Autumn is finally upon us, intrepid readers, and here in SoCal we’ve already had vestiges of Halloween appearing as early as mid-August. Even I think that’s a little too soon, but Christmas does the same to the months before it, so what do you do?
But I’m not here to rant, oh no. It’s time to kick off The Fog Report for the 2025 spooky season, and welcome it I shall with open arms. This year, I got started with something new, at least for me: my first ever visit to Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights event.
Anyone who knows me (or who has read previous Fog Reports) might find that surprising. I’ve never felt a massive compulsion to go to HHN when there are a multitude of other haunts and immersive theater events in the region that tell their own stories. Generally speaking, IP-driven mazes and events don’t usually draw me in, not nearly to the level of original or homegrown ideas. Add to this the horror stories I’ve heard from friends about the crowds and wait times at Universal and the apparent necessity to buy an Express pass to even hope to get through everything, and you might understand why I haven’t been keen on attending. But a friend of mine invited me to an employee preview night, which I graciously accepted. Keep that in mind as you read further because my perceptions of the event might be significantly different due to the reduced crowd size and technical dress rehearsal nature.
That said, was this was a good year to be properly introduced to HHN?
The Event
In a broad sense, HHN does have its own feel to it compared to other theme park haunts, and rightfully so. It’s not as inherently immersive as Knott’s Scary Farm or as drenched in fairground party atmosphere as Dark Harbor, but falls somewhere in the middle and with the unique plus of having a genuine movie studio roster of IP to pull from, plus a movie studio budget going into its props, costumes and maze design. Universal absolutely leans on brand recognition when it comes to its presentation, as it actively changes out most of its mazes and zones every year unlike the 4-to-5-years shelf life of other attractions. The money they can pump into it is on full display, and my hope is that the designers and crew who set this up feel good about what they get to work with, because it is genuinely impressive.
I should note a distinction when it comes to “scare zones” at HHN: they’re tiny! Compared to sprawling park-wide swaths of Scary Farm, HHN has these little pockets and corners where they have a handful of decorations and a squad of roaming monsters, but they are few and far between. Standouts for me were Noche de Brujas, a dark street haunted by Latin American witches and decorated with eerie wagons, wicker effigies and poster-sized tarot cards depicting the resident hags; and Murder of Crowz with its stilt-walking corvid monsters protecting a creepy (but cute) animatronic fledgling.
The rest of the zones were a little more cut and dried, with the Chainsaw Clownz and Carnival of Carnage filling the requisite killer clown and scary chainsaw box along the main thoroughfare. There was also a extra-small “zone” one passed through on the way to the Terror Tram called Hellbillyz, but it seems to be an almost unofficial one a couple of gruesome yokels menacing passersby with pickaxes.
Size aside, the talent in all of these did a superb job - a part of me just wishes they had more room to play.
Making up for this is the most one-of-a-kind recurring feature of HHN, the Terror Tram. A quick jaunt aboard the studio tour trams takes visitors to the lower lot and lets you walk a gauntlet through legitimate movie sets now populated with scare actors. This year, the theme was all horror properties of Blumhouse, spearheaded by M3GAN and featuring a full roster from the last 15 years of the studio.
There’s not really anything else anywhere I can compare the Terror Tram experience to. Having the opportunity to walk right up to the house from Psycho complete with photo-op with Norman Bates, and then stroll through the the now Purge-ified ruined neighborhood from War of the Worlds, was a treat in itself. I’m not necessarily a massive Blumhouse fan so the appeal for me was different, but again I commend the talent here for keeping the terror going, especially the folk who weren’t given a chainsaw (did I mention there were a lot of chainsaws?) to work with. I’m not saying chainsaws make the job any easier, but there’s an inherent gut reaction when someone is running at you with a real revving and gasoline-powered tool and swiping at your legs.
On this visit I didn’t get a chance to see the two offered shows (The Purge: Dangerous Waters and Chainsaw Man: The Chaos), but I did get a chance to sample some of the food, a topic I admittedly don’t talk about much when it comes to other events. As another example of how brand recognition drives the event, I confess I was eager to know specifically what their Fallout-themed confections tasted like. Thankfully the Filly Foodstuffs venue had a pretty legit-looking menu and some cool in-universe theming on top of it. I ended up trying some Gulper Stew which was above-average when it comes to theme park clam chowder I’ve had before, and washed it down with a sadly-not-actually-sarsaparilla Sunset Sarsaparilla (really just a root beer with some cool creamy foam on top, and no star bottle cap to be had either). The standout was probably the RadAway “blood bag,” a weird blend of chipotle, pineapple lemonade and brown sugar that was surprisingly good. And I sampled the Nuclear Blast mixed drink, which is so sweet and tasty it’s dangerous.
But for me, the real meat-and-potatoes of any haunt is going to be its mazes…
The Mazes
Eight mazes are presented at HHN 2025, all but two of them drawing on existing TV and film franchises. Looking at it from the outside prior to this, I had a lukewarm opinion of Universal’s choice of how to do maze scares, an extra factor that kept me from visiting on top of the price tag and disinterest in big horror properties as a draw. My observation was that HHN tends to have a “robotic” mentality when it comes to how the actors perform, all down to a formula: flashing light, loud sound, actor emerges from corner/boo door, makes scary motion, resets. I’m not sure how the talent feel about the seeming repetition, but it would drive me crazy; an egregious example of what I’m describing was what I saw in a 2022 Halloween maze where a performer playing Dr. Loomis had to work off the same looping scene of turning around and shooting Michael Myers. Imagine doing that, over and over, every night of HHN.
Was that opinion justified? It’s… complicated. I’ve kept tabs on both Hollywood and Orlando’s Horror Nights mazes over the years and like to think I have a balanced understanding of what to expect of them, but venturing into them is a completely different experience than watching them play out online (thanks to all the dedicated YouTube people for preserving past and present mazes in this form, by the way).
Below is my own personal ranking from least-enjoyed to most. As always, these tend to be where I put the most evaluation on the quality of the haunt, but it all boils down to an opinion. And in a similar vein, I deliberately skipped the Terrifier maze - I know for some this probably a fan favorite, but I’m not huge on the over-the-top gore ideas, the fact that the maze is “wet,” and there’s a room that smells like… well, like a bathroom Art the Clown is making his own personal canvas. That’s a big pass for me, but if you enjoyed it more power to you.
With that in place, here’s how the rest stacked up:
7 - Poltergeist
While it’s not uncommon for Universal to revive certain classic films to make mazes of, this is a one-for-one return of a previous Poltergeist maze from 2018! I’m not sure what prompted it or why, since I understand it was basically completely rebuilt. With that in mind, it suffers from what a lot of older HHN mazes struggled with - long, blank black corridors between more detailed scenes. Sometimes these corridors still have scares, but these sections leave a lot to be desired. This appears to be a design trend that’s gradually falling off so it makes this maze feel like a throwback, and not in an ideal way.
The giant skull puppets were very cool though, even if one of them basically startled me to the point where I inhaled fog and actually tasted it. I don’t recommend that.
6. Jason Universe
Consolidating the bulk of the Friday the 13th franchise into one big tribute maze, Jason Universe delivers in surprising and excellent ways as your move in roughly chronological order through the woods and cabins of Crystal Lake and encounter Jason and his victims. Nearly every iteration of Jason makes an appearance (sans Jason X… cowards) and the scares are familiar come aggressively, hardly giving room to recover - personal favorite being a tribute to the arrow kill from Part 3. Fans of the series are definitely going to get a kick out of this one, and unlike the previous maze on my list, there’s not a blackout corridor anywhere I saw.
5 - WWE Presents: The Horrors of the Wyatt Sicks
I’m unfamiliar with a lot of pro-wrestling and was kind of surprised to see this in the maze lineup. I did try to prepare by asking my good friend (and incredibly handsome UCA co-host) Allen to fill me in a little on the Wyatt Sicks lore, so I didn’t go in totally blind. The lack of expectation actually contributed to my enjoyment of the maze because this felt like an introduction to the members of the Sicks. Each space was the stomping ground for one of the group, helping set up who they were before they inevitably appeared from dark doorway or shadowy corner. I’d be curious to see how more informed fans of the Sicks will feel about this maze, but I appreciated that it seemed designed to get the theme across for the uninitiated while paying tribute to what the fireflies would hope for.
4 - Five Nights at Freddy’s
Definitely the most anticipated maze this year by the Gen-Z crowd, and that’s not a dig - the amount of excitement and love I saw in the line warmed my heart. Freddy’s is technically impressive, if not all that scary to me, which is A-OK. The attention to detail within the pizzeria is wonderful, and the animatronics and puppets used for Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy and the others are appropriately janky and a treat to see. If this doesn’t end up being one of the most popular mazes this year, I will honestly be surprised.
3 - Fallout
See, this was the one franchise maze I was most looking forward to this year, the chief reason I quickly accepted the offer to go. My bias might be on full display as a Fallout fan, but this maze kicked ass. It more-or-less follows scenes from the show, taking me from Vault 33 overrun by raiders to various corners of the Wasteland seen in the series. It also has my favorite big puppet scare of the whole event in a certain mutant creature (that I won’t spoil here), and a fun hint at the end pointing toward my beloved New Vegas in the show’s upcoming season.
If there’s any minor gripes I have with this maze, is that it feels too short and ends kind of abruptly. If they do something like this again, they can utilize a space where they can expand the footprint.
2 - Scarecrow: Music by Slash
Unsurprising to anyone who has read my Fog Reports before, the two original mazes are my winners. Promoting music is by Slash is kind of weird since it didn’t really stand out to me through the maze; what did stand out was the pacing, presentation and story. Set on a Depression-era farm during the Dust Bowl, you learn that the human inhabitants have been wiped out and the scarecrows, inhabited by the vengeful spirit of the depleted and dry land, are wreaking havoc.
I enjoy mazes that build, and this one eases in with a short, quieter section before the first scarecrow strikes, and then the environmental storytelling well and truly kicks in. The scares were good, coming at you from all sides, and the finale is a short but memorable cornfield scene that caps off an excellent maze.
1 - Monstruos 3: The Ghosts of Latin America
Third in a trilogy of mazes drawing from the rich and eerie folklore of Latin America, this year brings in a trio of ghostly women, one of whom has had her own mazes at HHN before. La Muerte guides you into a crypt where the spirits of La Muelona, La Siguanaba and La Llorona each have their stories unfold, all before you are dumped into the streets of Noche de Brujas to put a sinister bow on this spectral present.
Previous iterations of this theme have always captured my interest, oftentimes the one I see and go “I’d go to HHN just to see Monstruos, honestly.” Finally getting to go through this was a fantastic experience. The maze is feast for the eye and terrifying to boot, both haunting and hair-raising. In addition, I was happy to finally see Universal’s interpretation of La Llorona in person. That myth is near and dear to me, to the point where I’ve tried to tell my own story with her in Midnight Marinara The talent playing her went above and beyond nailing her vibe, appearing with a wail and retreating with a look of horror and sadness on their faces. Even the use of one blackout corridor at the very end was actually justified, as La Muerte set up for it by asking if anyone was afraid of the dark. Easily my favorite maze.
Final thoughts
It was a trip getting to visit Halloween Horror Nights after years of watching it from afar and I had a fantastic evening. Is it something I would do again? I’m not entirely sure, as this was a special occasion brought about by the kindness of a friend. It’s hard to be beat free admission, and I’m not sure I’d go again based on the asking price, the massive crowds and the reliance on familiar big properties, but that’s just me. Maybe I’ll try my hand at the Orlando version sometime… except that require going to Florida. Hm.
I’m still not entirely sold on HHN, but the work that’s done is hard to beat. I think places like Dark Harbor and Scary Farm have more charm, but that doesn’t detract from what HHN accomplished this year or in previous years. The maze design is top-notch, to be expected from a studio of this caliber, and I see now that some of my initial biases about the “robotic” maze scares aren’t necessarily applicable in all cases - for what they do I think the scare actors are giving it their all and delivering within their parameters. I just hope no one has to be Dr. Loomis again.
With that said, happy Fall to all. I’ve got a full season of tricks and treats ahead, and more reports on the horizon. Until the next one, I’ll see you in the fog.