Inside ‘The Last of Us,’ ‘Stranger Things’ and More Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights Houses

Horror classics meet franchise updates for 2023’s terrifying Halloween Horror Nights lineup at Universal Studios parks.

The monsters and murderers of The Last of Us, Stranger Things, The Exorcist: Believer, Evil Dead Rise, Child’s Play and four classic Universal horror films will all be unleashed in Orlando from Sept. 1 to Nov. 4 and in Hollywood from Sept. 7 to Oct. 31. This year, IP properties constitute at least half of the houses at the Florida and California locations, while also offering a new twist on some HHN favorite franchises.

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“We will bring some IP back, we will bring some original stories back, but we never produce them the same way. If we’re going to bring something back, we need to have something new to say with it; a new journey we can take guests on visually,” Michael Aiello, Universal Orlando’s director of entertainment creative development, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “That’s something we live by. It’s something we create by. It’s the hallmark of what separates Horror Nights, I think, from any other seasonal Halloween event in the country — maybe the world.”

The 2023 bicoastal event will also mark the debut of Voldemort’s followers in Orlando’s Diagon Alley, and two Blumhouse experiences in L.A. The first is The Purge: Dangerous Waters, a live show in the WaterWorld venue featuring action sequences, stunts, lighting and laser effects, high fall fire burns and massive explosions as part of an “evening of anarchy.” The second is Blumhouse: Behind the Screams, which lets fans explore authentic film props and costume displays alongside terrifying character encounters for Five Nights at Freddy’s, The Exorcist: Believer, M3GAN and The Black Phone.

“We’re looking for things that can expand the slate,” says John Murdy, creative director and executive producer of Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood. “We’ve never really tried to tackle a house that is inspired 100 percent by a video game. That’s totally new to us. Chucky has been a part of our event over the years in many, many different ways, but we’ve never tried to do a full house [in Los Angeles]. And, obviously, we’ve done the original Exorcist a couple of times in the history of Halloween Horror Nights, but now our studio and Blumhouse are making an all-new film.

“So, while some of the titles and franchises are things that we’ve featured before, the content that we’re creating is all new,” he continues. “It’s something that no one’s ever seen before.”

The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Murdy and Aiello about how they delivered on that through this year’s IP houses, as well as L.A.’s Terror Tram and Orlando’s new horror icon Dr. Oddfellow.

Stranger Things 4

This year marks the third time HHN has produced a Stranger Things experience, with Murdy telling THR the house went through “a lot of iterations” before settling on this year’s design. Fans can expect to see recreations of Chrissy’s deadly encounter with Vecna in Eddie’s RV; Eleven’s first confrontation with Henry in the Rainbow Room; Fred Benson’s unsettling encounter in the woods with a group of tormented-looking humans; a deconstructed version of the Creel house in the Upside Down; and Vecna’s lair, which Aiello calls an “abstract red hell.”

Murdy notes that with the show becoming “very epic in scale” both in terms of production design and episode length, the team had to find the connective tissue between the sequences. They naturally settled on the season’s big bad and his curse, with the demogorgons serving as the B-team creature scares.

“We made a head-to-toe creature suit custom sculpt — the mask, the chest piece, the arms, Vecna’s left claw, the legs. There isn’t a part of that that is the actor’s skin, so it’s incredibly complicated,” Murdy reveals. “In one scene, it’s an animated figure of Vecna that incorporates LED technology, projection elements and smoke to make it look like [Eleven’s] vanquishing him.”

“We don’t want to show it right out of the gate,” he adds about how Vecna will appear through the house. “We want to do what they did with the show — build the tension of it. So, the first time you see him, you’re probably just going to see the claw come at you. But, as we build, you’ll see more.”

Both Aiello and Murdy were excited by how much more of season four leaned into the horror genre, and they used Vecna to help recreate a palpable fear. “This is much more in your face. It’s much more visceral. You’re getting pursued and being affected by Vecna,” Aiello explains, adding the ticking clock will play a role. “Vecna [in the show] was omnipresent, and that is something we linked to as we created the collection of scenes. You’re going to see and hear him throughout the house.”

Evil Dead Rise

An adaptation of the latest chapter in the Evil Dead franchise, Murdy was in conversation with Sam Raimi and his production company Ghost House about a possible Evil Dead Rise maze — which is only available at the Universal Studios Hollywood event — for several years.

“We had lunch three or four years ago, and the topic of this new film came up. I was very intrigued and said, ‘Oh, I love Evil Dead. I would love to read the script,'” he recalls. “When I got to read the script for the first time, what I was impressed with was that it is a totally new story. Evil Dead has always been Bruce Campbell in a cabin in the woods. The throughline for this film is the Book of the Dead. That’s the piece from the original Evil Dead films that carries forward.”

Like several of this year’s IP houses, Evil Dead Rise will take iconic moments from the film — about estranged sisters trying to save their family from deadites — and adapt them through the house. For Murdy, who worked on the houses for 2013’s Evil Dead remake film and later the Ash vs Evil Dead TV series, the film’s Los Angeles setting — and more specifically, a “rundown Art Deco apartment complex” — was an added bonus for the California-based park.

Fans should expect to see appearances from the Marauder, as well as recreations of several rather unsettling moments. “We’re trying to hit on all the really outrageous things in the film, like when Bridget’s [Ellie’s oldest daughter] eating the wineglass and swallowing it down, saying, ‘I needed to kill the creepy crawlies in my tummy,'” says Murdy. “There’s something just really disturbing about that.”

HHN Hollywood’s creative director also suggests that those who enter the house be prepared for things to get a little more graphic. “Evil Dead for us fulfills a very specific slot when we’re trying to curate Horror Nights,” he tells THR. “[The event is] like an ice cream parlor with all these different flavors. So what’s the thing we’re going to do that’s going to fulfill the hardcore or extreme gore category? This one.”

The Last of Us

The idea for the house was first broached in December 2021 after fans tagged HHN and Naughty Dog in a Twitter post. That resulted in Neil Druckmann, co-president of the video game developer, calling for a meeting shortly after having ridden Orlando’s The Mummy coaster. Since then, he’s been an “amazing” collaborator, says Aiello, and directly involved in its conception. That includes the decision to set the house in the Pittsburgh quarantine zone, a place that’s “not really the beginning or the end, so it’s a good way to give people a taste of what The Last of Us is,” Aiello explains.

“Naughty Dog were great because they just provided us with so much material,” Murdy adds. “[Druckmann] allowed us to bring in characters that maybe don’t appear in the Pittsburgh section of the video game but are very well known to the community of fans of Last of Us. So, you’re going to go through that world where the Cordyceps virus is out of control and see all four stages of the infected — runners, stalkers, clickers, bloaters.

“Head-to-toe creature suits — it was absolutely nuts to try to figure out how to make that work for a live performer and an actor,” he adds.

They also bring in the Hunters, rogue actors who are “just as dangerous if not more” than the monsters. Murdy teases they will get their own chance to induce some scares. “The Hunters have a very specific vehicle — a Humvee with a military gun turret on top of it,” he says. “We wanted the Hummer to not only be there, we wanted it to drive, so, working with the mechanical engineers, we built one that looks like a full-size Hummer, but it’s actually only a third of it. And there’s a sensor, so when you walk into the scene you trip it and hear it rev and the gun turret rotates to start shooting at whatever it’s chasing.”

The L.A. HHN creative director describes the foliage-driven setting of the house as “claustrophobic” but “gorgeous,” with Aiello adding that the production design pulls only from the game. “When we first started our creative process, they were just beginning pre-production on the show,” he says. “So knowing that it was the game, we really wanted to lean into certain color values, even how things were lit to inform a slightly different texture. It’s subliminal, but it’s there.”

They also brought back Joel and Ellie voice actors Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, with Murdy voice directing “bespoke dialogue, so fans are going to hear Joel and Ellie speaking brand-new lines,” Aiello teases.

Universal Monsters: Unmasked

Once again set to original music from Slash, Unmasked is the latest chapter in a string of houses that kicked off in 2019. “We wanted that first house to have this prologue and let you understand who each monster is and what they’re about,” Aiello explains. “Every year from then on, we’d dive into new stories and new combinations of new characters.”

It arrives during the 100th anniversary of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a film Murdy says is the “birth” of the Universal Classic Monsters. “It was one of the biggest productions made at the studio up to that point. Prior to that, Universal made a lot of two-reelers, which is like a 26-minute short,” Murdy tells THR. “If that movie hadn’t been made, they never would have made Phantom of the Opera, or Frankenstein and Dracula.”

An ode to the silent film era and featuring Hunchback, Phantom, the Invisible Man, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, HNN teamed with legendary creature creator Crash McCreery (Terminator, Jurassic Park, Edward Scissorhands, Pirates of the Caribbean) to reimagine these monsters, who are “more maniacal in tone,” says Aiello.

Henry Jekyll has fled from London to Paris’ catacombs to avoid a murder investigation and continue his dark experiments. He’s joined by the Phantom under the Paris Opera House and the Hunchback, who’s made his way into an underground torture chamber featured in his 1923 film. “For Hunchback, we’ve created a bell tower, and we have a stunt component where it’s going to look as if he is actually falling onto you,” Aiello teases. “Our costume for Jekyll and Hyde is massive, and we’re creating the space to appear a little bit smaller so he looks even larger.”

For the Invisible Man, Murdy says he’ll serve as the coat check at a hell-themed cabaret, based on one of the world’s first themed restaurants, Cabaret de l’Enfer in Paris. “We do him all with black light — his coat, his bandages, his glasses and everything else he’s wearing that we don’t want you to see as is black, and it’s the same material that’s in the back of the set that he’s in,” Murdy adds. “It’s not too far from how they actually did the movie back in ’33. It’s an optical effect.”

The Exorcist: Believer

Based on the upcoming Blumhouse and Universal film, The Exorcist: Believer maze is designed to deliver what Murdy and Aiello describe as a living trailer. “People will have to wait and see if things may be informed by what we’ve done in the past [houses],” Aiello notes. “But our goal was to create an experience that is the first step into what will be a brand-new story and vision for the franchise.”

The HHN teams had access to dailies and raw footage from the movie and met with production designers, makeup artists and photographers to realize an experience that would capture the demonic energy of the film.

“We needed access to things that historically you don’t give access to when you’re at that stage of production, but it was imperative for us to be able to do this. We don’t want to have spoilers that are going to give away something that’s super important for a shock and surprise element in the film, but at the same time, we need to deliver a house that’s going to be terrifying and make you want to see the film,” Murdy explains.

HHN L.A. leaned on the banned trailer as inspiration for its 2016 Exorcist house (which it brought back in 2021). Murdy notes that this time around, they used photographic flash frames to take attendees back and forth between the homes of the film’s two young leads, Angela and Katherine, as well as the hospital. “We’re setting it up so that you see what’s causing this, you meet the girls, you realize that something’s wrong with them, and then we get into the big exorcism,” he adds.

The house will go one step beyond that, Aiello tells THR, by leaving eventgoers wondering if the presence that haunts these girls is also haunting them. “This experience is relentless in the idea of the progression of possession,” the Orlando creative director continues. “We want the guests to feel like not only are they seeing the demise of these two poor girls’ souls across the length of this house, but at the same time, that voice is also informing them as well. There’s this idea that that entity, whatever that is, is aware of you, so what does that feel like going through the experience?”

Chucky: Ultimate Kill Count

Chucky is no stranger to Halloween Horror Nights, making appearances on the studio back lot tour for 2010’s Chucky’s Revenge and as 2017’s host of the Titans of Terror Tram in California. But the L.A. park has never attempted a house, “and there’s a very good reason for that,” Murdy says. “He’s two and a half feet tall. Not easy to do in a live event.”

In Florida, the Child’s Play franchise garnered its own 2018 scare zone almost a decade after 2009’s Chucky: Friends til the End house. “The conceit of that house was we shrunk the guest down to toy size, and we made everything else large,” Aiello recalls. “The first thing we put on the board amid the creative process this year was, ‘We will not do oversized costumes for Chucky. He will be the doll at all times.'”

Described by Murdy as the “most technically challenging, complicated haunted house we’ve ever done” in his 18 years with HHN, the park’s mechanical engineers were brought in to help realize the maze and design a fully walking Chucky. “We have a lot of animated effects, which is typically not what we do for Horror Nights, so it’s taking what we do to the next level,” L.A.’s HHN creative director explains.

The teams on both coasts also leaned into Child’s Play‘s meta sense of horror and humor to create the “ultimate kill count” experience — a concept that came straight from Chucky’s creator Don Mancini. Fueled by the killer doll’s frustration that performers only scare attendees, and his jealousy over other horror icons (whose fans obsess over their kill counts) getting their own houses, Chucky crashes HHN, possessing a collection of Good Guys dolls.

Once inside, eagle-eyed fans should look for easter eggs when they aren’t navigating the scare actors, including some operations workers and techs in the house inspired by the series and movies. “We have a costume that has two knives in the chest of a person that wears it with Chucky’s legs [hanging out] as if they were standing there saying move along and Chucky killed them,” Aiello reveals. 

“There’s a scene in the house where you’re hearing a guy talking about livestreaming from the house, and you hear this nail gun, turn the corner and find his dead body holding his cell phone with the video that he made,” Murdy says of one scene inspired by Horror Nights YouTubers.

Dr. Oddfellow

A significant chunk of this year’s Horror Nights in Orlando is shaped around Dr. Oddfellow, the event’s newest “icon” — or original characters created to theme houses and scare zones, as well as market HHN before the event leaned more into IP —  since its 23rd year, and the first of color in the park’s history.

“We’re really proud of that, and we’ve got a wonderful roster of castmembers that are so excited to be an icon in the event,” the HHN Orlando creative director says. Like other elements of the 2023 experience, Dr. Oddfellow is a new chapter in a familiar legend, having gone from a supporting character in Jack the Clown’s story to the central figure of one house, Dr. Oddfellow’s Twisted Origins, and all five scare zones.

First introduced in 2004, Oddfellow is a ringmaster killed by Jack in the Dust Bowl era of the circus, in which his top hat, coat and cane of souls are claimed. It’s a character, Aiello says, that had remained largely in obscurity since then, giving the team the chance “to create anything we want” with the immortal icon.

“We needed to create something that if you didn’t see the commercials, didn’t see social media, you could just walk into the park and show a linking agent between scare zones,” Aiello says. “And we felt it would be really fun for our hardcore fans to bring Oddfellow out of the shadows and create an event storyline that allows him to literally take over.”

As attendees walk through house and scare zones, they’ll be invited into various odd and twisted “textures” that play on different horror genres, creatures and settings — all corrupted in “really demented, very esoteric” ways, Aiello notes. In Shipyard 32, fans can find Oddfellow’s insignia all over boxes, which once housed the now-roaming monsters he collected. Jungle of Doom will serve as the home and origins of Oddfellow’s immortal power, while Vamp ’69 will offer the coolest spin on a scare zone this year.

“It’s a music festival that has become infested with vampires,” Aiello says. “We did Vamp 55 years ago, and we’ve had several vampire houses, but this is a fun locale and fun costuming, where you’re going to see all kinds of vampires run the gamut of personas.”

Terror Tram: The Exterminatorz

Universal Studios Hollywood attendees will once again get the chance to walk through the actual set for Alfred Hitchcock’s Bates Motel and Psycho House, Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds’ plane crash and Jupiter’s Claim, the fictional theme park from Jordan Peele’s Nope.

But this year, their terrifying experience will be shaped by a new twist on Exterminatorz, a 2015 scare zone. “The premise is that the insects have risen up from the sewers along with the other vermin and pests in order to form an extermination company to exterminate humans because they’ve been such bad stewards of the planet,” Murdy says of the Terror Tram storyline’s concept.

For this iteration, Murdy and his L.A. team created Larry Larva, a new HHN icon who is a “human bot fly infested with bot flies” that acts like an “’80s or ’90s late night infomercial host,” to be the main character of the video that accompanies the ride to the back lot. Described as a “really disgusting character,” Larry embodies the experience’s focus on insect-human hybrids.

“There’s a bot fly infestation of the skin where these boils form and then little maggots come out of your skin,” Murdy explains. “What we liked about that, because we always study the psychology of fear, is that it plays to trypophobia, a fear of irregular [or clusters of] holes.”

Larry leads the uprising of insects, who offer their own brand of terror. Moths and murder hornets are joined by praying mantises, ants, spiders and roaches — the latter of which attendees can expect around the Bates Motel — as they prey on people. And, once again, attendees will also get to experience the Peele double-feature in Jupiter’s Claim, where fans will be met by the Tethered, portrayed by scareactors coached by Us choreographer Madeline Hollander.

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