Halloween Horror Nights Universal Orlando 2022 Delivers Weird, Classic and Musical Scares

The 31st Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla. kicked off this past weekend with its usual array of spooky mazes and endless supply of jump scares. Given this is the 31st HHN, the creative designers leaned into that number and chose to focus on everyone’s favorite tropes related to October 31st, Halloween, from witches and goblins to Jack O’Lanterns and trick-or-treaters. IGN attended in order to check out all 10 mazes, and the result was one of the weirdest and most fun HHNs in years.

Check out the full breakdown of everything we saw and which mazes scared us the most.

Descendants of Destruction

The first maze on our tour was called Descendants of Destruction and, as the title alludes, it featured those surviving on a post-apocalyptic world destroyed by pollution. The maze consisted of an underground subway system populated by mold people that have devolved into nightmarish monsters. This maze was a bit more tame and didn’t get any scares out of us, but we were sufficiently grossed out by the fluorescent mold people.

Bugs: Eaten Alive

Speaking of gross, the Bugs: Eaten Alive maze was as gooey as it was gross. The 1950s setting gave it a kitschy charm as we saw the story unfold of an experimental pesticide that, when applied in excess, mutates and multiplies bugs instead of exterminating them. This one was incredibly unsettling because, well, bugs. It got two good scares out of us, one when a person covered in roaches lurched out of the dark and another when we were forced to walk through a completely dark hallway while feeling all sorts of webs and insect legs drag across our skin. Talk about getting the creepy crawlies!

The Weeknd: After Hours Nightmare

By far the most unique and fun maze of the night was The Weeknd: After Hours Nightmare. The folks at Universal knew The Weeknd was a big horror fan and invited him to help design a house filled with the horrors of the music videos made for his After Hours album. The result was a trippy and entertaining experience where The Weeknd himself appears in increasingly unhinged and monstrous forms all while his music plays and the lights strobe. The “run away” lyrics in Save Your Tears certainly take on a new context in this environment! It truly felt like walking through a music video, making it the most immersive maze we’ve walked through in quite some time.

Universal Monsters: Legends Collide

The Universal Monsters: Legends Collide maze features three iconic Universal monsters duking it out in a battle royale. The story sees the Wolf Man travel to Egypt to secure a magic amulet with the power of the sun and the moon, hoping it will be the cure for his full-moon affliction. The maze takes you through an impressively rendered Egyptian temple complete with colossal statues and all manner of mummies trying to keep the amulet away from their furry visitor. The big twist comes when we learn Dracula is the one who tipped off the werewolf because he wants the amulet for himself to become a daywalker, and that’s when an all-out brawl ensues between the three monstrous legends. The best moment comes when all three baddies try to scare you at once, and Dracula certainly succeeded when he came swinging in from above on a wire. The maze does an excellent job telling the story and ends with a different outcome each night. For our run, it ended with Dracula staked to the wall and the Mummy holding up the werewolf’s head like a trophy.

The Horrors of Blumhouse: Freaky and The Black Phone

The Horrors of Blumhouse is a two-in-one maze. The first leg features Freaky, the 2020 film starring Vince Vaughan as a serial killer who unexpectedly swaps bodies with a teenage girl. While the maze does get props for recreating the film’s various kills with great attention to detail, it didn’t have much scare factor to it. The second part was all about The Black Phone from Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson. The setting in this one felt limiting because most of the movie takes place in a single room, but it was cool to see the increasingly creepy versions of the Grabber’s mask as he popped out from unexpected spots.

Hellblock Horror

Hellblock Horror enlists you to enter a prison where the inmates were experimented on and turned into monsters, and now it’s up to you to reach the end of the maze to detonate a bomb to stop from them from breaking out and destroying the world. Given all of the unique scares and thrills in the other mazes, this one felt tame by comparison.

Halloween

A Horror Nights classic, Halloween recreates the original film with loving attention to detail and adds in some new elements for longtime fans. This time we get to see inside Michael Meyer’s childhood room, his escape from Smith's Grove Sanitarium, and we walk inside the closet during that iconic moment between Michael and Laurie Strode. This was an oldie but a goodie with just enough new stuff to keep it fresh.

Spirits of the Coven

Easily our favorite theme among the custom houses not based on an IP, Spirits of the Coven invites you into a 1920s speakeasy where the flapper girls are secretly witches who want to use your blood for the drinks. While not too scary, it bewitched us with its excellent use of the time period to turn out some memorable costumes and settings.

Fiesta de Chupacabras

The Fiesta de Chupacabras maze takes you to a South American town where the locals don creepy masks and a fearsome Chupacabra stalks the streets. The environment was brilliantly crafted to make you feel like you’re actually walking down the winding streets of a small village, and the Chupacabra itself is an amazing, oversized puppet that was a delight to see whenever it popped up.

Dead Man’s Pier: Winter’s Wake

While we didn’t tour the mazes in any particular order, we have a sneaking suspicion they saved the best for last. Dead Man’s Pier: Winter’s Wake has a story that’s romantic and melancholy, which isn’t what you’d expect from a horror maze. The setting is an old fishing town where you walk aboard ships filled with hook-wielding fish-people. All the while, a woman plays a haunting melody on the violin, a sad siren call to her husband lost at sea. It was a surprisingly emotional and engrossing walkthrough that never stopped delivering new, unexpected things to love that left everyone in our group astonished by the time it ended. And as an added bonus, a blustery sea breeze blew throughout the maze—a much-needed reprieve from the inescapable muggy Florida heat.