Has Halloween Horror Nights been open at Universal Studios Hollywood for a month? Yes. Is it already October? Yes. Is it too late for the Wolfman to offer you some advice on how to make the most of your visit? Yes! Wait – I mean no.

It’s been more than a decade since I attended Hollywood Horror Nights in Hollywood, so it was a thrill to get to return this year to check out what they had to offer. As any HHN aficionado knows, the exciting part about visiting both the Orlando and Hollywood locations is that, in addition to there being houses unique to each coast, even the overlapping properties offer new perspectives on iconic IP, each with its own pluses and minuses.

So whether you’re headed to HHN in Hollywood as we get closer to Halloween or you want to reflect on the time you had, keep reading to see how all eight houses stack up to one another.

8) Fallout

The Fallout games and TV show are set in an apocalyptic wasteland, and while that premise is understandably horrifying, the spirit of the games and Prime Video series leans more into the sci-fi and action elements of the concept. The ghouls and various other monsters are understandably terrifying, but with this house centered around the events of Season 1 of Fallout, there’s just not much material there to really scare you.

Even longtime fans of the series might not be entirely thrilled with this house, as there aren’t many surprises, but on the other hand, devout fans might appreciate getting to walk amongst iconic locales and rub shoulders with ghouls.

7) Poltergeist

Back in 2018, Halloween Horror Nights in Orlando had a Poltergeist house and it was one of my favorites of the event, so hopes were high to get to revisit this property.

The original Poltergeist is one of the best haunted house movies of all time, but that’s not just due to how terrifying it is; it’s the family dynamics and characters that make the movie so good. By leaning into the more frightening elements of the movie to startle you, this experience isn’t entirely satisfying. The researcher who rips his face off in the mirror is featured prominently, seemingly because he’s the most overtly creepy thing from the movie to look at. There are two or three very large, well-designed monsters in the house, but otherwise you just walk through the kids’ bedroom multiple times, weave through black corridors, and hear quotes from the movie played over the speakers. The ending, though, does feature a cool sequence with corpses and the dead bodies that were never moved, so at least it ends on a higher note than what precedes it.

6) Five Nights at Freddy’s

What I know about Five Nights at Freddy’s is that children are obsessed with it and it’s about haunted robots…or something. Much like in Orlando, much of this house features robots with a limited range of motion standing in one spot, with the scares coming from the timing of strobe lights illuminating them, accompanied by loud noises.

Even though the robots themselves didn’t totally work for me, as compared to the house in Orlando, it felt like Hollywood had many more human scareactors incorporated into the house to jump out at you. When you grow accustomed to just seeing robots, the inclusion of actual, human performers does work well to scare you.

5) Terrifier

The Terrifier movies don’t have a reputation for being “good,” so much as they have a reputation for being “sick” and “nasty.” The Terrifier house at Halloween Horror Nights in Hollywood embraces this approach to cinema by delivering something that is sick, and is also nasty.

As you go through the house, you’ll see Art the Clown carrying out horrifying murders and tortures, while various Arts also jump out at you. It comes as little surprise that such a gross house is also one of the most engrossing, as you walk through a room full of bleach barrels spraying “bleach” onto you, which you can also smell. You walk through a disgusting bathroom, and it smells like a disgusting bathroom.

While the Terrifier house in Orlando allows you to exit through a dry path or a wet path, the house in Hollywood instead ends with misty condensation, replicating the wintery vibes of Terrifier 3. You might not actually feel like you just walked through a snowstorm, but this finale does activate other senses to make for a more satisfying experience.

4) The Horrors of the Wyatt Sicks

Many people in the last six weeks have been asking me, “What the hell is the Wyatt Sicks?” and my response is typically, “They’re WWE characters who are basically like the bad guys from True Detective Season 1 – cultist weirdos who live in the Bayou.”

Halloween Horror Nights in Hollywood leans much more fully into the cult concept of the Wyatt Sicks than in Orlando, as you walk through swampy scenes and through cabins and see dead bodies and freaks in animal masks. The whole thing is also very stinky.

Unlike Orlando, Wyatt Sicks in Hollywood is almost complete devoid of direct connections to Bray Wyatt’s career in the WWE. For me, it means I could enjoy the freakier elements of the characters’ lore, though WWE fans will potentially be disappointed that those elements aren’t included. Since I’m ranking these houses, and not you, that means it gets a higher position than you WWE fanatics would give it.

3) Jason Universe

Jason Voorhees and Friday the 13th have never done much for me – I appreciate the franchise’s impact on the horror genre, but there are many other movies I’d rather watch. With Jason Universe not really impressing me in Orlando, my expectations were low, so I’m happy to see that this Jason Universe exceeded those expectations!

Jason Universe replicates a number of iconic kills, sequences, and iterations of Jason. Given the title of “Universe,” it really embraces that concept by celebrating all things Jason. Even though I don’t care much about most versions of him, I liked seeing so many versions of him get celebrated. The layout of this house and the environments you walk through – campsites, forests, cabins, and barns – were effectively claustrophobic, making for an experience that felt much more immersive than what’s being offered in Orlando. The ending of the house isn’t as overwhelming as Orlando, yet each tableau is consistently thrilling and immersive.

2) Scarecrow: Music by Slash

When a house is being promoted with the fact that Slash wrote music for it, I’m not entirely impressed, as the soundtrack of a haunted house isn’t what I’m paying the most attention to. While I didn’t come away from Scarecrow thinking the music was incredible, the house itself was a standout.

Given that the name is “Scarecrow,” you can likely imagine exactly what this house is; we walk through farmhouses, through fields, through barns, and everything is covered in weeds and cornstalks and burlap. Unlike other houses at Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights, nearly every inch of scenery is decorated. It likely helps that the theming of the house means you can just toss burlap on something and it looks decorated, but that also means your eyes start to glaze over when you see burlap, allowing scareactors in scarecrow-looking costumes to more genuinely startle you.

The general idea of “scary farm with corn and scarecrow monsters” is a time-honored tradition of Halloween haunts, and for good reason. This year’s Scarecrow house hits all the necessary beats you want from a farm-related house, while also building to a fulfilling creature reveal, and if Slash’s music is your thing, the consistent, distorted guitar playing during your journey will make the experience even more enjoyable.

1) Monstruos 3: The Ghosts of Latin America

The last Monstrous I got to enjoy was one of my favorites of the event, and this year’s Monstrous similarly takes a top spot.

Rather than there being one consistent concept serving as a narrative throughline in the house, guests experience three iconic monsters from Latin American lore: La Llorona, La Muelona, and La Siguanaba. This means that you almost get three mini houses with their own payoffs, with the house also offering a diverse selection of beasts. The house also briefly takes you back outside into the open air, blurring the line between reality and fiction, and it happens at a point that feels organic to the flow of the house.

Monstrous has some of the coolest, biggest, and weirdest creations at this year’s Halloween Horror Nights in Hollywood, and to top it off, you also exit directly into a Scare Zone, which makes it feel like the entire experience is prolonged. If there’s only one house you can make it to at Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood, make it Monstrous.

Honorable Mention: Terror Tram

I have a soft spot for the Terror Tram, as it is reminiscent of more backwoods haunted houses where you get to just wander around at your own pace. You get dropped off on a path, people with chainsaws pop out at you, and they also sneak up from behind.

This year’s Terror Tram honors 15 years of Blumhouse, with the experience including dancing M3GANs, monsters from Insidious, masked figures from The Purge, The Black Phone’s Grabber, and more various characters from their history. The path itself is segmented, as you pass from one specific zone to another, as opposed to all of Blumhouse’s greatest hits intermingling the whole time.

Even though I don’t care about the movies all that much, The Purge characters still remain some of the freakiest psychos to walk past. The movies themselves have allowed for killers to wear all sorts of intimidating disguises, virtually all of which are represented throughout the Terror Tram. If you’re like me, you’ll enjoy immersing yourself among these Purge psychos, but unless you have a major affinity for them or other Blumhouse characters, this year’s Terror Tram isn’t a must-see. Though there’s one part where the Grabber is supposed to be skating on ice and he’s clearly wearing Heelys and that just rocks.