Misc
Everything You Need to Know About Halloween Horror Nights 2022 at Universal’s Orlando Resort
If there’s one thing the East Coast knows, its haunts.
From upstate New York to down South Carolina shores, some of America’s best haunted houses are here. And nowhere is that more obvious than with Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Orlando in Florida. Halloween Horror Nights is truly back in full swing, starting September 2nd through to October 31st open rain or shine. This year there are 15 attractions: 10 haunted houses and 5 full scare zones.
We at Horror Press, purveyors of all things terror, know you might need some help organizing all the delightfully frightful events. So let this article be a comprehensive fiend folio to let you know everything Halloween Horror Nights and Universal Orlando has to offer.
THE HAUNTED HOUSES
Save Your Tears for The Weeknd: After Hours Nightmares
The Weeknd’s 2020 album After Hours has some of the most horrifying music videos we’ve seen. And now, fans of the musical sensation can get a chance to immerse themselves with the sensual, nightmarish body horror visuals seen in the videos, with bandaged faces and blood-splattered maniacs abound.
A Deadly Double Feature in The Horrors of Blumhouse
Fans of both Freaky and recent smash hit The Black Phone will love that both these horror films share the stage at a doubled-up haunt. First, find yourself in the middle of the Blissfield Butcher’s rampage post body swap; then, escape The Grabber’s hellhole of a haunted basement—and survive the wicked murderer himself.
Finishing What Started with Halloween
How can Halloween end without an extreme haunt from the classic slasher himself? Going back to the franchise’s roots, this attraction sends you back to the fateful Halloween night in Haddonfield, Illinois, 1978, the night Michael Myers came home. Will you make it out like Laurie Strode, or perish as so many have before the embodiment of pure evil?
Experience A Legendary Clash as Universal Monsters: Legends Collide
They’ve been in the game longer than anyone, and the carnage starts piling up when they’re around. Dracula, Wolfman, and The Mummy burst onto the scene searching for a coveted mystical amulet, and you happen to be unlucky enough to be in their way. Let’s hope these O.G.s got slower cause you and your scream squad will need all the help you can get to outrun them.
Speak Easy, or Get Caught by The Spirits of the Coven
A group of 1920s “flapper witches” (sold, I already love this aesthetic so much!) drop all their glamour and make it plain that the only brew on the menu of their speakeasy will be made from the blood of its visitors.
Entomophobes, Beware of Bugs: Eaten Alive!
This haunt promises a lot of bugs and slime everywhere, as you explore a “home of the future”; will you survive this smart house’s transformation into a house of the damned when there’s a wall-to-wall infestation of mutated insects?
Make A Ghoulish Prisonbreak with Hellblock Horror
What’s more horrifying than the carceral system? How about being locked up with monsters and the undead hounding you from between the bars? That is, assuming the jail cells can hold them in much longer.
Avoid Going Under at Dead Man’s Pier: Winter’s Wake
The sea hasn’t been kind to the fishermen of this New England Coastal town, and their return from underneath the high tide promises to be just as cold, threatening to take you under the icy, midwinter waves.
Will You Be the GOAT or the Goat at La Fiesta de Chupacabras?
The legendary cryptid of Puerto Rican & Latin American folklore stalks a bright festival full of tourists and threatens to make blood bags out of you and the other attendees…and it may not be alone; when the body count starts rising, you know it’s time to leave the party.
Don’t Get Captured by the Descendants of Destruction
When cannibal mutants have plundered the post-apocalypse and picked it clean of flesh and bone, you and your scream squad must navigate a completely gutted New York City, traverse through the subways, and avoid becoming the next bite to eat.
THE SCARE ZONES
The frights go beyond the houses, though. To get around, you’ll need to travel through Scare Zones, stomping grounds populated with the monstrosities that rule them. This year’s Scare Zones include:
- Horrors of Halloween, where The Pumpkin Lord’s verdantly violent plant monsters roam free to terrorize resort goers
- Scarecrow: Cursed Soil, where haunted harvest guardians seek vengeance on the living
- Sweet Revenge, where good children have gone bad on a murderous sugar rush (courtesy of Major Sweets’ Candy Company!)
- The stormy Graveyard: Deadly Unrest, where returned souls seek out anybody in the land of the living
- And Conjure the Dark, where otherworldly entities summoned by a shadowy sorceress are out for your blood!
ALRIGHT, I NEED TO GO. HOW DO I BOOK IT?
Simple: the dark magics of the internet, courtesy of the warlocks at universalorlando.com! Tickets are on sale now, with prices start at $73.99+ per person, and Express Passes at $119.00+ that let you skip the regular lines. Single night tickets and multi night passes can be found here!
HAPPY HAUNTING, HORROR PRESS FANS! HOPE TO SEE YOU AT HALLOWEEN HORROR NIGHTS ORLANDO!
Misc
Our Halloween Giveaway Is Here!
Enter Our Halloween Giveaway!
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What You’ll Win
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) Limited Edition 4K UHD from Arrow Video
- 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
- Original DTS-HD MA 7.1 and 5.1 surround audio and lossless stereo audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Brand new audio commentary with Dread Central co-founder Steve “Uncle Creepy” Barton and co-host of The Spooky Picture Show podcast Chris MacGibbon
- Archival audio commentary with director Marcus Nispel, producer Michael Bay, executive producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form and New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye
- Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, director of photography Daniel Pearl, production designer Greg Blair, art director Scott Gallager, sound supervisor Trevor Jolly and composer Steve Jablonsky
- Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, Michael Bay, writer Scott Kosar, Brad Fuller, Andrew Form and actors Jessica Biel, Erica Leerhsen, Eric Balfour Jonathan Tucker, Mike Vogel and Andrew Bryniarski
- Reimagining a Classic, a brand new interview with director Marcus Nispel
- Shadows of Yesteryear, a brand new interview with cinematographer Daniel Pearl
- The Lost Leatherface, a brand new interview with actor Brett Wagner
- Masks and Massacres, a brand new interview with makeup effects artist Scott Stoddard
- Chainsaw Symphony, a brand new interview with composer Steve Jablonsky
- Chainsaw Redux: Making A Massacre, a making-of documentary
- Ed Gein: The Ghoul of Plainfield, an in-depth look at the infamous killer who inspired the character of Leatherface
- Severed Parts, a look at the cutting room floor and some of the scenes excised from the final edit
- Deleted scenes including an alternate opening and ending
- Screen tests for Jessica Biel, Eric Balfour and Erica Leerhsen
- Behind-the-scenes featurette
- Cast and crew interviews
- Theatrical trailers and TV spots
- Concept art galleries
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
- Double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
- Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Gingold
Misc
NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights: A Sneak Peek at ‘The Lost Boys’ Musical, ‘Resident Evil: Requiem,’ and More!
As soon as New York Comic Con announced that its 2025 theme would be “haunted,” I started lacing up my comfy shoes and making a beeline for the Javitz Center! Horror has always been represented at the con, but it felt fitting that it should play a central role in this year’s event at a time when the genre seems more popular than ever.
From beloved family-friendly properties like The Nightmare Before Christmas to pants-dampening titles like the upcoming Resident Evil: Requiem, horror appeared in countless shapes and forms. Here are all the best and scariest insights I gleaned from the show floor, panel rooms, and pop-ups of New York Comic Con 2025!
Our NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights
Resident Evil: Requiem Is Going to Test Your Bladder Strength
Full disclaimer: I’m not a gamer. I’m honestly pretty bad at games, which made my Resident Evil: Requiem play session all the more frightening because I was convinced that everyone around me would realize I’m a fraud. But with easy-to-grasp controls, even for a newb like me, the latest installment in the iconic horror franchise quickly sucked me in and left me on edge for entirely different reasons.
During my 30-minute session, I was introduced to FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft, Requiem’s central character. She swims to consciousness to find herself strapped upside down on a gurney with a needle in her arm, siphoning her blood. After Grace managed to free herself, the controls were handed over to me to explore the creepy facility through Grace’s eyes, looking for a fuse. Some spaces were bathed in red light; others were lit only by flickering bulbs that left me white-knuckling the controller, waiting for something to emerge from the shadows and swallow me whole, not helped by Grace’s anxious, stuttering breathing in my ear.
I took a moment to appreciate how detailed video games have become since my childhood experiences playing Evil Dead: Hail to the King on the original PlayStation (seriously, you can see the dust drifting in beams of light now?!), only for the sound of movement somewhere in the facility to yank me back to the present. I renewed my frantic search for the fuse, only to run blindly into a pitch-black room and encounter something enormous that dragged me into the darkness. Sorry, Grace!
You can find out what happens next when Resident Evil: Requiem releases for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 on February 27, 2026.
Megan Fox Is Among the New Cast Members in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2—And Blumhouse Hasn’t Given Up on Its Other m3gan Yet
Blumhouse made several announcements at their NYCC panel, most notably that Megan Fox (Jennifer’s Body) is voicing Toy Chica in director Emma Tammi’s highly anticipated sequel Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, coming to theaters on December 5. Other new additions to the cast include YouTuber Matthew Patrick, aka MatPat, who cameoed in the first movie and will voice Toy Bonnie, and Kellen Goff, who has voiced multiple characters in the game series and will now lend his pipes to Toy Freddy.
I’m interested in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, not least because my best friend is terrified of the franchise and makes a wildly entertaining moviegoing companion—but I’m more interested in the future of another Blumhouse franchise, M3GAN. After the sequel underperformed, likely due in part to its hard genre pivot away from horror and into action territory, the future of the killer doll is uncertain. But in a special industry presentation on “The Business of Fear,” Jason Blum revealed that “we’re all working to keep M3GAN alive,” adding that Blumhouse is exploring other potential mediums before trying to resurrect her on film.
Does that mean a M3GAN video game might come our way in the future, or perhaps a TV series? I don’t know, but I have a feeling this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the silicone diva.

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.
The Lost Boys: A New Musical Will Feature Flying Stunts and a Live Vampire Band
My queer heart is a sucker for musical adaptations of horror films I love, so you can be certain that I’ll be heading down to the Santa Carla Boulevard—aka Broadway’s Palace Theater—for The Lost Boys: A New Musical, which begins previews on March 27, 2026. At their NYCC panel, producer Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring franchise), director Michael Arden (Maybe Happy Ending), and cast members LJ Benet, Ali Louis Bourzgui, and Maria Wirries revealed why they feel Joel Schumacher’s 1987 classic translates so well to the stage, and what audiences can look forward to.
“There’s something that I see with both horror movies, musicals, and superhero movies—there’s an element of melodrama that’s really rewarding,” says Wilson, who began his career in musical theater and worked with Schumacher on the director’s 2004 film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. “Some people view it as camp, but there’s a reality of it being heightened that felt like this story cemented itself so much to being a musical.”
“They’re a biker gang, after all, and there’s a level of theatricality to that in and of itself,” says Arden. “Our biker gang also happens to play instruments.”
That’s right: the vampires will be playing instruments live on stage, which made casting twice as hard. Ali Louis Bourzgui, who plays David, the character portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland in the film, reveals that he plays guitar. And that wasn’t the only unusual request in the casting call: auditions included a flying test. (Presumably wires were involved, unless Arden has found himself a real cabal of vampires in his cast.)
Other highlights that fans can look forward to include killer music from one of Arden’s favorite bands, The Rescues. You can listen to the song “Have to Have You” right now, featuring instrumentals from Slash. The director also teases that many fan-favorite moments from the film will feature in some way in the musical, including the bridge scene and, yes, even the sexy saxophone guy.
Greg Nicotero’s Guts & Glory Marks a New Challenge for a Legend of the Business
If you like looking at gnarly practical effects in horror movies, chances are you’re familiar with Greg Nicotero’s work, whether you realize it or not. The legendary SFX artist has worked on everything from George Romero’s Day of the Dead and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II to Kill Bill and, more recently, The Walking Dead. The impressive extent of his resume was made clear at the panel “Shudder is Here to Scare the S*** Out of You,” in which almost any film mentioned by the other panelists was met by a small smile and a humble murmur of “worked on that” into the mic, often followed by a wild anecdote. Nicotero seems like the most interesting man in the world to grab a drink with, and his new horror competition show for Shudder—Guts & Glory—will let us see more of the man behind the makeup brush.
“Guts & Glory is one of the most fun times I’ve had on a show,” Nicotero says, teasing that the series is “part Sam Raimi, part Halloween Horror Nights, and part Survivor.”
In the six-episode first season, contestants are dropped into an Alabama swamp, where there’s an urban legend about an evil spirit. “One of the contestants gets possessed by the evil spirit, people start dying off, but in the meantime, they’re still competing and there’s a prize,” Nicotero explains.
Guts & Glory is effects-heavy, which was challenging to do in an unscripted series relying on real people’s real-time reactions. “You do a movie, you can cut and try it again,” Nicotero explains. “[This] was completely out of my wheelhouse and out of my comfort zone, but I’m really, really proud of it.”
Nicotero’s Creepshow was one of the first original shows to debut on Shudder, so he’s truly part of the DNA of the horror streamer, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. Guts & Glory premieres on October 14 as part of Shudder’s Season of Screams programming.
Horror Short The Littles Deserves the Big-Screen Feature Treatment
Some short films are perfectly suited to their bite-sized format, while others contain the seeds of something much bigger. At the New York Premiere of The Littles, a new short written and directed by American Horror Story producer Andrew Duplessie, I could immediately see the potential for the feature film that Duplessie hopes to make.
Equal parts charming and unsettling, The Littles stars M3GAN’s Violet McGraw as a little girl with a loose floorboard in her bedroom. One night, a scuffling sound and a crack of light between the boards lead the little girl to discover that her family isn’t alone in the house…
Duplessie says The Littles was inspired by his own experiences growing up in a creaky old house with a no-doubt overactive imagination. The short features creepy-cute stop-motion animation from Anthony Scott (The Nightmare Before Christmas), puppets by Katy Strutz (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio), and some truly adorable miniature sets by Aiden Creates, all blended perfectly with the live-action scenes. Check it out if it’s playing at a festival near you, and watch this space for a (fingers-crossed) future feature!

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.
Disney Publishing’s New The Nightmare Before Christmas Tie-in Novel Welcomes Younger Fans into the Scary Fun
NYCC’s horror happenings weren’t all geared toward an adult audience. Disney Publishing took over Daily Provisions Manhattan West for a pop-up experience inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas, featuring themed food and drinks like a delectable Pumpkin Potion coffee that I could honestly drink all season long.
At a media and creator event in the space, I took a look at the newly released Hour of the Pumpkin Queen from New York Times best-selling author Megan Shepherd, who also wrote the official novelization of The Nightmare Before Christmas for the film’s 30th anniversary in 2023. In this new tie-in novel, Sally and her rag doll apprentice, Luna, embark on a time-bending adventure to save Jack Skellington and Halloween Town after falling through a mysterious portal.
I was gifted a copy of the book by Disney, but all opinions are my own here. I’m looking forward to giving it a read during the inevitable Halloween hangover that takes place in November, before likely passing it on to my young nieces when they’re old enough. It’s a full novel, not a picture book, so definitely geared more toward a YA audience, but between the beautiful artwork on the cover and the seasonal theme, it might just be the perfect gift for the budding horror lover in your life.
That’s a wrap on New York Comic Con 2025! Be sure to bookmark Horror Press if you haven’t already so you never miss our coverage of conventions, festivals, and more.





