- Nov 3, 2015
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Halloween Horror Nights 31 (UOR) - Speculation & Rumors
- Thread starter Brian G.
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I just wanna chime in that I don't think you're getting any answer from any of the hinters so we should probably reign in on just throwing whatever at the wall. Some of the IP spec has been.... a choice.
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Warning: Lots of hot takes ahead...
I should clarify that I'm not hoping this comes to the event, simply that I would give it a chance if it was announced, regardless of misgivings. Let's consider this for a second. Let's pretend you'd never seen Killer Klowns from Outer Space for a second and it's not a cultural touchstone for you and you went through the house at HHN. I took multiple people through the house who had not. What did those people think of that house? It's not scary and they have no connection to the property, so it hangs on the basic storytelling in the house. If you're a younger person, do you even enjoy it or understand it? My guess is no (and several of the people I took admired the theme but didn't get it). My point here is that Among Us is as weird a concept to us as Killer Klowns is to the younger crowd. As someone who doesn't love Killer Klowns, I actually feel that a sufficiently grimdark version of Among Us has the chance to be every bit as effective as Killer Klowns. I personally don't think you can strip an Among Us house of the cartoonish nature, but walking through scenes of amorphous blobs hacked to pieces and covered in blood under the right lighting with ominous music *could* be scary, and that's why I'm willing to reserve judgement. And we know perfectly well this would pack in the ticket sales to an otherwise completely untapped demographic (see further below).
I suppose I simply look at the amount of gatekeeping for HHN sometimes (Hello, Billie Eilish) and kind of shrug and at least try to keep an open mind. I feel that if we re-examine our kult klassic kinema (sorry) through a critical lens, we might realize that's it's all inherently silly. (That said, I don't want Squid Games there.)
I personally think Five Nights at Freddy's gets a bad rap. A lot of the fans are a bit older now, and in its purest form, it's about possessed animatronics hunting down a vulnerable human and that's scary. The Fright Done maze showed it can be done, and it had a decent aesthetic but not enough action. I don't think it would be nearly as young a demographic as Among Us. (Disclaimer: I like the property and I'm in my 30s.)
One final observation here. I would wager that 14 year old kids are probably the most likely to purchase a single day full price HHN ticket to come see their favorite IP once, while true horror fans like the people in this are likely to buy the much less profitable multi-night passes. Remember Stranger Things? That would definitely work again. Oh, sure, there's merch spend from older fans, but given Disney's ability to maximize profit and their focus on single day tickets, I'd actually expect merchandise of popular properties (like Among Us) to sell out handily. It's basically the Disney AP problem.
I should clarify that I'm not hoping this comes to the event, simply that I would give it a chance if it was announced, regardless of misgivings. Let's consider this for a second. Let's pretend you'd never seen Killer Klowns from Outer Space for a second and it's not a cultural touchstone for you and you went through the house at HHN. I took multiple people through the house who had not. What did those people think of that house? It's not scary and they have no connection to the property, so it hangs on the basic storytelling in the house. If you're a younger person, do you even enjoy it or understand it? My guess is no (and several of the people I took admired the theme but didn't get it). My point here is that Among Us is as weird a concept to us as Killer Klowns is to the younger crowd. As someone who doesn't love Killer Klowns, I actually feel that a sufficiently grimdark version of Among Us has the chance to be every bit as effective as Killer Klowns. I personally don't think you can strip an Among Us house of the cartoonish nature, but walking through scenes of amorphous blobs hacked to pieces and covered in blood under the right lighting with ominous music *could* be scary, and that's why I'm willing to reserve judgement. And we know perfectly well this would pack in the ticket sales to an otherwise completely untapped demographic (see further below).
I suppose I simply look at the amount of gatekeeping for HHN sometimes (Hello, Billie Eilish) and kind of shrug and at least try to keep an open mind. I feel that if we re-examine our kult klassic kinema (sorry) through a critical lens, we might realize that's it's all inherently silly. (That said, I don't want Squid Games there.)
I personally think Five Nights at Freddy's gets a bad rap. A lot of the fans are a bit older now, and in its purest form, it's about possessed animatronics hunting down a vulnerable human and that's scary. The Fright Done maze showed it can be done, and it had a decent aesthetic but not enough action. I don't think it would be nearly as young a demographic as Among Us. (Disclaimer: I like the property and I'm in my 30s.)
One final observation here. I would wager that 14 year old kids are probably the most likely to purchase a single day full price HHN ticket to come see their favorite IP once, while true horror fans like the people in this are likely to buy the much less profitable multi-night passes. Remember Stranger Things? That would definitely work again. Oh, sure, there's merch spend from older fans, but given Disney's ability to maximize profit and their focus on single day tickets, I'd actually expect merchandise of popular properties (like Among Us) to sell out handily. It's basically the Disney AP problem.
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Not much mentioned here, not even Among Us, has the current popularity that Billie Eilish did at the time of her house conception. Among Us, in fact, has been waning in popularity for the better part of this past half-year (maybe longer). Kids move pretty quick from fad-to-fad unless it has real staying power in ways that Among Us just hasn’t offered.
Squiddy Gs is really the only thing that’s still fairly fresh at that level in the pop culture zeitgeist this year. But again, not seeing how that becomes a house when so much of the show revolves around pretty taboo kills to put into a crowded public space.
I don’t really know what it could be. I’m sure more information is out there and we’ll all be along for the ride when we find out.
Squiddy Gs is really the only thing that’s still fairly fresh at that level in the pop culture zeitgeist this year. But again, not seeing how that becomes a house when so much of the show revolves around pretty taboo kills to put into a crowded public space.
I don’t really know what it could be. I’m sure more information is out there and we’ll all be along for the ride when we find out.
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I really don’t like how the word gate keeping is thrown around when discussing atypical IPs. There’s a difference between something that fits into the pillars of Halloween and Horror and something that doesn’t.
Good example with KKFoS being subjective based on your experience with the property, but it’s still a cult classic horror film. Stanger Things is a newer IP that is a homage to classic horror films. It fits in.
I don’t think any die hard HHN fan is saying newer IPs can’t be at the event, but rather newer IPs should fit well with the event and not be such a stretch. Of course, that’s being idealistic and not realizing CREAM and that Comcast/Universal are corporate whores.
Good example with KKFoS being subjective based on your experience with the property, but it’s still a cult classic horror film. Stanger Things is a newer IP that is a homage to classic horror films. It fits in.
I don’t think any die hard HHN fan is saying newer IPs can’t be at the event, but rather newer IPs should fit well with the event and not be such a stretch. Of course, that’s being idealistic and not realizing CREAM and that Comcast/Universal are corporate whores.
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I mean, this pretty much goes against the entire history of HHN tbh. The reason it comes across as gatekeeper-y when people have issues with properties with audiences that tend to skew younger/less male over how engulfed in the genre they are is because HHN has never been some consistent bastion for horror. Some previous house/street examples include:
- Penn & Teller
- Fear Factor
- Marvel
- Alice Cooper
- Rob Zombie
- Cirque du Freak
We've had odd properties that don't fit neatly into a "horror" bubble and we've had musicians who utilize horror before. Alice Cooper & Rob Zombie never saw the amount of backlash that Billie Eilish had. There's also no reason why something like Five Nights At Freddy should be seen as odd when it's a horror video game and we've had properties that are far less based in horror in the past.
This conversation happens annually. HHN has never been consistently horror-centric all the way across the board. It's a big goofy event that loves IPs that'll make money and push merch. Most of those have already been done at least once, so they're bound to keep getting weird with it from time to time as the years go on. I'm not very knowledgeable in many of the current suggestions and some are definitely a bit off-base, but there definitely is some undeniable gatekeeping in the community as well.
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Considering what happened 2 years ago, I don't expect them to announce dates so early anymore. People already know that HHN happens in October, and fans flock to the resort hotels opening weekend/September anyway when dates are announced, so there's no risk in announcing dates later in the year.
There's also a question of whether the event's popularity can support a late august start date.
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Right. And the proof is in the pudding with Fear Factor widely considered the worst house of all time. Die hard HHN fans just want more horror. There are still bucket list IPs out there and interesting original stories to be told. I don’t think it’s gatekeeping when you know what HHN is capable of versus what’s decided upon for profit.
I always find it amusing people bring up Rob Zombie when we have this debate. The dude lives and breathes horror and Halloween - an actual horror director that makes horror themed shock rock (which BTW I never liked until the Hellbilly Deluxe zone…now I love that album). Someone like Eilish just does what her marketing team tells her to do, which is why her house didn’t happen at HHN 30… “Sorry Billie, you’re going to be blonde and wear make up now, can’t have you doing a horror-adjacent haunted house confusing people about the marketing of your image!”
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There’s so much I can unpack here but instead I’m just gonna say please, please, please let’s not go down this road again.
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See, but this right here is inherently where the gatekeeping is. Eilish's whole first album era surrounded a horror aesthetic that her, not her label, came up with.
The credits for basically every song on that album are exclusively her & her brother, not some cowriters that the label supplied. Most sources seem to credit her horror-based music video concepts to her. Etc.
Hell, even the blonde transition you're referring to was her idea by all accounts.
You have quite literally nothing to base this on other than your own assumptions. There were endless posts back in 2020 explaining how in-depth she got with horror in that era and how it was controlled by her. Weird accusations like this are what make it gatekeeping.
An artist doesn't have to live and breathe horror to be relevant to that sphere. Same goes for properties like Us. Are they not HHN appropriate because creators such as Jordan Peele also spent an era of his life doing comedy instead of horror? What about Halloween 2018/Halloween Kills? Do we not want those because Danny McBride & David Gordon Green spent most of their careers doing comedy rather than engulfing themselves strictly in horror?
EDIT: Just saw @Allison's post and will be bowing out of the conversation as requested.
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Peele and McBride created horror films. I agree that Eillish’s imagery would have been cool for a house, but it’s a stretch. These “horror-adjacent” houses have been poor to mediocre at best, including Alice Cooper whose live shows are filled with the horror genre. I also heard the “This Is The End” house was pretty bad too. I don’t blame fans for getting annoyed hearing about “horror adjacent” IPs given the house quality for past properties. Hell, even the video game IPs we’ve had were pretty awful.
I’m also not assuming anything about Eilish here. Her team had a new album to market that was contrary to the imagery of her first album. That’s why her house based on Where Do We Go… didn’t return for HHN 30. She chose to market a new album over giving her fans a HHN experience.
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Still waiting on my Primus house….. :ninja:
Real talk tho, it’s probably gonna be a house based on some TikTok trend none of us out-of-touch nerds will even know yet, haha. And if it makes a good house, that’s fine by me!
Real talk tho, it’s probably gonna be a house based on some TikTok trend none of us out-of-touch nerds will even know yet, haha. And if it makes a good house, that’s fine by me!
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Could you imagine a Tool house?Still waiting on my Primus house….. :ninja:
Real talk tho, it’s probably gonna be a house based on some TikTok trend none of us out-of-touch nerds will even know yet, haha. And if it makes a good house, that’s fine by me!
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I could, but I’m a little concerned about what smells creative would come up with for that :afraid: lol
- Jul 27, 2015
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From my understanding, the IP in question is not a video game.
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