Halloween Horror Nights is the premiere Halloween event out here in Southern California and in Orlando, Florida. Throughout the years, they’ve had plenty of houses that are terrifying, fun, spooky, back to scary, and always entertaining. The power of the event is that each house isn’t always for everyone, but there’ll always be something to do. This year, we had houses from Halloween, The Weeknd, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Blumhouse, and plenty of other franchises. Judging by how John Murdy (a great Twitter follow, by the way) and his team do the event every year, they usually include some sort of musical act, a classic Universal Monsters house, one from an 80’s franchise, and one from a new movie or recent movie series.

You can read our full review of Halloween Horror Nights 2022 right here!

So, for this exercise, we’ll be following some “rules”. As much as I’d love to include houses just from the classic 80’s franchises, that would be a boring exercise. Also, we’re going to try to keep it to Universal movies or franchises that they could easily get. That means, no, no Star Wars: Red Harvest house, or anything like that. Let’s jump into the Dream Halloween Horror Nights Lineup!

The Houses

  • Iron Maiden: Fear of the Dark
  • Army Of Darkness
  • New Halloween Trilogy (Halloween, Halloween Kills, Halloween Ends)
  • Stranger Things 4/5
  • Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Psycho and The Birds
  • A Nightmare On Elm Street: Freddy’s Back
  • Chucky
  • Bride Of Frankenstein Vs. Dracula (Original Story)
  • The Invisible Man
  • Terror Tram: Horror Motel and Trick r’ Treat

As you can see, we’ve got a pretty good mix of old and new with the houses here. We’ve had houses based on the music of The Weeknd, Black Sabbath, and Alice Cooper, who’s next? Well, Iron Maiden has some pretty nice imagery from their most famous album covers to fill out a Halloween Horror Nights house. Take each room and build it out with Iron Maiden blasting throughout as you go through their career. Start with Iron Maiden, go to Killers, Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind, Powerslave, Somewhere In Time, and then finish up with Fear of the Dark. It’s a match made in heaven (or hell).

While Universal doesn’t own the rights to the first two Evil Dead films, they’ve done houses based on the movies and TV show before, although we haven’t gotten one solely based on Army of Darkness. It’s got plenty of laughs, but the movie also has some nice setpieces and scares to go through. I can’t imagine walking through an area based on the pit section at the beginning of the film. It would be the right balance of terrifying and fun.

We’ve had houses based on Halloween and Halloween 4, but nothing based on the Blumhouse trilogy of films. They’re easily the scariest in the entire franchise, and especially the Halloween (2018) film, it would make for a great house. Also to celebrate the end of Halloween (for now), give it a supersized house with three movies worth of content. We got two movies with The Horrors of Blumhouse: Freaky and The Black Phone.

More Info On The Houses

We’ve had two years’ worth of advertising about Chucky at Horror Nights, but no actual Chucky houses or any sort of scare zone. That’s a shame because there are some great moments throughout the first season and with the second season coming out later this year, it would be a perfect way to draw more people to a prospective third season. Also, we’ve had some houses based on Chucky, but nothing recently. For a horror icon like Chucky, he hasn’t had a lot of Horror Nights love lately.

Universal has the rights to Alfred Hitchcock‘s scariest films Psycho and The Birds. With The Birds, there are plenty of avenues for some good scares. Psycho makes a house by itself with all the good scares throughout that film. Norman Bates is already a part of the Terror Tram, so it’s natural to give one of the most influential horror directors of all time his own house.

Stranger Things was easily the most popular from the 2019 edition of Halloween Horror Nights and with the popularity of the show exploding after Season Four, it’s an easy choice. Vecna and the fourth season of the show gave us the most frightening version of the show, so they could give us a recap of season four with plenty of terrifying looks at Vecna and the themes throughout the show.

The Final Few Houses Explained

The last couple of houses come from a place of personal love for the franchises. A Nightmare on Elm Street hasn’t had a lot of love lately. The franchise hasn’t had a movie since the remake, we haven’t had a new Blu-ray release for the franchise, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of movement from New Line Cinema on the series. What better way to jumpstart some excitement than doing a franchise-expansive haunted house from Freddy?

For our last two, because I have no idea what original idea houses John Murdy and crew could think of, I’d go with two based on the classic Universal Monsters. The Bride of Frankenstein Lives! is one of the best houses that they’ve ever done at the event, and I’d do a sequel to that featuring the other most famous Universal Monster, Dracula. The Invisible Man has some potential as a house with people in morph suits jumping out at you or other ways, this seems like a great way to scare the hell out of people.

The Terror Tram is also usually based on a brand-new movie or recent movie, so I’d go with the Horror Motel to get the Bates Motel set going and hopefully we get a Trick ‘r Treat sequel out of it.

So, what do you think of the Dream Halloween Horror Nights lineup? Would you want to go to this event? Let me know in the comments!

For more on horror, make sure to check out Fright-A-Thon, the 61-day Halloween Content Marathon!

Keep Reading:

The Ultimate Guide To Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood 2022 [Fright-A-Thon]