Universal recently announced that Sinners will be part of this year’s Halloween Horror Nights event. Sinners is one of the best movies in recent memory, an original horror film that not only proved popular with audiences but was also widely hailed as a significant piece of filmmaking. A film rich in visual style and packed with memorable imagery. Landing that license is a major get for Universal, and the idea of a maze inspired by the film at Halloween Horror Nights should be exciting.
So, why am I worried the theme park experience may not live up to the potential inherent in the film?
As a longtime fan of Halloween Horror Nights, how did I get here? Since returning after the 2020 theme park shutdowns, Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood has increasingly felt stale. Overly reliant on rigid formulas and recognizable intellectual property rather than creative innovation. What makes the recent state of Horror Nights even more frustrating is that we’re having this conversation on the heels of Universal’s second season of Fan Fest Nights. Fan Fest is another after-hours offering from Universal, but one that feels vibrant and exciting, standing in stark contrast to the growing sameness of Horror Nights.
Last year’s Fan Fest was a solid first attempt at a new event concept: ambitious and interesting, but a little rough around the edges. This year’s version felt much more confident and polished. Fewer experiences resembled Comic-Con activations, instead making clever use of the park’s existing infrastructure. There were more performers, more interactive elements, and crucially, experiences that actually felt distinct from one another. Every Fan Fest offering felt intuitively connected, both to the physical space it occupied and to the core appeal of the fictional worlds it represented.
On some level, the disparity between Fan Fest Nights and Halloween Horror Nights makes sense. Fan Fest Nights is still a new offering, and Universal is clearly pulling out all the stops to build positive word-of-mouth and convince guests that this event is worth their time and money. By contrast, Horror Nights is an institution, one that is already enormously successful. There’s less pressure to innovate and more pressure to stick with what already works. “If it ain’t broke,” and all that. But resistance to change also risks leaving you outpaced by the competition and, in this case, by your own newer offerings.
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David Daut 