“We loved the idea of Vicky and Little Pale Girl being Art’s sidekicks to lure us into this bloodbath, so we knew they needed to have a big presence in the experience,” he says. “And then Sienna Shaw: Of course we had to represent her because she is, in my opinion, one of the coolest, most headstrong, and most badass final girls we’ve had in horror in quite some time, if not ever. We knew she had to have a big part in the experience and really play into the ending of the experience.”
What’s more, Paradoa says to expect, “the highest number of bodies ever at Halloween Horror Nights, by almost more than double,” in addition to lots of Easter eggs that pay tribute to the films
Walking through the house, I noticed the Terrifier Easter eggs were plentiful. In fact, I’m tempted to go on one of Universal’s Unmasking the Horror tours, where you can walk through the houses with the lights on, to hunt for more of them. In my two times through the house, I spotted things like the creepy “circus” hitchhiking sign Art holds in the original Terrifier short film, a wall emblazoned with “Vicky + Art,” a throwback to Vicky’s moments in the asylum before she gives birth to Art’s reanimated head at the close of Terrifier 2, and lots of smeared, partially-mopped blood around Allie’s bed in the salt-and-bleach bedroom kill scene, because Art always cleans up after himself, silly little guy that he is.
The Terrifier franchise seems to have eased up over the years in its portrayal of violence towards women or, at the very least, has started incorporating the killing of men into the films too. With many critics of Leone’s works saying they go too far in their exploitation of women, I asked Paradoa if Art’s haunted house would show an equal number of men and women being slaughtered.
“One hundred percent,” he says. “When you go through the hacksaw hallway and you see those two hacksaw rigs going back and forth, that’s happening to two male victims that have unfortunately been captured by Art the Clown. It’s definitely well-balanced in the haunted house because I think the beauty of Art the Clown is he does not pick and choose, he just kind of kills as he goes. He is a tornado and he is going to run past anybody in his path.”
And Paradoa’s right. Yes, I saw some of Art’s cringiest female kills, like a naked Dawn being sawed in half upside down in Terrifier, but there was plenty of violence inflicted upon guys in the house as well, from Cole’s chainsaw shower death in Terrifier 3 to those hacksawed male victims Paradoa told me to keep an eye out for. In this version of Terrifier, Art the Clown is an equal-opportunity slayer. Additionally, the Terrifier haunted house will end with the opportunity for guests to choose between a wet and dry path. Since this feature was announced, Universal has been hinting that those who choose the wet path will get completely soaked.
