Get an Early Look at the Creepy and Freaky “Terrifier” and “Fallout” Houses Coming to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood

At Universal Studios Hollywood today, Laughing Place took part in an advance behind the scenes tour of two of this year’s Halloween Horror Nights houses, both based on very popular franchises: Terrifier and Fallout. Creative Director John Murdy guided us through each house, previewing the scares to come…

We began with Terrifier, based upon the slasher movie sensation that amazingly grew from the microbudgeted, barely theatrically released original in 2018 to last year’s third installment, which brought in $90 million worldwide on a $2 million budget. The HHN team decided to use the setting for Terrifier 2’s conclusion – an old, run down amusement park attraction actually called The Terrifier – as their primary setting, since it was such a natural fit for HHN. The entrance to The Terrifier seen in Terrifier 2 was a miniature, and Murdy noted that it was very fun to get to show the HHN version to Terrifier writer-director Damien Leone and producer Phil Falcone. Said Murdy, “This is the first time that it's been built life size. Damien and Phil were out here like a week ago, and they were just tripping out. They were just like, ‘Oh my god, can we have it!?’"

Terrifier’s now-iconic villain, Art the Clown, will not just be a scareactor in the Terrifier house, he will also be roaming about through Halloween Horror Nights, with Murdy noting these performers got special training to really bring the character to life. That will also include in the exterior queue for the Terrifier house, with Murdy describing a radio report that will play. “Somebody has spotted a tall, thin man in a black and white clown costume, carrying a black plastic bag. And as the reporter is saying that, you're going to see Art materialize where the devil’s head (on the house facade) is and then he's going to open the gate and he's going to come out and he's going to start messing with you. We’ve put all of these performers through our own version of mime school, basically, but there's one Art dedicated just to the facade. There's a gate so that he can interact with the people entering the house. But he can also go out into the queue line."

Murdy added they felt it was important to have Art be so prevalent because, “He’s the new face of horror. I think he is the equivalent of what Freddy, Jason, Leatherface, and Michael Myers were back in the 70s and 80s. And I think that's what's so special about Terrifier, is that it's really been a long time since there's been an iconic horror movie slasher that horror fans have embraced, and Art is certainly that."

If you’ve seen the Terrifier movies, you know they are about as extreme as you can get when it comes to onscreen gore and depicting outrageously gross moments. And Murdy promised (or cautioned, depending on your POV) that will all be part of the house too, including “The most iconic, infamous kill from the first Terrifier movie, which is the hacksaw kill." I’ll skip describing exactly what occurs in this scene – if you know, you know – but Murdy knew people would immediately wonder just how much they would be willing to include from the films, recalling “When we announced this to our fans, they were like ‘Oh, you're not really gonna do the…’ ‘Yeah, we are!’" He added, “That's Terrifier. That's the whole point. Like, if you're going to do Terrifier, you got to do Terrifier." And the prop we saw of the victim in this scene and the blood and gore already present certainly proved they were very much going there. In fact, even unfinished, the entire house was already filled with outrageously vivid moments we’ll mostly bypass in these photos for those who might need a bit more prep before they’re ready to go full Terrifier. 

Halloween Horror Nights has done blood spray effects, using water, plenty of times in the past, but Terrifier is bringing it to the next level, with Murdy explaining “In the first scene, [you’re] showered in blood. Second scene, showered in blood. This theme is going to repeat as we go along!" At HHN Orlando, you can choose a wet or dry path for their version of the Terrifier house, but in Hollywood, there’s only one path, so as you see all of the horrible things Art is doing to people, get ready to be splashed…

As evidenced by the hacksaw kill, while the framework for the house is the second movie, the Terrifier house pulls from all three films released so far in different ways, including a conclusion using Art’s Santa Claus outfit from the Christmas-set third movie and the mayhem he causes at a mall. The house will even get a bit meta, with a sequence where you’re being ushered to a fake backstage area of The Terrifier attraction, as one of those cloaked employees who make sure you don’t go the wrong way in an HHN house turns out to actually be Art. Then, in the faux backstage area, you’ll see another Art performer, who’s taken off his mask but is otherwise still in his costume.

As Murdy explained, “I told our casting people, ‘Make this the worst casting decision you've ever made. Just make it way too short and make his physical build totally different from Art.’ And he's sitting there and he's just scrolling on his phone, listening to his music, but behind him is the real Art. But this dude just thinks it’s his fellow cast member trying to mess with him. So as you come in, he's going to be lip syncing to a track, and he's going to be like, ‘Dude, how many times have to tell you, don't try to scare me when I'm on my break!’ And then he notices there's all these people walking backstage, and he's like, ‘Hey, you guys aren’t supposed to be here…’ But before he can say anything else, Art slashes his throat… and you get showered in blood!’"

From the messiness of Art, we went to the cleanliness of Vault 33… Well, the former cleanliness that is, since Halloween Horror Nights still has to live up to its reputation as it adapts Prime Video’s Fallout, based on the beloved video game franchise. Murdy said Fallout being part of HHN represented the evolution of the event and the wish to give their guests very different experiences as they go to each house. As he explained, “Back in the day, when I was first starting out with this in 2006, it was like ‘[Let’s do] Freddy, Jason, Leatherface!’ Our vision of Horror Nights was really specific. It was like slashers, and that was it. But horror as a genre continues to evolve, as it has always done since the silent movie era, and particularly today." So while Terrifier stills supplies the slasher movie component, the genre mashup of Fallout can offer something else altogether.

With a show as expansive as Fallout,  Murdy noted, “It was almost overwhelming, because there were just so many places and so much opportunity and so many things you could do." To keep things focused, Murdy said they decided to mainly focus on the journey of the main character Lucy in the series, with a couple of diversions to moments she wasn’t present for. The Lucy focus thus begins the house in Vault 33, where she lives, as one of those who’s been raised in underground vaults ever since a nuclear war occurred 200 years before. Said Murdy, “We're going to start with the wedding, the arranged wedding that goes horribly wrong when the raiders break in. We're going to follow in her footsteps as she leaves the Vault and goes out into the wasteland. We're going to meet the same person she met, The Ghoul, and then we're going to focus on the Super Duper Mart as kind of our finale."

Unlike Terrifier, none of the various dead body props had been placed inside Fallout yet during our tour, but Murdy explained for the opening scene, “There's a bunch of dead Vaulters scattered all over the ground. Over the door will be ‘Just Married’ decorations for Lucy's apartment, and she comes out. She's already been stabbed by Monty. She's in that wedding dress… Monty comes out from the opposite door, and the guests are trapped in between the two of them, as if they're trying to get at each other. That’s the first sign you get, besides all the dead bodies, that something has gone wrong in this idyllic vault."

You will then walk through to Vault 32, and Murdy said that meant “We had to build a vault door. That is a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of CNC cutting. I think it's something like 20 something layers of it." Murdy said that hard work was worth it though to make the impressive-looking door, because “This is a super iconic element in the world of Fallout. So you wanted to have a moment where you got to see a big, giant open vault door."

Murdy then brought us into the next setpiece, as Lucy leaves the vaults for the outside world of the post-apocalyptic wasteland. Murdy told us this visual was being accomplished “With a huge Cyclorama; big, huge, dimensional set pieces; a printed floor graphic; and then the final layer is actual sand and dirt, and that gets piled up in the corners." On top of that will be “All of the bodies that have been completely obliterated by the nuclear bombs. As you're coming in here, you're hearing Geiger counter clicks to tell you it's highly radioactive, but you're also hearing weird sounds coming from the window. It's a ghoul that is in the process of going feral, trying desperately to hang on to his humanity. In that [other] window, you see radroaches. Everything, all the animals and insects, have also been altered by radiation."

After that are portions that cover the non-Lucy parts of the storyline, including The Ghoul’s grave being dug up, and the scene where Maximus and the heavily armored Knight he squires for, Titus, are confronted by a mutated Yao guai bear inside a cave. This was the one room we couldn’t take photos in yet, but Murdy told us, of the bear, “This thing is massive. When we were sculpting it, just the clay alone weighed 500 pounds. It's one of the biggest creatures we've ever built for Horror Nights." In addition, “Titus is an animatronic. That's what they're building right now. And he says, ‘Go inside that cave and see if the target’s in there…’  And then all of the sudden, the bear attacks, which is a big, huge puppet in effect. And then Maximus tries to shoot it and we're kind of in the middle of all of that action."

Finally, the house will conclude in the Super Duper Mart, which includes a scare where, “Lucy comes out of a door with a pair of defibrillator paddles and tries to shock you with them, and then realizes that you're not the threat and feels bad about it, because Lucy's like the nicest person." After that, Murdy said the finale was “All about the ghouls. There are ghouls inside the refrigerators that are coming out for you. But Martha is that kind of sad, pathetic character in this scene in the series, where she hasn't turned yet, and she's really trying to hang on to her humanity. So she's just standing here going, ‘My name is Martha. My name is Martha…’ But then she turns and attacks you as well. So it's just a gauntlet of ghouls all the way through this section."

And last but not least will be a small taste of the upcoming Season 2 of Fallout, with Murdy saying you’ll see “a big billboard for Las Vegas."

The Horror Nights crew tries to involve the creators behind what they’re adapting when schedules permit to do so, and Murdy revealed that for Fallout, “I had [executive producer] Jonathan Nolan down here last week and the production designer, and a whole bunch of people from the series and people from Bethesda. It was probably like 15 people. But it was fun to walk Jonathan through, because he was just like, ‘I feel like I'm back on set!’ And that's a really common thing we hear from filmmakers when they enter our haunted houses for the first time. It mentally sends them back to being on set. But he was surprised. He was like, ‘Oh, wow, you guys went there!’ And we're like, ‘Yeah, we have to… It's Fallout!’"

Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood begins September 4th, 2025.

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