HHNU has now seen 6 out of the total nine houses. Check out what we thought of the three we saw last night, and come check us out again tomorrow for the final three remaining mazes; Texas Chainsaw, Halloween 2, and The Exorcist…
Krampus ★★★☆☆
With great use of holiday smells, sights, and sounds, Krampus is the holiday juxtapose most guests are looking for. It is based on the horror comedy film released last year of the same name.
The hype surrounding this house had many HHN fans looking forward to it as being this year’s comedic horror house, with some sense of humor sprinkled into the frights. Unfortunately, we did not find that this was the case.
Nay, not only were there no parts of the house that we found to be funny, but the diversity of characters was also lacking. All we saw were these short, evil elf characters throughout the house. They have very large, almost bobble-head like craniums with symbols on their foreheads. Apparently they appear in the movie a few times, but not enough for me to remember too well, and definitely not as many times as they did in this haunted house.
The house didn’t exactly follow the plot of the film, but rather had us walking through about 3 or 4 houses within the neighborhood that the movie takes place, observing the destruction and killings that happened within them. One scene, with the smell of gingerbread pumped into it, was inside someone’s kitchen with static evil gingerbread men spread troughout the scene. We got excited at this moment because we thought we would see some cool effect with gingerbread men puppets being hurled at our faces, but no. It was just another short evil elf. Disappointing.
We did not see the evil teddy bear either (even though we have heard that he was in there, perhaps that scene didn’t activate as we walked through), and there was only ONE snowman throughout the entire house. What we did see was the evil Jack in the box monster clown…….thing. He was in the attic scene across from a woman being hung by a noose.
The Krampus characters themselves are actually large, hollow, immobile constructs of his body, which a scareactor crawls into the back of and sticks their face into the hole where Krampus’s face would be. We thought maybe they would be large puppets or actors in costumes, but nope.
A noteworthy scene is near the end when you end up in Krampus’s lair, where it smells like dirt and there are snowglobes all over the walls. A keen observer would notice a lot of iconic horror houses inside of these snowglobes (The Myers’s house, Shadybrook Asylum, the house in Insidious, AHS Murder House, and even the caretaker’s ScreamHouse)
I give this house 3 stars because it’s lack of characters, no comedic elements, and overall lack of connection to the movie it’s representing. I can see why they made the decisions they made when designing this house, but I really feel like they could have done a lot more to really give the guest a feeling like they were walking through the movie, not walking through a mediocre haunted house loosely based off the movie.
American Horror Story ★★★★☆
This year’s “uber house” (longest house of the year/in HHN history) as we have mentioned before, covers three seasons of the ever popular “American Horror Story” TV series.
Murder House seemed rather glossed over, with about three or four scenes from the season, mostly focusing on the basement. We saw Tate once, as well as Doctor Montgomery, and Moira O’Hara (both young with both eyes in tact and old with her ghost eye) We apparently missed the scene with the burnt man, Larry Harvey. Guess the scareactor just kept hiding as we passed. We also walked into the bathroom scene where a man said “Here piggy, pig, pig” into his mirror and a pig man in overalls appeared in his shower tub. There was also a scene with a bunch of rubber men, some being actors and standing still and some mannequins, there were even some floating above us and some climbing out of the walls. One of those “I’m not sure which one is real!” type scares we have seen many times in the past.
Freak Show seemed to be the main event in this house, with a large bulk of the middle section of the house dedicated to it. We saw plenty of characters from the season, including Pepper, The Tall Woman, Twisty the Clown (he pops up the most of all the characters), The Bearded Lady, The Two Headed Lady, Meep, and Dandy, as well as his mother. We did not see The Tattooed Seal Man, Mon Petit, magician Chester Creb, or Lobster Boy.
A noteworthy scene during the Freak Show segment, which I was really hoping to see, was the scene where Elsa Mars loses her legs to a chainsaw when she was unwillingly casted in a snuff film.
After Freak Show of course was Hotel, which essentially showed us some highlight scenes throughout the season until about the 6th episode. Scenes like James Patrick March stabbing someone on a bed, and the maid popping out to freshen the linens. As well as the countess in multiple scenes, including one with her baby in it’s crib. There was a demon guy squeezing out of a mattress as well.
We also saw the sarcophagi that the children of the hotel slept in, as well as the cages with neon lights on them that they kept the captives in to feed the children with.
You see Twisty the clown one last time in a room full of crazy strobe lights before exiting the house. One last detail we would like to point out is that Orlando did way better than Hollywood did when it comes to the Twisty characters make up job. As we have mentioned before, the Hollywood AHS house has Twisty characters wearing full face masks including the hair, eyes, and nose. But in Orlando, they made them look much better with make up on their face and the bottom jaw piece covering the bottom half of their face. It looks much, much better than the Twisty characters in Hollywood. Thanks for that, Orlando team.
I give this house 4 stars for its length, attention to detail, amount of actors, faithfulness to its original source, and some good scares.
The Walking Dead ★★★☆☆
Finally, the last time I’m walking through one of these monotonous placeholders. There’s not much to say about this house other than it’s honestly just a highlights house that accumulates all of the best scenes from the Walking Dead houses over the last 5 years. It’s a whole bunch of stuff we have already seen, presented as a compilation of sorts to service the die hard fans of the series one last time.
I give this house 3 stars mainly because it’s a whole bunch of decent scenes strung into one zombie collage, so to speak. It was one of the better walking dead houses over the years, but I’m still glad this IP will finally be laid to rest after this year. It’s gotten very old and sour over the past few years. This dead horse is finally getting it’s last beating.
Three Houses Remain
We have saved what we think will be the best houses of the year for last; The Exorcist, Halloween: Hell Comes to Haddonfield, and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Check out the site tomorrow for reviews of these houses and an overall best and worst piece to give you guys an overall idea of what’s great and what is totally skippable if you’re pressed for time.
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