Universal Studios Hollywood Halloween Horror Nights 2021: General Review

Universal Studios Hollywood, Universal City, CA

The 2021 haunt season has officially begun, and as is our tradition, today, we’re kicking off our coverage of the spoopiest time of the year by visiting Universal Studios Hollywood to see this year’s edition of Halloween Horror Nights! Today is a general review, so make sure to come back this week to check out our deep dives into this year’s mazes as well as the scare zones and Terror Tram. Like most commercial haunts around Southern California, HHN Hollywood was dark last year due to the Coronavirus pandemic. But this year, with vaccines available to the general public and health restrictions less drastic, Universal (and its fellow friendly competitors) are back with mazes, scare zones, monsters, and more!

Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights is back, and with it, fire towers and spooky scenery!

Although the return of Horror Nights this year was greatly welcome in the Halloween community, there was a certain measure of restraint in this year’s offerings. Possibly due to the financial challenges of no operating for a significant portion of the past year+ and possibly in case the Coronavirus pandemic suddenly rapidly worsened and prompted closures by local health agencies, Universal Studios seemed to (at least on paper) take a cautious approach to the level and breadth of profile of the attractions they announced.

Sure, the top of the line-up packed exciting, high profile name recognition. The Haunting of Hill House, based off the acclaimed hit Netflex series, was tailor-made to be translated into a haunted attraction, with the Hill House’s many mysterious and elaborate rooms and chilling ambiance combined with disturbingly iconic ghosts providing evocative moments to explore. Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein Lives! was clearly a heavy investment, given all the thought, passion, and detail poured into the maze, as John Murdy showcased in the Halloween Horror Nights main panel at last month’s Awaken the Spirits.

Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein Lives is pretty much on top of everyone’s maze rankings this year, and it’s sure to be among the most popular as the run continues.

Further down, however, and the rest of the line-up was filled with literal repeat mazes from recent past years—five overall returning haunted walk-throughs in total, compared to previous years, when the number of old mazes from previous years was limited to one or two at most (usually the absolute most popular hits of the previous season). The Curse of Pandora’s Box brought back one of 2019’s most acclaimed mazes. Halloween 4: The Return Michael Myers was produced the year before. The Exorcist held one of the top billings in 2016. And the Texas Chainsaw Massacre has made an appearance in many a Halloween Horror Nights season over the past decade and a half. Even The Walking Dead experience was dusted off from its closure as a permanent attraction last March (right before the pandemic got real, coincidentally enough) and included in the maze line-up! And while the return of the Terror Tram as a “fan-favorite request” brought some excitement, the use of The Forever Purge as yet another HHN Purge attraction set an expectation for a lot of repeat sets and a carousel of familiar, ravenously murderous characters.

And yet, for all the potential for this year’s Horror Nights to be a simple processing of the motions for a conservative return to haunt operation, the 2021 iteration of HHN was surprisingly fun and enjoyable! Part of this had to do with just the grateful appreciation of being able to enjoy a large scale haunted attraction again—something that haunt fans were deprived of last year. Just being in the atmosphere of a haunt—smelling the fog, feeling the warmth of the fire towers, and watching the scareactors ply their draft—was incredibly gratifying.

Normally, familiarity is somewhat of a criticism of Horror Nights, which reuses the same formula each year, but after a year off, the familiarity of elements like the Chainsaw Chaseout was very welcome!

But Universal was also able to generally improve upon its returning mazes, minimizing or revising their weak areas, while knocking it out of the park with their Universal Monsters original story maze and staying solid (though not quite spectacular) enough with The Haunting of Hill House to hit all of the familiar beats that guests have come to expect from an HHN experience.

Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein Returns, The Curse of Pandora’s Box, and The Exorcist ended up being our top mazes of the night during our opening night visit. The first was easily the best maze of the night, and the passion and love that John Murdy and the design and production team have for the classic monsters was clearly on display in the consistent high quality of the sets, make-up, theming, theatrical effects, art direction, and opulent storytelling. And that soundtrack by Guns ‘n’ Roses guitarist, slash? *Chef’s Kiss* The second was essentially unchanged from two years ago, but that offering was so solid that no improvements were really needed. And bronze medal The Exorcist was happily able to redeem itself from its disappointing 2016 production. The multiple lengthy black corridors were greatly reduced, and there was more of a live scareactor presence (though the use of many mannequins still persisted). The Reagan possession scenes were spectacular, and the Universal team even added a new climactic room featuring Reagan juxtaposed against Pazuzu.

The Bride becomes the creator in Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein Lives.

The Curse of Pandora’s Box once again rains HADES FIRE on guests.

The Exorcist is located in the soundstage on the Lower Lot this year and has benefited from the new setting and new enhancements.

Surprisingly (to us at least), The Haunting of Hill House, one of the most eagerly anticipated mazes of this year’s Horror Nights, fell a bit flat. This is more a matter of expectations. The maze was described as a departure from the normal HHN “boo box-palooza” formula, focusing on the house itself as the main character and slowly building up psychological tension before ramping up the scares and intensity on the back half. This felt like it take a starting tone similar to the 2015 Crimson Peak maze, which built upon a sumptuously furnished, hauntingly elegant ambiance that wasn’t necessarily as trigger-happy with the scares but provided an exquisite visual feast and more psychological experience. Unfortunately, the maze ended up being the typical sudden roar, strobe-filled startle-scare spree that a typical Horror Nights maze features (with the Bent-Neck Lady, the Tall Man, and Olivia Crain featuring prominently), and the sets didn’t feel like they had quite enough time to breathe. Rather than experience the house, the experience felt like walking past dioramas, and that disconnect (understandably influenced by COVID safety protocols) detracted from the impact of the maze and moved it to the middle of the pack.

Nell Crain features prominently in the Haunting of Hill House maze.

Rounding out the remaining mazes, Halloween 4 was nowhere near the relentless intense, tightly organized, brilliant terror of the 2015 Halloween: Michael Myers Comes Home classic, but it did improve upon its 2019 copy by managing its layout more efficiently and giving a more intimate feel. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre felt like a mash-up “greatest hits” of all of Horror Nights’ previous TCM mazes, but it was solid enough—nothing spectacular but hitting the expected scenes and beats. And The Walking Dead… it was the same as its been in all its previous years—though I will say that this year’s visit was by far the most staffed and active I have ever seen the maze. So kudos to the scareactors and maze team for putting forth maximum effort on HHN’s longest-running recurring maze!

A representation of the frequency of Halloween mazes at Horror Nights over the years.

Leatherface gutting a victim in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Check.

The Walking Dead Experience was resurrected from the dead this year.

Like the mazes, this year’s scare zones also saw a reduction in number from the usual four or five down to only three—with two areas being true scare zones.

Chainsaw Rangers, spanning the entrance corridor to just before New York Street, was listed as a scare zone by virtue of the gamut of chainsaw-wielding mutated forest creatures that guests had to navigate to get through, but one wouldn’t have guessed it was a scare zone any other way, since it was literally devoid of theming. Demon City, this year’s manifestation for New York Street, was far better, with a host of crimson creatures and stilt walkers constantly prowling and packing energy into their scares. The set dressing, however, did feel a little more sparse than prior years—a subtle sign of the more austere approach to this year’s event under the still-lingering shadow of COVID. On the other hand, it was nice to have the fire towers back!

Demon City, where hellfire and twisted fiends reign.

Over on French Street, Silver Scream Queenz made its mark as our favorite scare zone of the evening—an honor that has typically gone to the New York Street scare zone in almost all previous years. This tribute to the lady icons and variations of the classic Universal Monsters picked up guests coming out of The Bride of Frankenstein Lives maze and corralled them through an avenue lined with beautiful movie poster sets of films (real and imagined) dedicated to said scream queens/z. Guests might encounter the Bride, of course, as well as Dracula’s daughter, the She-Wolf, Anck Su Namun, and a supporting cast of female vampires and mummies. Also lingering in the fog, an intimidating towering and stilt-walking Frankenstein’s monster. This scare zone offered a more classic and refined approach, utilizing the one way traffic to corner exiting maze guests and also taking advantage of the lingering burst of fog to come upon unsuspecting guests still recovering from the maze. Plus, each movie poster set piece was marvelously decorated. It felt specifically designed rather than a recycle of old props and past scare zone set pieces and was by far the best scare zone that we have seen occupy French Street.

This scare zone was fantastic every time we went through.

Lastly on the haunted attractions front, the return of the Terror Tram offered another comforting nod toward normalcy by bringing back a longstanding Horror Nights feature that was missing in 2019. Admittedly, we’ve spoken in the past about how the Terror Tram is essentially the same experience with a different IP veneer each year, and over the years, it has felt more and more stale. With the same site and general layout across multiple permanent sets, the Terror Tram has always been an attraction working around its surroundings, rather than tailoring its surroundings to fit it.

This year’s theme, featuring The Forever Purge, essentially felt like a repeat of each of the previous Purge overlays (the only thing really distinguishing this as something from the latest movie installment was the tram guide spiel and some banners at one of the War of the Worlds set houses). However, the circuit was reconfigured to be tighter and more efficient, dropping off guests at the usual spot where the Whoville set used to be, winding them by the Bates Motel, then cutting in front of the Psycho House rather than diverting to a bottleneck maze uphill and behind it, and cutting through two pathways across the War of the Worlds set. Although the components were essentially the same, this streamlined route felt more improved and effective, because it eliminated dead spaces and kept the pedestrian flow moving. In a case of “less is more,” even the Terror Tram felt refreshingly enjoyable, thanks to the refinements.

Terror Tram x The Forever Purge delivers a cutting experience.

Don’t mind them. They’re just waiting for you.

Of course, we’d be remiss to express our joy at seeing Log Bunny out in the backlot again. This goofy Horror Nights equivalent of the Catawampus is one of those silly but enjoyable traditions that brings a bit of levity to the normally very serious-minded event.

Another pleasantly enjoyable factor was the overall crowd management. We’ve talked about how Horror Nights has suffered from nearly unbearable crowds before, with opening night wait times sometimes drifting into the 2 to 3 hour mark. That sort of protracted queueing created the impossibility of seeing every haunted attraction, even for guests taking advantage of early entry and being strategic about hitting mazes off of their typical peak waiting times of the evening. Fortunately, for opening night at least, the capacity limit on the crowds kept things very nicely manageable. The longest wait time we noticed during the evening was 75 minutes, and mazes were typically less than an hour long. And in the lulls, sometimes, posted waits were as little as 10-15 minutes. This may not persist through the rest of the run, especially on peak Fridays and Saturdays, but we did appreciate what we saw on opening night.

Very manageable wait times throughout opening night!

We did not catch the Jabbawockeez show, which is par for the course. It’s not Halloween-themed (and not an appealing enough exception like Puppet Up!), and our priorities are focused on the actual haunt content. But fans of the dance troupe or people who appreciate slick, well-choreographed, impressive dance shows could take a break from the frights and enjoy the high-energy music performance offering. It’s a good show, but just not for us at an event like Horror Nights.

Lastly, we also wanted to point out some observations on how Universal handled COVID-related safety for this event—given the large-scale, crowd-packing, occasionally confined space nature of it. A big plus was all of the compliant mask wearing in mazes and indoor spaces that we saw all guests accommodating on opening night. Although there weren’t many active reminders by Universal staff to put on masks (I suppose this is because most of the mazes at Horror Nights are technically outdoors, even when covered), all of the guests that we saw behaved themselves and wore their masks in the mazes (and many—including myself—outdoors in the scare zones and Terror Tram and just throughout the night).

The scareactors were also almost universally masked, with the exception of a small number of street talent. While thematically speaking, this does take away from the story and might pull some out of the immersion, it was an appreciated safety measure that takes precedence over the regular commitment to making the movies seem as real as possible (and in the case of a maze like The Bride of Frankenstein Lives, the Bride wearing a surgical mask actually lent a fitting aesthetic to her evolution into the new mad doctor role).

Most scareactors were masked, one way or another. For some, the masking sort of fit.

For others, it was noticeable, but an appreciated health safety gesture.

Many of the mazes also featured monsters behind plexiglass enclosures or caging to separate them from the guests. These segments were worked into the maze so that they didn’t stand out, and they offered a bonus variation of a boo box by giving a different startle scare medium with which to hit unsuspecting bypassers. Some of the mazes themselves also felt more open air than in previous years—particularly the Waterworld maze setting housing the Halloween 4 maze; the experience here before it gets dark is starkly different from normal due to all the natural light illumination.

Scareactors behind windows and plexiglass was another common feature.

In addition, the water effects were kept to a minimum this year. Given that it’s water, this wouldn’t necessarily have been a COVID issue anyway, but considering that concern over droplet transfer of the Coronavirus has been a headline message for the past year and a half, it was probably a good idea not to spray guests. (Another past overuse complaint—foul scents—was also absent this time around.)

Minimal water effects this year, thank goodness. Instead, liquids were mostly relegated to the bars, which many would also welcome!

Overall, we had a fun and invigorating time at Halloween Horror Nights. The event has long ceased to be “scary” for us, thanks to its formulaic nature, but we have found deep admiration for the maze designs, the artistry of the sets, costuming, and make-up, and the satisfying feeling of just taking in the scare zone ambiance. Halloween is such a wonderful time of the year—a weird tradition built on entertainment derived from simulated fear, with imagery distilled from the morbid and macabre—but it’s also created a passionate and caring community that does what they do for each other.

Halloween Horror Nights has by now become a longstanding tradition that steeps itself in all of that, producing a rich tapestry of stories that guests can experience. And though the event still suffers from some of the longstanding critiques of redundancy in its scares and experiences—something that is intentional anyway—it remains one of the marquee Halloween attractions in Southern California, and one that we continue to appreciate, especially after its absence last year. No matter what life throws at it, HHN—and haunted attractions like it—will persist. Like the horror villain icons that it so frequently features, Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights will never die.