Horror — good horror, in any case — often speaks to the cultural anxieties of the moment. While the genre, of course, creates new monsters and terrifying scenarios that haunt our nightmares, those monsters are often a magnified, exacerbated and personified version of what we already fear. Whatever’s happening on the cultural or political stage crops up in the horror movies of the time. Whether it’s fear of nuclear war in the 1950s, anxiety over protest movements of the 1960s or the “stranger danger” paranoia of the 1990s, the genre is a funhouse mirror of ourselves.
“Horror has always tapped into that,” says John Murdy, creative director and executive producer of Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood. “It continues to tap into whatever the existential threat is – whether that’s A.I. or whatever else is going on in society.”
But before we dive into our own personal and cultural anxieties, let’s set the scene. Welcome to DEAD EXPOSURE: DEATH VALLEY.
This brand-new house is one of two original content houses at Halloween Horror Nights (HHN) at Universal Studios Hollywood this year. (Check out the full lineup right here.) It was inspired by the HHN house, “Dead Exposure: Patient Zero,” which ran at HHN 28 at Universal Orlando Resort. In that house, the planet is being ravaged by a disease which turns humans into zombies. “Death Valley,” while still zombie-centric, takes a different approach. Because zombies can really come from anywhere if you think about it!
In this iteration of the “Dead Exposure” story, guests will enter a top-secret government facility out in Death Valley — a.k.a., the middle of nowhere. The location provides much more than just a snappy title. “If you were gonna build a facility somewhere that you didn’t want anyone to know about, you’d build it in Death Valley,” says John. “It’s one of the most inhospitable places on Earth.”
Beyond “top secret government facility,” visitors aren’t primed with much information before entering this haunted house. The first thing we see is that the gates to the facility have been smashed open, with sirens blaring and a general sense that havoc is being wreaked. The experience begins with a feeling of unease, speculation, and intrigue — in doing so, it invites guests to develop their own conspiracy theories about what’s going on in there. Are they building top-secret weapons? Is it a bunker for the uber rich and powerful? Do they have proof of extraterrestrial life in there? The answers are slowly revealed throughout the house. And you just might regret ever asking them.
That’s the first cultural theme we encounter in “Dead Exposure: Death Valley:” conspiracy theories. In our increasingly online era of misinformation, it seems like everyone has a conspiracy theory today. This isn’t unique to our moment — in fact, John says he drew inspiration from Soviet-era conspiracy theories for this particular house. But the impulse to question everything is sure to resonate with the horror fanatics at HHN.
“After the fall of the Soviet Union, in the early ‘90s, there was a lot of chatter about all these secret military facilities and labs popping up all over the world,” says John. He and the HHN team decided to tap into that existential fear, which he still sees existing online these days. They were fascinated by the idea of people going crazy with speculation, even if the object of their obsession might be (and probably is) something really mundane. “In the world of Horror Nights, we can open that Pandora’s Box and let [the guests’] worst fears become reality.”
John also found inspiration in his own travels to late-Soviet Europe in designing the concept and feel for this house. As a foreign exchange student in Copenhagen in the late-80s, he was able to spend some time traveling in the Soviet Union. This was soon after the Cheronobyl disaster, an event that in itself launched countless conspiracy theories. John says being an American kid in that part of the world at that particular moment made him feel really paranoid.
“I remember taking pictures in Red Square and having my camera taken away, and the film taken out by a soldier,” he recalls, explaining there was some kind of military vehicle in the area unbeknownst to him. “That paranoia stayed with me. I knew I was going to do something with that feeling one day.”
Now, back to “Dead Exposure: Death Valley.” As we approach the facility itself, we see a vehicle labeled, “DANGER: RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL” has slammed into the building. Uh-oh. That’s what smashed through the guard gate, we gather. And now, through the hazy green smoke, we realize that the radioactive material that was in the vehicle is leaking out everywhere. So, of course, it’s only a matter of time before we encounter someone who’s been infected by that radioactive material….
…and that time is NOW. We find ourselves face-to-face with the facility guards — or, the zombies who used to be facility guards. They’re experiencing the early stages of radioactive poisoning: they have horrible skin lesions, and their eyes are turning red. If you can make it past the guards, you’ll make your way to the security station inside, where you’ll get another view of the vehicle that smashed into the facility. “But now, from the inside, you can see the guy driving it is just, you know,” says John, “…splattered all over the windshield.” Lovely.
In all, John and his team sought to create a complete sense of chaos and uncertainty inside the facility. We hear a computerized voice blaring, “WARNING…WARNING…WARNING…” The voice is sometimes slowed down, and sometimes sped up, all intended to make you feel completely disoriented. “The whole approach to the audio design is to create this feeling of instability,” says John, “like everything is coming apart at the seams.”
Eventually, we finally learn what, exactly, has been going on in this remote, top-secret government lab: They’re creating super soldiers. John explains: “It’s a soldier that could be shot on the battlefield, drop, then get right back up and keep fighting.”
Catch any commercial break on TV these days, and you’re bound to see an ad for artificial intelligence. We’re told that AI is going to change the world — that it’s already changing the world. But what does it really look like? How will it work? How can we set up the appropriate guardrails to keep AI in check? These are some of the biggest questions of the current moment — to some, it’s thrilling, and to others, it’s terrifying. And that’s where Halloween Horror Nights comes in. The government creating unkillable super soldiers? Yep, that’s one of the creepiest possible interpretations of our AI anxieties.
But these aren’t just super soldiers. They’re radioactive, super soldier zombies. John and his team created their own, original look for the zombies in “Dead Exposure: Death Valley.” The tops of their skulls are removed and their brains, which are exposed for experimentation, have all kinds of wires and cables emerging from them. And then there’s their trademark red eyes, zeroed in on you, ready to attack.
“Dead Exposure: Death Valley” has no shortage of types of zombies. Radioactive lab tech zombies in hazmat suits; a gigantic, zombified gorilla with his brain exposed, going absolutely nuts; humans in body bags with oxygen lines hooked up to them; the thawing freezer unit, where they freeze human test subjects before experimenting on them, that is thawing, resulting in half-frozen military zombies attacking you.
We could spill more tea, but y’know what? Halloween Horror Nights is no fun without some surprises under wraps. Grab your tickets for HHN 2024 right here. And if you’ve already got ‘em, grab some more — the more scares, the better!
What are you most looking forward to at HHN 2024 at Universal Studios Hollywood? Let us know in the comments below.
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