One Year Of Screams Later: Universal Horror Unleashed Las Vegas Spices Up The Summer (The NoPro Review)

We open on Las Vegas: 117 degrees with not a prayer of a cloud in the sky. The desert winds are starting to stir, threatening to turn the city into a convection oven. For a time you might have took shelter under the decommissioned fuselage of a 747, steps away from the hulking grey mass of Warehouse 25.

Titanic metal doors mark the entrance to the facility which anchors the northern end of AREA15’s District 2. Just what might need doors that large is a question that one doesn’t want to think about too hard. The guest entrance is just to the right, blissfully shielded from the elements and leading to a hallway that either needs some TLC from an electrician or is an ill omen of what waits beyond the very much not in-world security checkpoint.

Steps past that awaits the night-dark interior of Universal Horror Unleashed, the one-year old attraction which offers horror mazes inspired by Universal Studio’s famed Halloween Horror Nights haunted house offerings year-round. I was lucky enough to be there while a Resident Evil theme takes over the common areas of the attraction through Aug. 30, 2026. This translates into having some Raccoon City Police Department tactical officers menacing possible T-virus carriers (that would be us) from on high and misting guests down in front of the "Welcome to Raccoon City" sign with an anti-zombie spray before letting them pass on into the faux night.

Hulking behind the sign is a gargantuan diselpunk generator festooned with top shelf spirits of the alcoholic variety: the Boiler Bar. Nothing isn’t a bar in Vegas, and UHU features three. Although this is the only one that I saw with a zombie bartender who was going through the motions of wiping down the bar before collapsing into a heap and contemplating her own wounds and then starting up all over again. A fascinating, nuanced performance in the midst of the bombast of RCPD tac squads brawling with zombies.

The takeover really gives the space the energy of a theme park Halloween season, with shambling actors and hero characters. Corporate spy Ada Wong recruits me to get samples of the T-virus. At one point a horde of zombies get agitated inside of a cage while RCPD officers try and hold them back but get overrun. The zombies surge amidst shouts of “Stay back!” at the guests and take to the common areas.

Before going, just about everything I’d heard or seen about UHU was about how Universal Halloween Horror Nights fans were somewhat disappointed with what was on offer. So the degree to which the — new and temporary, to be sure — RCPD activation has given the attraction a real verve was a surprise to me. It also probably helps that I’ve never been to Halloween Horror Nights — I’m a Knott’s Scary Farm man, myself — and so I didn’t have memories of Hollywood or Orlando to compare what lies within one of AREA15’s anchor tenants.

There are two main tickets for UHU — a $99 all-you-can-shriek pass that lets you go into the haunts as many times as you want in a single trip, or a $69 ticket that lets you go into each of the four main haunts once. The haunts aren’t terribly long, but are packed with enough detail that repeat runs are a reasonable desire. When I was there they also staggered when the different houses are open, which gives a slightly programmed flow to the whole thing. I’ll cover the mazes in the order I took them on.

SCARECROW: THE REAPING

The one maze not based on a movie of the primary set of four, this one starts off with a few cornfield switchbacks that lead into a farmhouse and then more cornfields beyond. Populated by menacing scarecrows, of course. I’ll be honest: I don’t remember all that much of this one, other than the enthusiasm of a few of the scare actors.

This Scarecrow maze comes from a long series of popular mazes and spinoff experiences at Halloween Horror Nights Orlando, but as I lack that association this one just fell a bit flat.

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE

Now I’ve always been too much of a fraidy cat to watch Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, as the trailer has always freaked me out since I was a kid. Nor am I a big fan of gore, although that has metabolized into counting down how long it takes in a given haunted house before running into a dismembered corpse as many a horror fan comes to haunted houses for the MEAT. (I call it TTC: Time To Corpse.)

Which is to say that I approached The Texas Chainsaw Massacre house with the most apprehension of any of the mazes at UHU, and I wasn’t entirely happy that it was my only other option after Scarecrow on what was turning into a speed run Sunday.

The verdict?

This house is spectacular, made with a clear lot of — twisted — love by the designers and populated by incredibly enthusiastic scare actors who understand that the assignment is to be just this side of camp. 

If you’ve gone to enough haunts you’ve been through a zillion “cannibal family” mazes, but there’s a reason why Texas Chainsaw is the blood rose gold standard of the genre. From the initial approach to the family butcher shop through the encounters with both Sawyer family members and the hapless teens who are on tonight’s menu this one packs the details and the dread. 

God help me, but I think I might watch the movie at long last because of this.

UNIVERSAL MONSTERS

Speaking of love, it’s clear the team knows what they have on their hands with the Universal Monsters maze which gives guests ample opportunities to get spooked by the most iconic of horror icons on the planet.

Starting with the Wolfman — watch out for that full moon looming above at all hours of the day and all nights of the month — and twisting through bits of the stories of Dracula, The Creature From The Black Lagoon, The Phantom of the Opera, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Mummy this one hits like a movie marathon in clip show form.

Not nearly as sinister as the other mazes, I still got startled more than once by a well timed jump scare on the part of the actors, who all look amazing. There are so many fun details in the maze, and the temptation to make a second run is high as its impossible to pick up on everything in just one run.

BLUMHOUSE’S THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER

My favorite of the set, this one starts in a twisting representation of a Haitian Marketplace before transitioning, almost dreamlike, to a forest where adults are looking for two missing girls. 

A sheriff’s deputy declares that they’ve found a body, and then its deeper and deeper into the story with increasingly intense scenes including a wall that disappears to reveal a possessed 12-year old on the other side (that really looked like a 12-year old), and sequences straight out of entries in the long running horror franchise.

Possessed kids. Demons. Failed exorcisms. This one has it all and does the best storytelling in the whole of Horror Unleashed. It does this not only from a narrative clarity point of view but an experiential one: the dread grows as we get deeper into the house/story. This is how I like my haunted houses: a kind of living cinema we can move through where the characters are aware of us as intruders on their own stories.

RESIDENT EVIL TAKEOVER: RCPD STATION

So one thing that I wasn’t able to completely take advantage of was the culmination of the Resident Evil Takeover which led to a fifth experience outside. Remember that 117 degree heat? Yeah. That kept the outdoor part closed until closer to nightfall and unfortunately for me I had somewhere to be.

But that didn’t stop me from starting the trailhead for the final experience because, yes, you had to EARN your way to the finale.

This consisted of two steps. First, you had to solve a puzzle inside the Raccoon City Police Department station that was set up opposite the Boiler Bar. Multiple desks within the station featured different puzzles which one had to solve in order to earn the puzzle card which led to the second puzzle: a stoplight signal codebreaker.

As the staff was interested in a fairly orderly run of guests coming through one cops inside the station was a little too eager to help — asking me within seconds of stepping up to the desk if I was having trouble. Which, ironically, threw me off from my game and probably cost me a minute in what was otherwise a really simple “find pieces and put them on a chessboard in the right places” puzzle.

The stoplight codebreaking puzzle was straightforward enough, if a little hard to do solo thanks to needing to look at the card and the signals in quick succession. Luckily everyone given the clue card works on the same puzzle and the spirit of collaboration that a decade of escape gaming has instilled in the general population means that nearby groups were helping check each others work.

PREMIERE HOUSE & THE DEMENTED CIRCUS 

Horror Unleashed features a full service restaurant on the premises as well as a quick service option at the “Roughcuts” spot near the Boiler Bar. As I became aware that I should eat some real food while I was inside the building and didn’t want to step out into the Devil Only Knows heat to hunt for food amongst the still a little too scant options at AREA15 I decided to sit down at the House.

For the run of the Resident Evil Takeover the main stage show — Jack’s Demented Circus — has been moved into the restaurant from its usual spot on the stage next to Jack’s Alley Bar, which are all steps away from each other on the way to the Scarecrow maze.

The service at PH was lovely — Vegas is good at this, and the young staff is friendly — and I opted for the “Chance’s Chicken”: pan-seared chicken served over mashed purple potatoes and corn ribs. It was easily the most grounding and probably the healthiest thing I ate while in Vegas and I’d get it again without question. A Liquid Death Cherry Obituary based mocktail, on the other hand, wasn’t as satisfying as a straight up Cherry Obituary (the best flavor) all by itself and cost about four times what a tall boy of the good stuff would. (For those who don’t know: it’s lightly cherry soda flavored sparkling water and I’ve been replacing my blood with it for months.)

The stage show started up right around the time that my food arrived.

Look: I’ve got nothing bad to say about the circus performers — really talented young acrobats — or the actors playing the roles of Jack the Clown and Chance — the psychotic clown who runs the circus and his pigtailed equally crazy moll in a tutu.

But run that description back and you see how this looks, right?

I get that Jack has been around for a quarter century now and that Chance has been around for a decade — at least that’s what the very usuful Halloween Horror Nights fan wiki tells me. It’s just that if this is your introduction to the whole Universal Halloweenverse the pair read as Temu Joker and Harley. 

As I watched the comically gory show I found myself doubling down on the feeling that I wish Universal has stayed in the bidding war for Warner Bros. and won. That way Universal could have the characters these two were based off of and stage a “Joker vs. Jack” maze that would… anyway. It’s unlikely the Horror Nights fan service is going to go away, but it will definitely continue to read as some also-ran action to the newbies. Few of whom will bother to find out the intricacies of the two signature character’s legacy with Univseral’s Spooky Season tradition.

GET YOUR SCARE ON

All in all I stepped back out into the blast furnace of early evening Las Vegas very satisfied by my time at Universal Horror Unleashed and looking forward to seeing how the space evolves. If they keep the seasonal overlay action going so that there’s something new worth stopping in to check out whenever the siren song of Vegas hits (or work conventions draw you there).

Given that Universal is still on track to open one of these in Chicago, figuring out the balance is a must, and after getting a taste here I’m rooting for the team to dial in the formula.

Universal Horror Unleashed is open Thursdays thru Sundays year round at AREA15 in Las Vegas, tickets start at $59 per person.

Discover the latest immersive events, festivals, workshops, and more at our new site EVERYTHING IMMERSIVE, home of NoPro’s show listings.

NoPro is a labor of love made possible by our backers. Join them today and get access to our Newsletter and Discord!

In addition to the No Proscenium website and our podcast, and you can find NoPro on Bluesky, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and in the Facebook community also named Everything Immersive.