Imagine: You’re creeping through an old, empty farmhouse. It’s dark; light peeks in just enough for you to make your way through to the next room. You see a beam of light pour out from an open door to your right, so you tiptoe toward it. Your eyes are glued to the floor, lest you step on that one creaky floorboard. You can’t afford to give away your location. Finally safe and in the light, you look up. And then you see it: a horrifying creature, lithe and lean and hungry, with layers of blade-like teeth certain to shred you in the blink of an eye. It lurks on all fours, ready to spring onto its prey at any moment. And its teeth are mere feet from your throat.
What do you do? In any other Halloween Horror Nights house, you’d scream your guts out. But doing that here would all but guarantee your demise.
“A Quiet Place,” which is based on the film series of the same name, is coming to both HHN Hollywood and HHN Orlando this fall. If you know anything about the “A Quiet Place” films — truly, even just their names — it’s that there’s no screaming allowed. In this dystopian world, creatures have invaded the planet and are slaughtering every human they encounter. Classic horror movie creature thing to do, to be fair. They boast near-impenetrable armor, as well as hypersensitive hearing abilities. The creatures can hear the creak of a floorboard from the other end of a football field, and a scream from miles away.
Don’t forget to check out the full lineups on both coasts! Both Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Orlando Resort have terrifying experiences in store for you.
The tiny bit of good news? They can’t see you. So as long as you stay quiet, you stay alive. You get the assignment? All right, now zip it. Universal Studios Hollywood executive show producer John Murdy admits this’ll be tricky for guests to accomplish. “It’s almost counterintuitive when you think about it,” says John, who has been the creative force behind HHN in Hollywood since 2006. “The last thing our guests do at Horror Nights is be quiet!”
“A Quiet Place” (the house) is based on the first two films of the horror trilogy of the same name. In it, we’ll join the Abbott family — the family central to “A Quiet Place” and “A Quiet Place Part II” — as they try to survive another night on their farm. The Abbotts have made it this far into the siege because they have an advantage: they communicate with American Sign Language (ASL), as their daughter, Regan, is Deaf. It’s tough to imagine a more useful tool when combating murderous creatures with no vision and ultra-strong hearing.
In the HHN interpretation of the films in both Hollywood and Orlando, we wind our way throughout the Abbotts’ farm: through the house, the foundry, the corn silo, and more. Without giving too much away, guests will find themselves inside iconic scenes from the movies — including a particularly terrifying one, where the mother, Evelyn, struggles in the basement after stepping on a rusty nail.
A Reimagined Soundscape
John recalls watching the movie in theaters, and at first thinking there was no sound design to speak of. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The soundscape of the “A Quiet Place” films is crucial to the storytelling. While there’s very little sound (not to mention spoken dialogue) in the stories, the sound design is made up of subtle drones and naturalistic sounds. After all, the Abbott family can stay quiet, but they can’t keep the world from turning. That subtle, yet rich tapestry of background noise is a fundamental element of the trademark tension of the “A Quiet Place” films.
And when it comes to “A Quiet Place,” silence is contagious. “One of the things I remember from going to see the movie is how quiet the audience was,” John recalls. “The audience was like, afraid to eat popcorn. It was so strange!”
As such, John knew it was critical to implement a similar sonic experience in the HHN house. That meant throwing away the playbook he and Charles Gray, the senior show director for HHN at Universal Orlando Resort, have used for years. Typically, HHN houses inundate guests with sound and music — this helps immerse you in the experience, and can even disorient you a bit, making the jump scares even harder to see coming. But John knew that strategy wouldn’t work for “A Quiet Place.”
Instead, the “A Quiet Place” house will use something called near field audio design. Where most other HHN houses blare music from giant speakers above the attraction, “A Quiet Place” will have much smaller speakers hidden all throughout the experience. This technique minimizes room acoustics, and makes the sound feel more intimate and immediate. And since sound is everything in the “A Quiet Place” universe — remember, snap one stick and you could be toast — guests will be paying way more attention to it than they would be in other HHN houses.
And for good reason. Because the creatures themselves are also built into this house’s sonic landscape. “You start to hear them coming from a distance and circling around you,” says John. In fact, you’ll hear the creatures coming long before you actually get a glimpse of them. And yes, you will get a glimpse of them, and yes, you will want to scream your head off. But remember: ZIP IT!
Need a refresher on what to pack for an evening at Halloween Horror Nights? We’ve got you covered.
Incorporating ASL at HHN
The sound design is just one of the elements of this house that are brand-new to HHN this year. “A Quiet Place” will be the first house in Halloween Horror Nights history to implement characters who communicate short phrases in American Sign Language (ASL).
“We really keyed into the idea of American Sign Language because of the character of Regan. It’s so central to her storyline,” says John. Indeed, there’s no way the Abbott family would’ve made it this far into the apocalypse without their 15-year-old daughter. Not only do they know sign language thanks to her, but Regan’s cochlear implant is how she ends up discovering the creature’s weakness in the first film.
To support their ideas, John and Charles partnered with the Universal Destinations and Experiences Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team, as well as the Universal Orlando Resort Accessibility Team. Together, they shared a commitment to best practices for incorporating ASL in the “A Quiet Place” houses on each coast, including educating Team Members on the Deaf community. In doing so, Universal continued the “A Quiet Place” films’ commitment to authentically representing the community – that began with the casting, filming, and editing of the announcement video that premiered in June:
At the Hollywood house, the fun (slash terror) starts in the queue. “You’ll meet a survivor of the world of ‘A Quiet Place,’ and her entire dialogue is done in ASL with open captions on screen,” says John. This character will use ASL to give guests the run-down on the house: if the creatures hear you, they will hunt you, so stay silent.
Throughout both houses, characters will communicate using short phrases in ASL. HHN houses are quick — “At Halloween Horror Nights, we always say it’s a new show every ten seconds,” says John, given how quickly guests move from room to room — so those moments will occur quickly throughout the experience, phrases like “BE QUIET!” Classic Horror Nights directives, honestly.
“A Quiet Place” might be a new franchise to HHN, but it’s teeing up to be a house totally unlike any we’ve experienced. It’ll appear at both the Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Orlando Resort events, and while the Hollywood and Orlando experiences will differ slightly, their overall experiences will be very similar. But I just might have to jet over to Florida to experience every last bit of it.
Want another peek behind the HHN curtain? Check out the inside scoop on the Universal Studios Hollywood house, Dead Exposure: Death Valley.
Ready to step into the fog? Grab your tickets to Halloween Horror Nights 2024 at Universal Studios Hollywood right here.