It feels like a changing of generations this year at Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights. Yes, one of the old guard is back again this year - Friday the 13's Jason Voorhees, in the rebranded form of Jason Universe. But Universal also is introducing Terrifier's Art the Clown to a wider cohort of fans this year. And Universal continues to expand its definition of "Horror" to include houses from two franchises spawned by video games as well as a house themed to characters from pro wrestling's WWE.
Halloween Horror Nights opened officially Friday night at Universal Studios Florida in Orlando. Universal brought me out again to walk through all of the houses as part of its annual media RIP Tour. But as much as the IP houses get the early attention, Universal Orlando's best work on HHN often comes through its original concept houses. And that remains the case this year. Let's look at our authorized POV videos and my thoughts about each house.
The most visually impressive house this year, for me, was El Artista: A Spanish Haunting. This offers another beautiful visual feast from Universal's design team. Inspired by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, El Artista follows its stunning facade with an interior boasting Pepper's Ghost effects and other theatrical tricks to convince your mind that it's not the spirits, but also your eyes, playing tricks on you. It's the most ambitious of Universal's houses this year, both technically and narratively, telling a classic story of an artist gone mad by his own imagination.
Gálkn: Monsters of the North is a close second among my favorite houses of 2025. This year's "cold" house at Halloween Horror Nights is not as physically cold as other such houses, since Universal set this one in a tent behind Men in Black rather than in one of the soundstages. The house leans into Northern European folklore to tell the story of a woman's revenge. Gálkn delivers stunning set design throughout, especially in the finale, which is dominated by a giant puppet. 🎦 Video
Dolls: Let’s Play Dead follows closely behind. If you've ever harbored dark thoughts about toys while broiling in the queues for Walt Disney World's Toy Story Land, this house is your emotional antidote. Sid, meet Leila, a girl who understands the joy of making toys suffer. This is also Universal's interactive house this year, so press that big blue button in the first scene, plus two smaller glowing red buttons later in the house. The reactions will be worth your effort. Setting the scale to make us feel doll-sized just adds to the fun of the closest thing to a comedy house in this year's line-up. 🎦 Video
Hatchet and Chains: Demon Bounty Hunters brings back two characters from last year's Slaughter Sinema 2, showing how well Universal can keep mining its past original concepts for fresh experiences. This time, it's with an Old West theme. Grandma hates the idea of the train coming to town, so she's opened a well to Hell to let the demons take care of that. So it's up to our demon bounty hunters to send those spirits back where they belong. Again, it's a relatively coherent story with engaging set design and visual effects that's more spooky than gory. 🎦 Video
The final original house this year, Grave of Flesh, puts you six feet under to discover the flesh eaters who will feast on your mortal remains. There's no story here beyond that. It's all scenic design, but again, executed well with visuals that make you want to come back to catch all the additional decomposing bodies that you might miss in Universal's conga line the first time through. 🎦 Video
Five Nights at Freddy's hits close to home for me, as the spouse of a former "Billy Bob the Bear" from Showbiz Pizza Place, the clear real-life inspiration for Freddy Fazbear and his eponymous pizza restaurant. In the video games and now Universal films, an overnight guard must survive five nights at the now-abandoned pizza place, where animatronics are haunted by the ghosts of murdered children. That's your role in the house, which is filled with puppet and animatronic Freddy and friends, courtesy Jim Henson's Creature Shop. It's nonstop detail and action that brings the complexity of the story to life without leaving visitors feeling lost, which is a challenge with IP houses.
(In a totally buzz-killing coincidence, the Showbiz location in Aurora, Colorado, where my wife worked, years later was the site of a mass shooting, where - you guessed it - five people were shot, four fatally. I've always wondered is that incident in any way inspired this IP.)
Terrifier introduces to Halloween Horror Nights the character HHN Hollywood Creative Director John Murdy called "the new face of horror." Universal has created its own take on Art the Clown's Funhouse for this one, populating it with iconic kills from all three Terrifier films. If you are a fan of "classic" slasher-film HHN, this might be your number-one house. It was a close second among the IP houses and in my top five overall. This might be a new IP for HHN, but the house is classic HHN at its best, filled with 35 bodies - the most this year - and gallons and gallons of fake blood. At least I hope that was all fake. 🎦 Video
The Horrors of The Wyatt Sicks offers a living tribute to the late WWE wrestler Bray Wyatt. Based on characters he developed, The Wyatt Sicks are as much performance art as they are athletes, and Universal leans into their creepy, disruptive nature for this experience, depicting their debut on Monday Night Raw becoming a real-life terror on the WWE set. The final scene, with Bray's lantern on an otherwise empty rocking chair is an uncharacteristically, but welcomed, poignant touch in an HHN house. 🎦 Video
Jason Universe revives the classic Friday the 13th killer. The TL;DR here is CTRL+C, CTRL+V, as it's just one Jason after another coming after you. The repetition increases the chances that this is the house that will catch even the most savvy jump-scare avoider. But it's all one note to me. 🎦 Video
So what about what is probably the biggest IP of the year? Fallout brings the retro-futuristic, post-apocalyptic world of the video game and Prime Video series to life. The house follows the story of Lucy MacLean from Vault 33 onto the Earth's surface, where she - and we - must escape Scavengers, Raiders, Radroaches and the big bad of the franchise - The Ghoul. But this was the evening's one disappointment to me. The house crams in too much detail from the first season of the Prime Video series to remain coherent for anyone who isn't familiar with the show. It even misses the world building that would at least have made the house visually impressive. Having toured the Hollywood version this week, this might be one of those instances where Hollywood outshines Orlando on an IP house. 🎦 Video
Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Florida is a hard-ticket event that runs after park close on most Wednesday through Sunday evenings through November 2. In addition to the 10 houses, Halloween Horror Nights this year offers two new shows - the very loud dance, magic, and acrobatic Nightmare Fuel: Circus of Decay in the old Fear Factor theater and the projection show Haunt-O-Phonic: A Ghoulish Journey on the park's central lagoon. Visitors will also find multiple scare zones as well as low-wait access to select regular attractions.
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