#they actually did a maze for it at universal studios for horror nights

[ylove-bandaesthetics]

OMG YESSY SPOOKY MAMA the sequel of The Exorcist is finally here it’s dropping next month I think!!! Search up the trailers it actually looks great?? And Ellen Burstyn will be in it, she’s back she will be playing the same character!! OMFG CAN’T WAITTTT THIS SHI LOOKS SCARY AF 🎃🎃🎃🎃

[slurrmp]

No. 1 - ALL TRUSSED UP AND STILL NOWHERE TO GO

                  “You have to let go” | barbed wire | bound

summary: reader should have been careful with what they wished for. words: 1187 warnings: just some light mention of horror stuff, nothing too dramatic.

-&-

This wasn’t exactly what you had in mind when you said you wanted to have fun. It was nearing Halloween (at least in your timeline) and everyone on the TARDIS knew that it was your favourite time of year. Fall, leaves, the smell of pumpkins (pumpkin spice) and just everything spooky. Horror movies and late nights, piled under enormous mounds of blankets and chocolate. So much chocolate. So when the Doctor suggested this nice little planet just on the outskirts of the Milky Way, that was dedicated to the Best Scares In The Universe, according to the brochure anyway. They had any and all kinds of scare mazes and scare zones that you could imagine. You could hardly say no and the others were excited to visit just as much. Graham said he’d be the one to hold your bags when you did the ‘rides’.

What you didn’t imagine was that these weren’t just actors in masks and suits and pretending to be horror characters, no these WERE horror characters. Something had gone terribly wrong since the last time the Doctor had come here, you could automatically see it on her face when she stepped out of the TARDIS. The sky was dark and the air was stale, the slight metallic taste of blood hit the back of your throat. You couldn’t help but gag and step away from the TARDIS entrance - your name leaving the Doctor’s lips in warning. The fog wasn’t helping much with visibility, you could have sworn the Doctor said it was midday. Shouldn’t it be bright and not foggy like it was the middle of the night. The question had left your lips but no one answered you. Turning back around you suddenly noticed that the Doctor and the TARDIS wasn’t there anymore. All there was was fog and noises that made your skin crawl.

-x-

You had no idea how long you walked, but you couldn’t stay in the same spot for long, the noises were starting to get closer and the sudden breathe against your neck had caused you to snap out of your trance and sprint in ... some direction. You thought you were getting somewhere, that you were getting away but your foot caught on something and your whole body pitched forward - head cracking against the ground. Everything became dark. 

The next thing you knew, you awoke in a dimly lit basement, hands bound behind your back and feet chained to the floor. Your body was spread out on the dirty and dusty floor. You couldn’t help but feel like you had been sucked into an 80s horror movie. “Oh what the actual hell.” You mumbled to yourself as you struggled to sit up, hissing as your head made contact with the wall behind you. You could feel something wet against your forehead and you just knew that it was blood. “This is so not what I had planned,” you muttered to yourself as you closed your eyes and focused on dulling the pain away. “I should have just said Universal Studios. At least their scare actors aren’t alien.”

Then there was some rustling, movement from upstairs. The floor above your head creaked and footsteps could be heard. Oh if horror movies had taught you anything, it had taught you not to call out to the strange noises. The last thing you need is Michael Myers to find you. So you tried as best you could, to hide yourself from view of the stair case - coming to rest against a bookshelf.

“Doctor!” A voice rang out through the floor and your body jerked forward. What? “Doctor, I think I found them!” That sounded like Ryan, but who knew what type of alien was running this place. The door to the basement swung open and you had to squint against the sudden onslaught of light. A figure stood in the doorway, but you couldn’t make out exactly WHO it was.

Could have been a monster who could mimic sounds, mimic people, lure into a false sense of security and then when you weren’t looking ... BAM kill you. But then the blur started to disappear and your eyes adjusted and your whole body sagged forward - forehead coming to rest against the dirty, hard floor. “Oh thank god.” you mumbled. Foot steps hurried down the old stairs and hands suddenly found your shoulders.

“You’re alright?” Hazel eyes found yours and you couldn’t help the tears that appeared at the corner of your eyes. The Doctor had the most worried look on her face, which was covered in blood, a cut above her brow and a split lip. Frowning you looked behind her at Ryan, who also was sporting some bruises and blood stains on his shirt. Your name left the Doctor’s lips and you focused back on her. “You aren’t seriously hurt?” She tried again, delicate fingers coming to run against your hairline, you flinched backward and she mumbled an apologise. You shook your head.

“No ... no.” Your frown deepening. “Just that cut and a seriously sore head.” You guessed that’s from where you slammed on it when you tripped over. “What the hell happened? Are you two okay?” The Doctor worried her lip between her teeth, before she let you go (after making sure you were able to sit by yourself), taking out her sonic, she moved behind you, to get to work on undoing the shackles that bound your hands and to the floor.

“Fogs alive.” Ryan said who was still standing on the second last step, a device in his hand that made a pinging noise every thirty seconds. “Brings some weird shit to life.” You heard the Doctor scoff slightly at his language. “Fought a Ghostface.” Your mouth dropped open and you once again fell forward when your hands and feet were suddenly free. The Doctor caught you and threw an arm over her shoulder as she helped you stand.

“Ghostface?” You questioned. “As in ... do you like scary movies? Ghostface?” Ryan nodded and you snuggled into the Doctor, suddenly realising that your head hurt like a bitch, your knee was scrapped up pretty bad and your shirt had been torn.

“Yeah,” Ryan answered a sheepish grin spreading across his lips. You could tell that the whole experience had shaken him, but he was thinking about it now.

“Wicked.” You mumbled.

“Alright, let’s go you two.” The Doctor finally butted in as she tightened her grip around your waist. “Before the fog decides to become sentient again.” Nodding your head, the Doctor helped you up the stairs.

“Hey Doc,” You mumbled suddenly, the pair of you trailing behind Ryan. You couldn’t help but look around the “house” that you had found yourself in. It looked awfully familiar, but you didn’t want to dwell on it when you spotted the TARDIS out the window. A sigh of relief escaped your lips. A hum left the Doctor’s as she gripped onto your fingers. “Next time, let’s just do Universal Studios Horror Nights.” Another scoff of a laugh left the Time Lord.

“Deal.”

[myfriendpokey]

the 2019 my friend pokey year in review!!

released a game i was happy about. started work on a new game i'm not sure about yet! went through a few months of false starts, switching game engines and ideas and approaches.

at one point i decided i wanted to spend about 2 years making nothing but "clown games", games where you played as a little mr. do figure navigating these abstract tile mazes a la chip's challenge. these games would all have titles like clown thing, clown city, moon clown, clown deluxe. i put this idea on hold when it was pointed out to me that all of my games were clown games.

at a different point i decided to try making an rpg maker horror game. i spent a month reading as many ghost stories as i could but then when i actually started the work i realised i'd immediately lose interest when the game was meant to become scary as opposed to just being a strange space full of funny text descriptions. but, one day i hope i can return to this game.

i made physical cd rom boxes for 10 beautiful postcards and took them to a zine fair. i think i forget the extent to which cds are a legacy format, now... people seemed interested but noncommital. i need to remember the last time i tried doing this was in 2014!! still interested in the idea of more "local" ways of releasing these things but will need to reconsider my approach.

also for the fair i made a short zine of romantic comedy reviews from my big romantic comedy review thread. i think i started that last year... over time i've become more jaded... i think i want to put that aside for a while so that i don't become the romcom equivalent of a joyless youtube guy. i don't know if it comes across in anything i've written about them but i do get a certain charge from the studio romantic comedy format. these things were on TV all the time when i was a kid. they fit sort of the same role as horror films and action movies to me, in that the real appeal wasn't so much the nominal genre as the weird vague visions of "everyday life" that the genre had to clothe itself in. the idea that these could be examined for clues to that life... and of course romcoms offer up a different version of that terrain than other genre movies, one that's almost studiedly bland in such a stylised and artificial way that it becomes seductive. when i was a kid i dreamed about being one of the night watchmen patrolling the warehouse in the opening minutes of a horror movie; now i have at least some kind of fascination with the eerily benign and conflictless parallel universe of spunky yet hapless romcom heroines running around accidentally dumping coffee on people.

i wrote another few big blog things. my favourite is probably the one on easy games - as prolix as ever but basically light and drifting in scope. my attempt to get at what i find exciting about the specific category of "videogame writing" in Monster Party... i dunno, we always kill the thing we love etc. writing on modernism and vgames i found interesting though it's possibly unintelligible to anyone who doesn't have my particular haphazard reference points for what modernism even refers to (more biased to writing than painting etc). i enjoyed trying to figure out what morality means in this weird context.

I also wrote dictionary to the known world for emilie reed’s lost histories jam. this was an attempt to get across the sort of strange insular reference systems which existed in hobbyist game spaces at a point immediately before they were all grouped under “indie”. 

i spent the last two years kind of obsessively returning to the idea of videogames as speculation, videogames as financialisation, videogames and the market. videogames thru the lens of the crash in 2008. i don't completely know why i got so fixated for so long, but feel like i was finally able to burn myself out on the subject in the course of this long piece. i dunno, maybe in future i can swing more into the other direction - the non-economic, mystical, etc. this year i bought a little clear glass pyramid with a star embedded into it for £1.50, and if you look through it and turn it around you get these vivid translucent fields of colour... it's interesting and it's pleasant to look at. clear glass pyramid is the game of the year.

oh, I also did the ball with feet fanpage this year. come with me and appreciate one of the format’s most powerful critters.

books: i can never remember what i read, but here are the ones i most remember out of 2019.

val wilmer - as serious as your life: a beautiful book about free jazz, or "the new music", worthwhile less for the descriptions of same than for the careful contemporary reportage of how it came about: the people involved, the influences and ideas that moved and changed from place to place, disagreements and developments, across rehearsals and performances and such clubs as would book it at all: what sun ra refers to here as the "unmanufactured avant garde", the kind that emerges when people in a commercially disregarded form quietly find space to explore their own interests. and to respond to one another's work - possibly the most surprising aspect of this book in 2019 is the way seemingly none of the musicians felt the now inescapable obligation to respond to the commercial culture of the day, to describe their work in the preferred language of that culture rather than on their own terms. instead we get reportage of black avant-garde musicians attempting to unionise in hopes of extracting concessions  from a white pop media establishment - think about reconciling THAT with the recieved ideas of culture 2019, in which anything that's not a disney movie is presented as elitist. solid paperback reissue means it's suitable for throwing at the heads of passers by.

other books i remember:

jane bowles - collected works. these are very mysterious and funny - i don't know how to describe them other than as sort of having the tone of a screwball katherine hepburn comedy in which she gets the job of becoming a beckett protagonist. max haiven - art after money, money after art. a feast on every page... extremely sharp and restless thinking about art, financialisation, the shifting and ongoing interdependence of the two. roberto calasso - the marriage of cadmus and harmony. content warning for greek myths and all that this implies. got this one on a whim not caring anything about the subject but was immediately drawn in by the terrifying strangeness of the symbolic universe that he explores. jean debuffet - cultural asphyxiation. collection of miscellaneous debuffet writings. vengeful attacks upon official culture. ford madox ford - memories & impressions. an extremely unreliable but entertaining memoir about growing up in the circle of the pre-raphaelites. there's a good bit where he describes the terror of walking around london as a child when you've been made to dress like a cross between little lord fauntleroy and oscar wilde. b.s. johnson - christy malry's double entry. the title character applies the basic principle of double entry bookkeeping - for every debit, a credit - to work and life, killing thousands in the process. funny and  strangely melancholy in the manner of at swim-two-birds.

other 2019 things: first time visiting sligo, saw some megaliths, got some nice books. first time casting a vote for a political program i was sincerely enthusiastic about! they got crushed!! tomorrow is another year.

[pain-somnia]

SasuSaku Halloween

Title: Zombie March Rating: T Day’s Notes: so I lied about not posting anything for Halloween. I was hit with inspiration from a story that @cherrydangome told me about her trip to Universal Studios Japan and decided to write something short. Please enjoy this Modern AU. Just a taste of SS for now.

Around another corner and she hit another dead end. If she could take a moment to relax she would be able to find her way out fine but she couldn’t stop her heart from racing. Every single time she stopped something new popped out of her.

I should have stayed with Ino, Sakura cried inwardly.

She had separated from Ino and Karin when the two girls wanted to move on to other rides instead of waiting around for the 4D attraction Sakura wanted to go to. They both had taken a look at the line and decided that it was too long of a wait for something they weren’t that interested in.

“Are you sure you want to wait in line?” Ino had asked her. Sakura had nodded, refusing to move. She had waited all day for the 4D attraction. “Call us when you’re done and we’ll meet you somewhere.”

Now she was in the dark and regretting her decision.

When she realized that the 4D attraction had changed to the night event for Halloween she should have told a staff member that she had changed her mind and wanted to leave.

She should have.

But she didn’t.

Sakura wasn’t a huge fan of haunted houses. She preferred her horror when she was curled up on her couch and wrapped up like a burrito in one of Karin’s plush throws with the option to cling to Ino who would scream enough for the three of them.

Sakura had never gone into a haunted house before and figured that a haunted maze in an amusement park would be mild compared to the scares in a house.

She was wrong.

She had been chased down corridors by screaming banshees and crazy clowns. She touched something wet on one wall and she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her whenever she did catch herself somewhere alone.

Turning back down the hall, Sakura went in the direction she chose to avoid originally. Walking down the hallway the background music changed to the sounds of a battlefield, gunshots and explosions marked different beats in the eerie music.

“Hnnn…”

Sakura froze at the sound of moaning coming from behind her. Slowly, she pivoted in place and saw a zombie wearing an old military uniform down the hall. As soon as the zombie saw that she noticed him he sprinted toward her.

Screaming, Sakura turn and fled. She made it about five feet down the hall before she tripped and fell flat on her face. Ignoring the pain in her knees and arms and her forehead, she started to crawl forward.

“If I were a real zombie you would be dead right now.”

Sakura stopped screaming and turned around. The zombie was looming over her with his hand extended out to her.

“Do you need help?”

Sniffling, Sakura nodded and took his hand. It was dark and the shadows still made him look creepy but it was hard to stay scared when he was talking so calmly and helping her stand up.

“Do you want to continue? Or do you want to leave?”

Sakura shook her head. She had enough of being scared for one night.

“I would like to leave please.”

Guiding her by the hand, the zombie took out a flashlight from his pocket and led her down the hall. He reached a wall and opened a door Sakura wouldn’t have noticed on her own and led her into a brightly lit corridor.

“Are you okay?” The zombie turned to look at her and then dropped her hand. “Oh. You’re older than I thought.”

“I’m not that short!”

“Would you still feel better if I offered you some candy?”

Sakura pouted and averted her gaze. She could feel heat rising up her cheeks.

“Yeah actually candy would be nice.”

The zombie snorted and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a package decorated with the amusement park’s logo.

“Usually for the younger guests but I think we can make an exception in this case.”

“Thanks,” Sakura mumbled. She took another look at the zombie. In the bright light of the corridor he didn’t look as terrifying.

In fact, he looked kind of cute. Just dead.

“Does Mr. Zombie have a name?” She asked, trying to fill the time as he led her through the employee corridors.

“Sasuke. Does Ms. Screams-A-Lot have a name?”

“I don’t scream that much!”

“You were screaming the entire time,” Sasuke scoffed. “So do you?”

“Sakura.”

“Should I make a missing child announcement?”

“I have a phone!”

“What were you even doing in there by yourself if you can’t handle scary stuff?”

“My friends went to do the rest of the rides and I was in line for the 4D attraction but it changed by the time I got to the front of the line.”

“You know that after six the park changes to the Halloween event right? There’s going to be people in costumes trying to scare you everywhere you go.”

“Oh no…”

After the ordeal in the maze Sakura just wanted to find Ino and Karin and get a funnel cake to share. She didn’t want to repeat her experience with any more of the staff.

“Want an escort to your friends?” Sasuke asked. “I can walk with you.”

“What about your zombie job?”

“There’s another zombie. We usually take turns chasing down patrons.”

“Okay,” Sakura nodded, “please walk with me.”

“Want to hold onto my shirt too in case one of the actors pop out?” he teased her.

“Haha,” Sakura laughed sarcastically. “You’re real funny.”

In the end she still grabbed onto the hem of his uniform. Scary things just weren’t her thing.

[aion-rsa]

The Walking Dead: World Beyond Stars Talk Growing Up With Zombies

https://ift.tt/34hIA9c

To a certain generation of TV-watchers, zombies are an inevitability. AMC’s The Walking Dead, based on Robert Kirkman’s comics of the same name, first premiered a decade ago. It was quickly followed up by its spinoff cousin Fear the Walking Dead and other zombie shows like Z Nation, iZombie, and Daybreak. 

Now the latest zombie effort in The Walking Dead universe, The Walking Dead: World Beyond is set to pay homage to the zombie-watching youth, let’s call them Generation Z (that’s not taken already, right?). World Beyond is a coming-of-age tale about a group of four teenagers who must find themselves amid the zombie apocalypse. Alexa Mansour and Aliyah Royale lead the quartet as the fundamentally different but unshakably close sister duo: Hope and Iris Bennett. 

Just like their characters, Mansour and Royale have grown up with The Walking Dead universe as an unavoidable fact of life. 

“They would have ‘Freaky Friday’ nights on AMC, and I would watch all the scary movies with my dad. So when Walking Dead came out, I became obsessed and then the nightmares started and I had to stop,” Mansour says.

Hope and Iris, however, aren’t afforded the opportunity to stop watching The Walking Dead universe as they’re deep into it. Alongside Elton Ortiz (Nicolas Cantu) and Silas Plaskett (Hal Sumpston), the pair take off from their relatively safe Campus Colony home in Nebraska to travel the walker-filled country in search of their long-lost father. 

We caught up with Royale and Mansour to talk about that journey, what it means to be a part of the Walking Dead franchise, and why walkers are now called “empties.” 

A big theme of this show is experiencing the world through the eyes of young people who barely remember a world without zombies in it. With that in mind, do you guys remember a world before The Walking Dead? How old were you when the series premiered and what has your history with it been like?

Aliyah Royale: It was actually something that my two older brothers were obsessed with. That Christmas, the calendar that they got was The Walking Dead themed. They followed the show the whole way through, so to find out that their little sister is now on it has been insane. I grew up knowing that there is this incredible show with these creatures that just terrify everyone, but that actually has an incredible storyline as well. But I was always too afraid to watch it! Walkers freak me out.

Alexa Mansour: I was a little older, I think I might have been like 12 or 13 years old, and I watched it the second that it came out. They would have ‘Freaky Friday’ nights on AMC, and I would watch all the scary movies with my dad. So when Walking Dead came out, I became obsessed and then the nightmares started and I had to stop. I would look forward to seeing Walking Dead at Universal Studios Horror Nights every single year, I was obsessed with it.

Aliyah Royale: That was the one I avoided, the one maze!

What’s it feel like to be a part of this enormous franchise now?

Alexa Mansour: Crazy. It’s just like, it has such a loyal fan base. This show is so many people’s worlds. Even when we were at New York Comic Con and they’re asking us questions about stuff that we wouldn’t even know. They’d read the comics religiously and all this stuff, and they’re so loyal to this show that it’s like, man, I really don’t want to disappoint any of these people.

Aliyah Royale: Yeah, you’re definitely walking into a fan base that is already so invested, at least 10 years worth of invested, in these stories, plus what the comic books gave us. So, I remember just walking onto that stage at New York Comic Con and being overwhelmed by the love in the room and the excitement. I think there was just this hope that was like, we are starting a new story. We’re starting a new chapter with these new characters. It’s also the hope of finding what happens with Rick, what do these three rings on the helicopter mean? Our show just gives so many answers to these people and giving them that opportunity is really awesome.

You guys play sisters on the show. What was it like when you first met each other, and how do you go about building up chemistry?

Alexa Mansour: I didn’t know if she was going to be my sister. I met her at the very, very, very last audition where I had to read with all the possible Iris’s. The person I thought that booked the show was not her, and I was not excited about the person because she was being very mean at the casting. But then I get to Virginia and I see Aliyah. Aliyah calls me, she’s like, ‘hey, I’m your sister!’

Aliyah Royale: She was like, “thank God!” We both have this witty, sarcastic nature to us, this language that only we speak, especially when everybody else is involved or around us. You can just tell that the relationship is so genuine. That relationship is there onscreen and offscreen.

One thing that your showrunner, Matthew (Negrete), mentioned was that he sees that one of the big themes of the show being trauma and how people overcome it, how do you play with that a bit with your characters? How are they working to overcome their traumas?

Alexa Mansour: I think Hope definitely tries to overcome her trauma by not even thinking about it. She masks all of her inner guilt and inner shame with rebelling against everyone and everything, just constantly getting in trouble. It isn’t until later in the season and throughout the season that she actually starts to try and face it head on and forgive herself for everything that’s happened.

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The Walking Dead: World Beyond Review (Spoiler Free)

By Ron Hogan

Aliyah Royale: “The night the sky fell”, which is what we call the official moment of the apocalypse hitting, we did not know what we were doing. We were kids. We were what, like five, six? But a lot of things happened that night. Hope and Iris lost people that meant everything to them. I think from that moment, whereas Hope is like, “You know what? eff this, I’m living for me now,” Iris came out of that experience more like, “I was afraid and that night I just lived in fear. For the rest of my life, I am going to make up for that by being everything I can to whoever needs me to be.” That’s who Iris was in this college campus community that they started to live in. It isn’t until she decides to go on the road with her sister and figure out who we actually want to be, and not just who we were forced to be after that night, that we turned into some really bad-ass young adult women. Watching that journey is really incredible.

Speaking of that journey – you guys start off in Nebraska, in Omaha, and then head off on an actual physical journey across the United States. I imagine that means you worked outside a lot. What’s that like filming out in the elements? And are you ever surprised how much Virginia can resemble the rest of the country, depending on where they’re traveling?

Aliyah Royale: Virginia is a special beast. I remember it was like 107 degrees, and it’s raining, and there is lightning in the sky. I’m like, “wait a minute, since when does summer have lightning storms?” Only in the South could I have seen something like that. It was crazy, especially being in those leather jackets, they’re very heavy and keeping our weapons on us. It was insane. Virginia is different.

Alexa Mansour: We got to the point that we tried to put on cooling vests that you would have to charge and fill up. If you didn’t do it long enough, then all they did was make even hotter because they had nothing cold in them. Then having boots and stuff and you’re trying to run through dirt. You got things chasing you, and you have like 50 pounds worth of bags on you. It was crazy. Then by the time we wrapped, it was what, like 10 degrees?

Aliyah Royale: Yeah, the day would start in the hundreds and by nightfall we’d be in the twenties.

Another interesting aspect of this show is that AMC has already announced that it’s going for two seasons, 10 episodes each. What is it like working on a show that you know has an expiration date for them? How does it inform your performances?

Aliyah Royale: For me it doesn’t. I still take the character day by day, episode by episode. I’m not looking forward in terms of “I hope Iris becomes this or hope her story ends like this.” No, moment by moment I’m playing this person and I want to live as that person. All I’m here for is to enjoy the ride. Playing this character has been the opportunity of a lifetime, however long or short I get to do it. It’s a blessing regardless.

Alexa Mansour: Yeah, it’s been so incredible to be a part of a production like this. I think regardless of whether it’s two seasons, 10 seasons, one season, half the season, we’re going to give it our all and do the best that we can.

What are you most excited for people to see once this season premieres?

Aliyah Royale: I love the “empties” (zombies) on our show. They get very creative with the way that they’ve decayed. There are these empties in Boston covered in all this moss. They’ve got nature growing all over them and they’re still sitting in these seats that they were in the night the sky fell. It looks so cool, 10 years later, this is how they’ve developed. They’re still slightly slowly moving. You can see their eyes moving, but they can’t actually move because of all the nature that’s entangling them in these seats. Just the way that our special effects team went to work on these empties, it’s next level.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Alexa Mansour: The empties were insane. I remember getting freaked out a couple of times by seeing how realistic they looked. But this show proves how tough kids can be. I’m so excited for people to see how badass this whole team of kids is because we’re so used to seeing the adults on the show.

The Walking Dead: World Beyond premieres at 10 p.m. ET, Oct. 4 on AMC.

The post The Walking Dead: World Beyond Stars Talk Growing Up With Zombies appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[cbbrpg]

Did someone mention HALLOWEEN? Guess that must mean it’s time for our next event! We’ve had haunted houses and the actual Murder House as settings in the past, but this time, the Big Brother producers have something much bigger in store! Working together with the sickest minds at Universal Studies’ Halloween Horror Nights, we’re going to be immersing our celebrities into a living, breathing, three-dimensional WORLD OF TERROR. From the movie studio that INVENTED the horror film genre, prepare for the scariest, most intense Halloween event so far.

There will be a brief meet and greet with fans outside before Universal will close its gates to the general public and keep each attraction, ride, whatever open the entire time our residents are there. Beds and/or sleeping bags have been scattered around in each main attraction. Though celebrities are permitted to explore all over throughout the evening, each one will be expected to retire to their assigned area come MIDNIGHT each night. You will be allowed to leave again at SUNRISE. These areas range from the haunting nightmares of the AMERICAN HORROR STORY: ROANOKE maze to the post-apocalyptic world of THE WALKING DEAD. Food stands, merchandise stores and more will remain open until curfew. 

This spooktacular event will start on 30/10 and continue until 04/11. The sleeping arrangements, along with more information on what to expect from each attraction, will soon be posted in a separate post. Get ready for non-stop terror because the best nightmares never end!

[benjaminkindel]

Halloween Horror Nights 2016

Each year I go to Horror Nights (Hollywood), it appears to not only grow in size of event, but also in crowds. This year was, hands down, the strongest year I’ve been with some of the best mazes, scarezones, and other offerings, but it presents a larger challenge: the crowds. 

I talked with a representative for a length about it, and it seems like they are working on it, so it’s not a hindering problem. So with the waves of people put aside, how good was the event and mazes overall? It’s a bit past October so if anything this can help decision making for next year’s event (which if the rumors are to be trusted can be amazing). 

American Horror Story: Despite the fact that they crammed three seasons into a singular maze, this was a very beautiful and morbid maze that became darker and more twisted the further in you went. Definitely a great maze, but the overbearing crowds made it hard to enjoy. Between the massive wait time (even for Front of Line), and rude people taking pictures in the maze, it was a bit distracting. I loved where they were going with it, and I hope they could bring it back for more seasons, this time with a better control of the crowd. 

The Exorcist:  This is one of my favorite mazes of the year, being that it’s so high concept and artistic that it transcends a normal maze experience. In essence, you walk through the same room over and over, but with different things happening each time. But the simple story of it is so distressing that I felt hopeless going through it, and by the end, I was shaking uncontrollably. It was a maze that offered such horrifying images that they lingered long after you had left. 

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: Blood Brothers Without a doubt, this maze is the most disgusting of the lot. It strikes you quick and hard, not letting up until you exit the maze. That’s why I think it’s one of the most intense. It feels like a disorienting romp through a person’s house as they chase you with a chainsaw. And as previously mentioned, the scares come quick and hard. When there isn’t a chainsaw in your face, there’s a tall man sobbing in the corner of the room with the skin of a dead woman. It utilized every effect it had to deliver one hell of a strong experience. 

Freddy vs Jason: Where ‘Blood Brothers’ utilized scents to scare you, ‘FvJ’ utilized a nightmare dreamscape to horrify you. With rooms that fade in and out as you walk through them, or windows that have giant eyeballs in them, this maze was the most trippy of the entire event. It was honestly a marvel to experience, and I loved every moment of it. And with the alternating scenes, it definitely invited you back to re-experience it all for a new version that changed every fifteen minutes. 

Halloween: Hell Comes to Haddonfield: While last year’s ‘Halloween: Michael Myers Comes Home’ was one of the scariest mazes Horror Nights has done (to me), their follow-up didn’t feel as strong. The opening and the ending both were the highlights, with the middle bits feeling like we had just barely missed all the scares. And while the body count was high and the deaths gruesome, there was the element of inclusion that was missed. For me, it’s like when Horror Nights followed up ‘Insidious: Into the Further’ with ‘Return to the Further’. It just wasn’t as scary. It was still worth going into and seeing, but if they do a new ‘Halloween’ maze, they need to go back to what made ‘MMCH’ so scary. 

The Walking Dead: I can’t believe I’m actually saying I loved ‘The Walking Dead’ maze this year! It’s become such an over-used part of Horror Nights that it lost all charm it had, but somehow ‘The Walking Dead Attraction’ has sparked something new. It’s scary, involving, it’s heavily detailed. I thought it was a great scare for being something so over-used. 

Krampus: My favorite maze of the year. It was scary. It was funny. It had beautiful sets, gorgeous puppets and actors, good smells and bad smells, and it both had straight-forward scares with artistic takes. It goes all abstract towards the end until it even does a ‘falsetto’ ending. A purely cinematic experience that not only was a huge amount of fun, but easily was the best maze of the year.

Eli Roth presents The Terror Tram: With a name like Eli Roth attached to the Terror Tram, it’s hard to see where things could go wrong. But unfortunately, they did. And it’s not the subject matter or the gore, but how long it ended up being. It felt like a whopping five minutes of maze compared to the longer running times of previous years. I understand they they had two paths to chose from, but they eliminated much of the walking area (the dirt bend/camp area) which made it feel more like a sideshow than a main event like it was billed as. An easy fix? Just change the route overall and have guests explore a new section of the haunted backlot.

I may not be an expert on these matters, so take my review any way you wish. Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood is a highly enjoyable experience that I feel everyone should attempt at some point or another.