If you get scared, you scream. That’s the basic rule that makes horror movies so entertaining for countless fans. But 2018’s A Quiet Place challenged those fans by creating a world where screaming meant death for the characters.
Now, Universal is inviting theme park fans to muffle their screams in haunted houses themed “A Quiet Place” during this year’s Halloween Horror Nights in Hollywood and Orlando. Last week, I was invited to walk through the Hollywood installation of the “A Quiet Place” house with creative director John Murdy. He told me and other invited reporters what Universal did to bring this unique – and challenging – world to life.
Visitors to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood will find the “A Quiet Place” house in the old Walking Dead attraction area on the Upper Lot. The indoor environment allows Universal complete control over the soundscape for the attraction – an essential requirement given the theme.
“A lot of people who saw the film said it was a silent film. It’s never silent,” Murdy said. “You think it’s silent, but the sound was just very cleverly designed. A lot of the sounds in the film are what you hear in nature. So we knew we had to change the way we did the sound.”
“Usually in our haunted houses, there’s multi-channel audio in every room, but most of the time it’s big speakers up on the walls. We had to do the opposite. We had to do what’s called near-field audio design, which means that instead of having a bunch of big speakers up top, we have lots of small speakers right down at the bottom and really close to the guests – as close to them as possible. So we knew that meant there had to be a unique integration between stage props, décor and audio.”
Two speakers hidden in the trees in the house
As anyone who has ever been to a haunted event can attest, most of the noises in a house don’t come from speakers. They come from screaming visitors. Making noise is a death sentence in the world of “A Quiet Place,” where sounds attract the alien monsters. Murdy said the team at Universal understood and embraced that dichotomy.
“One thing we knew for sure: Our guests are not going to be quiet,” Murdy said. “You know, we’re going to repeat that (the need to be quiet) over and over throughout the line — and our characters repeat that with ASL (American Sign Language), but we know our guests. They’re going to make noise, so we’re going to punish them for it.”
Just like in the movies, screams will attract the monsters at Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights. And those monsters include some of the most advanced characters Universal has created for Halloween Horror Nights.
“Last year we built a house with Chucky, and that was kind of the test case to see if we could actually do fully animated characters,” Murdy said. “I think we built 17 of them for Chucky, but here in ‘A Quiet Place,’ we now need to upgrade that. So we again worked with our internal engineering department here at the park, who work on all the rides and attractions. And there are 10 creatures in this house — six of them are puppet effects and four of them are fully animated characters.”
Murdy with one of the monster dolls from “A Quiet Place”
Universal didn’t allow photos of the animatronic figures during our tour, but even still and half-clothed, they made an impression. These are the first physical creations of the monsters from the “A Quiet Place” universe, as they were created entirely in CGI for the films.
Another first for Universal in “A Quiet Place” is the use of American Sign Language (ASL).
“We wanted to incorporate American Sign Language into this house, and we’re doing that in two ways,” Murdy said. “So we do a full pre-show video in the queue, but it’s the only pre-show video I’ve done in my career that doesn’t have sound. It’s literally all done in ASL.”
“We cast a deaf actress who works here at Universal Studios Hollywood. We worked with our DEI team and experts on the Universal (Studios) side to tell the story of ‘A Quiet Place’ entirely in ASL, with open captioning so anyone can read it.
“And then, as part of the pre-show video, the person who’s talking to you – who is simply a survivor in the world of ‘A Quiet Place’ – tells you that there are certain things that you need to know if you want to survive in that world. And they teach you basic ASL language, and that’s repeated by our actors. So when we were rehearsing in this house a few nights ago as part of our horror acting training, we brought in experts to teach not only the character that plays Reagan, but other characters in the house basic ASL phrases that I wrote and then translated into ASL. That was the first time we’d ever done anything like that.”
“A Quiet Place” at Halloween Horror Nights is based on the first two films in the “A Quiet Place” series. After touring the house, we also visited the “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” house, which is located in one of the tents behind the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
I won’t give anything away about the house, but I will say that you should look for Easter eggs and flashbacks from the entire Ghostbusters franchise. And that the stars of the new house will probably be the “Mini-Pufts” who appear everywhere and often attack each other.
Mini Pufts
Halloween Horror Nights begins Thursday, September 5th in Hollywood and this Friday, August 30th in Orlando. The event runs on select nights on both coasts through November 3rd. Tickets for Halloween Horror Nights in Hollywood, including a 2pm day/night ticket, can be found on our partner Universal Studios Hollywood’s ticket page.
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