the lighting gets scarcer and scarcer.
While it's a quality maze with a solid original idea, it never clicked for me, and I found it slipping further away as I progressed.
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 at HHN that year. Needless to say, I wanted to love this house; I ended up liking it at the very least.
The maze starts off 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 that the dishwasher scene wasn't more of a focus.
The house itself is also rebuilt incredibly faithfully, and that same grimy, beaten-down, evil underlying feeling you felt in the film is present as you walk through this recreation.
As you approach the end of the maze, the quality kind of wanders off: everything becomes needlessly screen-based, starts to feel kind of empty, and it seems as if the creative team wasn't sure what to do with it at the end.
5.) Madlands: Caged Cannibals
A Visual Feast of Blood Guts
Madlands: Caged Cannibals is a unique concept, and props to Universal Studios for coming up with it in the first place. The story follows warring factions of cannibals who have taken over a zoo in a post-apocalyptic future, with each group basing its identity on different animals and sections of the zoo.
The production design, from sets to displays of carnage to costumes, is 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'm not all that familiar with Ozzy Osbourne's song library outside his greatest hits, such as "Crazy Train." So I had no expectations for this maze, and I 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 steady 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 the chance to send us through a literal crazy train, either, which was one of its highlights.
At the end of the day, this maze leans toward 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 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 rooms in sequence, 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, the theme could embrace and showcase a variety of topics and ideas, far more than any HHN house normally could.
It's important to note that this house isn't particularly scary 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 didn't like it at all. 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 particularly excited. 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
The idea is simple: 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 what I thought when I first heard about it. However, at the end of the day, the maze not only works but also provides one of the most solid and consistent experiences I had at HHN 35.
Ahead of the press being sent out to all the houses, a presentation 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 clear that letting the house simmer over that time paid off in spades.
The house's story has a dark progression, told not only in the narrative around you but also in the environments you walk through. There are also some inventive and neat set pieces in the maze that made me want to go through it a few more times to fully appreciate them.
