SoCal Spooky Season 2023 Review Rundown Special

This week we’re doing something special, with a standalone SoCal Spooky Season Review Rundown to be followed by our regularly scheduled rundown.

For those outside the Southland, Spooky Season is a BIG deal here, and the annual parade of events starts in early September and doesn’t let up until November.

This time out we have four reviews: the all-new Angel of Light, which seems to have the biggest budget of any non-theme park event that isn’t a full carnival; the return of Delusion for it’s final chapter (what?); Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights, and Knott’s Scary Farm’s 50th Anniversary.

Note: we didn’t review this year’s The Willows for two reasons: we trust the show is maintaining it’s high standard and it’s sold out already so it’s not like we can move the needle one way or another!

Could we have broken all these out into their own pieces? You betcha! But Google’s broken these days anyway so to hell with SEO! Let’s get haunting!

Looking for more? Check out our most recent edition of the regular Review Rundown, and Blake Weil’s ongoing Philadelphia Fringe Festival Diary.

Are you a creator who looks upon these reviews with envy? Okay, the positive ones, at least? Then you might want to check out our How To Get Covered By NoPro guide. Want to get listed in our newsletter and have your event shared with our social media following? Submit a listing to Everything Immersive.

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Angel of Light — Odeon
$60–84; Downtown LA; through October 31st

I regret to inform the LA immersive community that Angel of Light is not the dark savior of Spooky Season we’ve been longing for.

To be sure: four out of the five ingredients needed to make a stellar immersive horror experience are there: on-point set, sound, and costume design, a wickedly weird high concept, a game cast of around 75 performers, and an incredible setting — the historic Los Angeles theater. Yet the dish just won’t come together, in a way that actively lessens the sum of its parts.

Hopefully most people won’t experience the operational glitches and lack of clarity on press night that led our group to hanging out in the mid-event lobby for half an hour wondering when and where we were supposed to head to the next part, or if there even was a next part.

That hold killed the authentically spooky vibes that the opening maze conjured up — once we were past the slow theme park style queue — and then led to a darker understanding: that the story of songbird Rota K. Preston whose angelic voice summons a demon doesn’t have much to it once you scratch the surface.

Perhaps the creative team is holding all the good stuff for the movie Hex, due in 2025, they want to make that this event is purporting to be a well-in-advance promotion for. The problem being that the storytelling here is flat enough to not build confidence in much more than the aesthetic. That said: it is a great aesthetic.

The whole thing ends with a very well choreographed dance number on the Los Angeles’ main stage. It’s a technical spectacle that might have connected better if it weren’t for the operational issues or if some effort had been put into keeping the vibes of the second walk though going all the way through. Every drop in energy just takes one further and further out of the vibes.

And one warning: those with issues with strobes should stay far, far away from this. The usage in the final scene is intense.

All in all: Angel of Light frustrates because it’s got about 85% of the goods, but when it breaks it breaks and the world building & storytelling isn’t there to put it back together again.

— Noah J. Nelson, Founder & Publisher

Delusion: Nocturnes & Nightmares — Thirteenth Floor
$95 — $140; Pomona, CA; through November 12th

With this, the ninth story in the saga, the Delusion cycle has reached its final, unexpected conclusion.

This year’s edition, Nocturnes & Nightmares, reads on paper like a greatest hits compilation but manages to be that rarest of things: a clip show that actually has a point.

Creator Jon Braver returns to the conceit of the audience seeking a way into an author’s inner sanctum that was the focus of 2014’s Lies Within, but now with the corpus of over a decade’s worth of Delusions to draw from. The initial on-boarding is a bit loose — an extensive and needed safety briefing at the start of the show didn’t bother to also cast us in roles the way Delusion usually does — but once the first scene was in play even an operational hold early in the show didn’t bring down the action.

Few shows in the immersive cosmos are as cinematic as Delusion, and that’s on full display with this year’s edition. Those who have caught every show before might be disappointed to see returning bits, but as someone who hopped on the train late because he thought he was a big scaredy cat and turned out to be a jaded dude who eagerly volunteers to be put in coffins and on gurneys I was delighted to see some gags in person I’d only heard about.

If all Nocturnes & Nightmares was consisted of the clip reel it would still get a thumbs up, but the storytelling this time has some bittersweet notes. This one feels like an authentic look back on what Delusion was and even could have been, with the story cycle getting sealed away at the end by the audience’s own hand. The one thing this team has always understood is that the heart of an immersive experience comes down to what the audience is doing, not just what they are witnessing.

The VIP experience is a good option for small groups, with a chance to play zombies for other guests and a “behind the scenes” lounge that lets you watch the action through hidden cameras and a separate bar. A pro tip for those who go: visit the attic BEFORE you go through the main show and have an encounter that can frame up the whole experience. It’s worth getting down a little early for that.

To be sure, this isn’t really the LAST of Delusion. Indeed, plans are under way to head back to the literal beginning of the cycle next year. Original house and original show. Yet this does look to be the final Jon Braver directed original Delusion immersive show. Of course, immersive creators always say that.

— Noah J. Nelson, Founder & Publisher

Halloween Horror Nights — Universal Studios Hollywood
Starting at $77; Hollywood, CA; Through October 31

Halloween is coming up, which means it’s time for another iteration of Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood. While I’m tempted to copy/paste my framing from last year, I will slightly update it: Halloween Horror Nights is what it is at this point, there are high-quality sets, there are haunted houses (they did actually switch the branding away from mazes recently) based on popular IP, there are jump scares, loud noises, and flashing lights.

Before we get to the houses, there were a few things about the actual event I want to touch on.

First up, early entry used to be a nice free perk that Horror Nights offered, where they would let people in an hour and a half early to spread everyone out to the mazes further into the park. This year, it’s a ticket add-on that costs $10–25, depending on the night. Second, they had way too many houses and lines crammed into a smaller footprint this year, which meant frequent traffic jams as three mazes worth of people tried to move through a single bottleneck. Neither of these are the biggest deals in the world, but combined with Horror Nights’ biggest issue, they make for a real problem.

Third, the Universal Express (read: front of line) pass is basically essential to ensure you have a good time at the event. (Full disclosure, I buy the Express pass every year.) Wait times can quickly balloon into the 60-minute range, and the big properties frequently sit at around 120-minutes. This is, frankly, a problem on its own because it makes for either an expensive experience or a shitty one.

The free early entry option offered a way to get through more than three or four houses in a night without paying extra. Losing that extra time and forcing everyone (who didn’t want to pay extra) in at once makes for worse traffic and longer lines. In order to not spill out of the queues and block foot traffic, some of the lines were temporarily closed to those without an Express pass. This seemed to happen most frequently to the two hottest properties, Stranger Things and The Last of Us. Wanted to check out the mazes based on some of your favorite shows, but didn’t shell out extra? Tough luck, I guess.

It’s a shame because I genuinely enjoy the mazes and the atmosphere of Horror Nights, but whoever makes these decisions chose profit over guest experience. It does feel in line with so many other things these days though– you’re going to pay more for a worse experience, and you’re going to like it.

Now, finally, on to the houses:

Stranger Things 4: Based on season 4 of Stranger Things, this house recreates many of the major set pieces from the recent season of the show. It’s got the look down completely, but on my trip through, it felt like the timing was off on everything and I missed most of the scareactors, and some were just missing, including Eleven in her climactic showdown with Vecna.

The Last of Us: This house is light on scares, but really leans into the storytelling of The Last of Us. Joel and Ellie (with dialogue recorded by their original voice actors, Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson) are a frequent presence throughout and make it feel like you’re following them through the game. Plus the makeup for the runners, clickers, and bloaters is great. I always like when Horror Nights tries something different, and this one is a success.

Chucky: Ultimate Kill Count: The possessed doll is here to fill the semi-regular comedy style house spot. Chucky offers a running meta-commentary voiceover as he takes cracks at guests while they move through the house. The most interesting part of this one is that all of the Chucky dolls are animatronics that look and move like Chucky in his movies. It’s not particularly scary, but is fun.

Monstruos: The Monsters of Latin America: Pulling from Latin American folklore, Monstruos features three unknown-to-me monsters with wonderfully creepy designs, especially for Tlahuelpuchi and La Lechuza. The house hid some of its scares better than these usually do, and I jumped a few times. The scareactors were also great and nailed some very creepy movements, along with one who tricked me into a scare in an unusual for HHN way. My favorite of the year.

The Purge: Dangerous Waters: The regular Jabbawockeez show has exited stage left and made way for this Purge-themed stunt show that repurposes the Waterworld arena. It’s a nice change of pace, and with the addition of a few flamethrowers and more fake blood than I expected fits nicely with the theme. What can I say? I like stunt shows and this one features multiple people being set on fire and thrown off high towers.

Universal Monsters: Unmasked: The Universal Monsters have had a dedicated house each year since 2018, and this year it’s been turned over to a few of the less prominent monsters, including the Phantom of the Opera and the Invisible Man, along Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. It’s a solid house where the Hunchback gets two strong gags, the Phantom gets to play his organ, and Hyde menaces you along the way. I just wish the Invisible Man got more than one scene!

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Evil Dead Rise: Based on the movie released earlier this year, this one is the weakest house of the year. The scareactors here were really going for it, but the space does not set them up for success. It’s hard to make a jump scare work when you’re 15 feet away from your victims.

Holidayz in Hell: HHN last celebrated the Holidayz in 2019, and it’s back for a rerun. It’s a fun one that starts with New Year’s Day and walks guests through horrific reimaginings of the major holidays until you make it to Christmas.

The Exorcist: Believer: I almost forgot to include this one here. It’s fine.

— Kevin Gossett, LA Reviews Editor

Knott’s Scary Farm 50th Anniversary — Knott’s Berry Farm
$60+; Buena Vista, CA; through Oct. 31

Knott’s Scary Farm, the original theme park haunt that defined a genre and has created literal generations of fans, turns 50 years old this year and the Buena Vista, CA park has pulled out pretty much all the stops.

What follows are my impressions of the mazes for this year’s event, as we don’t really go in for the stage shows that are available. Or the rides. Just know those are up and running as well, making for a whole lot of entertainment for the ticket price.

This year I’ll tackle the news mazes, from my favorite to my least, and then sweep through the returning set. There are TEN mazes spread throughout the four corners of the park. It’s a long, long night of horror conga line action.

There’s also an optional interactive lantern that’s available for sale and supposedly keyed to different spots in the park, sort of the way that the magic wands work in Universal in boy wizard land. For the record: I didn’t have the $40 to shell out for one and while I saw a lot of people carrying them around I never saw anyone reacting with awe at what they were doing. If they do have some cool interactions they don’t seem to pop wide enough to draw attention to themselves, at least not in a chaotic environment like the first night of Scary Farm when the 1000 Monsters are out in force.

The New Stuff

Cinema Slasher: Easily the best maze of Knott’s year and one that manages to be sublime. Worth the price of admission all by its lonesome, Cinema Slasher replaces the beloved Dark Ride, which parodied theme park and carnival rides and tops it — and every other Scary Farm maze — in every conceivable way.

Guests enter through a hallway lined with movie posters for a slasher film series and snake into a cinema lobby that smells of buttered popcorn before heading into a screening room where a slashed open sliver screen plays one of the moves from the hallway. We walk through the screen and into the movie beyond: sorority beset by a masked killer who is one part Michael Myers and one part Jason.

Every detail is perfect, and the winding maze’s rooms are separated by a heavy rug-like fabric that gives each scene transition literal weight.

Escaping one slasher flick through the back rooms of the movie house, we find yet another screening room and film. For a moment we linger to appreciate the Friday the 13th/I Know What You Did Last Summer vibes on screen and then it’s through the screen and into that world.

Utterly brilliant. Three movies. A real sense of the killer deteriorating over the course of the film series. Only one weird dud of a room that reads as an elaborate but empty joke (maybe an actor was missing) and an ending that takes the Knott’s “big animatronic monster thing” trope and perfects it.

If you were thinking of skipping Scary Farm this year: DON’T. There’s always the chance they won’t try as hard with this one next year. But I hope they do.

Chilling Chambers: This is a clip show of a haunt, taking parts from five of Knott’s mazes from the course of its history and stitching them together with some narration and videos that the conga line pacing of a theme park haunt can’t quite slow down enough to pay attention to.

As someone who hasn’t spent the last decade plus going to Knott’s there was no nostalgia in this set for me, but I did appreciate the build and some of the more bizarre setups even if I tend to like my haunts a bit more story driven.

Mostly I just found myself wishing. They’d bring Carnival of Carnivorous Clowns back as a maze after going through this. Although I can do without the elephant poop fetish stuff. (Really.)

Room 13: We had saved Room 13, the maze inspired by the Goreing 20’s scare zone, for last. That section of the park had long been my favorite thanks to the immersive theatre vibes of the story the streetmosphere actors were tasked with spinning out.

Tainted booze is causing demonic possession. A green elixir is to blame. Green. Hmm… the color of Knott’s fabled Green Witch. A mystery indeed.

Unfortunately, despite some really solid Art Deco set designs, Room 13 already feels like it’s suffered the fate of my beloved Mesmer: taking a weird story concept and just throwing some MEAT at it.

Chopped up bodies and corpses are everywhere, only few of them have the kind of macabre thought given to them that Cinema Slasher does. There’s nothing inventive about Room 13, whose Time To Corpse factor (or TTC for short) is about 45 seconds. Only Wax Works, cheesy as it is, gets to the GUTS faster.

Scary Farm has this habit of just plastering random gore on a maze’s second year incarnation and Room 13 feels like it skipped right to its year two version. A real shame, as there’s potential with the theme.

THE RETURNING

Origins: Curse of Calico: The tale of Knott’s Green Witch and the curse she put on Calico could and should be the lynchpin story that connects to the other mazes in the park, and remains the best storytelling in the whole of Scary Farm.

My only wish is that they had a bit of restraint and held back the mutant freaks until about the quarter mark of the maze, giving it more of an arc. As it is the first corner turn already has a fiend, and that serves to flatten out the tension curve.

Still a banger of a maze thanks to the story progression of the Witch.

Dark Entity: The “don’t call it Alien” themed maze that is one of the four in the backstage area seems to have gotten some TLC this year, and was frankly freakier, even while the sun was still up, than it had any business being.

It may be showing it’s age, and word has it that this was the last hurrah for Dark Entity, but this one still has the juice. Enough so that it was my second favorite of the returning mazes and my third favorite over all. And it think: I nearly skipped it!

The Depths: I’ve long been scared of sharks, it’s a primal thing with me. So I’m always a bit more on edge in the undersea themed The Depths.

That said it too has gotten some TLC for the anniversary as it prepares to head into The Keeper’s vault of Haunts Past. Honestly, I felt like I didn’t remember about a third of the beats in this one and the ones that I did remember seemed like they’d been goosed up this year. For the first time I found myself wanting to linger in this maze.

Wax Works: Trust me, I’m as surprised as anyone that Wax Works is this high up on my list, given that its a gross our affair from jump. But it’s a clever gross out affair whose lighting was absolutely on point this year and featured a stellar turn by a scare actor playing a hapless guest stuck in the wax machine and crying for help near the start.

The descent into the depths of the wax museum is a cavalcade of body horror and torture porn, which aren’t really my bag. Yet after three years of dutifully winding my way through this one, I’ve come to appreciate its twisted sensibilities.

The actors really made the most of Wax Works this year, taking what had been one of my least favorite of the mazes and elevating it over the many of its newer brethren.

Mesmer: Now in its third year, Mesmer continues to break my heart.

After being sublimely strange and off-putting (in the good way) the first year with its theatrical sensibilities and mostly coherent story that has you falling under a hypnotist’s spell as you explore a twisted circus sideshow, the second year saw gore and guts splattered about as the literal first scene of the maze was replaced by a pile of rotting corpses.

I regret to inform that Mesmer was not restored to its first year glory, and in fact is showing signs of water damage. This was the maze that taught me last year that nothing truly strange can last long in the theme park haunt world because the conga line horror masses want their MEAT and by Beelzebub the theme park owners are gonna give it to them.

There are still glimmers of hope in the voice over and an occasional character moment, but if anything those feel like cruel teases that only serve to remind that this used to be something special.

Grimoire: A maze about a cursed book discovered by campers that unlocks a portal through horrific moments in history should be one of my favorite things ever, and yet it just falls flat for me.

I think it’s the fact that the maze wants a slower pace than the opening night conga line allows for. Or maybe that the story is told through dialogue and quick vignettes more than it is through the space itself, unlike Origins or Cinema Slasher. It feels like this one could get tuned up, or maybe it’s great on a slow night when the pressure to move on isn’t there and one can linger.

Bloodlines: Last year’s gimmicky “shoot vampires scare actors with laser guns” has taken away the laser guns. But didn’t bother to change some of the dialogue or blocking in the scenes.

What was a chaotic, but somewhat charming, mess last year now is just silly and pointless. Bloodlines is a bust and should be retired ASAP so that the game actors in the maze can be put to better use.

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