Movies
“The Walking Dead” Official Halloween Horror Nights Announcement!
Caught in the middle of a high-intensity struggle for survival, you fight off hordes of flesh-hungry, growling “walkers,” or zombies. No place is safe as you make your way through a post-apocalyptic wasteland with horror at every turn. Will you survive?
This fall, Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood are joining forces with AMC’s “The Walking Dead” for their Halloween Horror Nights events. Visitors to both theme parks will be able to experience the horror of AMC’s blockbuster original series, “The Walking Dead,” in elaborately themed, haunted mazes. It marks the first-time Universal Studios has featured a television series at Halloween Horror Nights on both coasts.
The Golden Globe-nominated, Emmy Award-winning, series “The Walking Dead” is based on the comic book written by Robert Kirkman and published by Image Comics. The series tells the story of the months and years that follow after a zombie apocalypse. It follows a group of survivors, led by police officer Rick Grimes, who travel in search of a safe and secure home. “The Walking Dead” is the number-one drama series in basic cable history for adults 18-49 and adults 25-54.
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Universal Studios’ Halloween creative teams are working with AMC and “The Walking Dead,” to create an authentic experience that is true to the Emmy Award-winning hit series. The haunted mazes on both coasts feature eerily authentic, elaborately designed, movie-quality sets that include some of the most iconic locations and scenes from the show. Mobs of undead walkers bring to “life” the vicious, hungry, zombies from the show.
“We want people to experience the same terror of the walker-filled reality our characters faced in seasons one and two – and will continue to face in our third season,” said Greg Nicotero, Co-Executive Producer and Special Effects Make-up Artist for the series. “Our collaboration with Universal Studios’ creative teams is exciting as we work to truly capture the essence of the show.”
“The collaboration with Universal Studios’ creative teams is a fantastic cross-promotional opportunity and a great way to capture the spirit of the series, which makes its season three debut on AMC this October,” said Linda Schupack, AMC’s Executive Vice President of Marketing.
“‘The Walking Dead’ puts real people in incredibly horrific situations where they experience true, raw fear, and guests at Halloween Horror Nights experience the same thing,” said Jim Timon, Senior Vice President of Entertainment at Universal Orlando Resort. “We can’t wait to merge the two powerful concepts together.”
“With ‘The Walking Dead,’ we want to make fans of the series feel like they are literally walking in the footsteps of the show’s characters, experiencing all of the horrific events from the series just as they experienced them,” said John Murdy, Creative Director at Universal Studios Hollywood. “The goal is to make guests of Halloween Horror Nights feel like they are trapped in the world of ‘The Walking Dead,’ using all of the attention to detail and movie-quality production values that Halloween Horror Nights has become famous for. You’re no longer sitting on a couch, watching a show…you’re living it!”
Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights® events have a more than 20-year history of creating incredibly entertaining, horrifying Halloween experiences that are consistently rated the nation’s best. The events on each coast feature highly-themed, disturbingly real, haunted mazes based on everything from film to nightmares — and streets filled with hundreds of specially trained “scareactors.”
For more information about Halloween Horror Nights at both Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood, visit HalloweenHorrorNights.com.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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