1. Ghost Town (Opening Rank: 7, Midpoint Rank: 5)
Every year there is one house that I'm feel meh about at first and it slowly grows on me to the point where I love it. This year that house was Ghost Town. The tone and beautiful scenes in this house were top notch. The facade with the gallows leading into the first scene sets the stage perfectly, and the wide open scene in the city is one of the more impressive scenes HHN has ever done. A House I will miss for sure.
2. Tomb of the Ancients (Opening Rank: 2, Midpoint Rank: 1)
A consistently strong house, TOTA is one of three houses to spend time in my top slot this year, but finishes at number two. At then end of the day there a little too much dead space to stick at number once, but still a fantastic house.
3. The Exorcist (Opening Rank: 3, Midpoint Rank: 3)
Continuing to hold steady at number three is the exorcist. The buildup and tension in this house is top notch. One thing HHN houses do better than any other haunted houses is tell a story, but this house stands out in that aspect even among other HHN houses. No other house based off a movie I can remember besides Maybe "Halloween" two years ago tells the full story of the movie better than this one.
4. Halloween Two (Opening Rank: 4, Midpoint Rank: 2)
After a stint in the top two, this house settles back down at the number four slot it started in. The Michal Myers masks, the Halloween music, and some truly great scenes put this in the top two for awhile, but the cracks started to show towards the end. Fact is that while the first few and last few scenes are great, the middle is so generically themed that its hard to put this house higher than four.
5. American Horror Story (Opening Rank: 5, Midpoint Rank: 7)
The Freak Show section of this house is the whole reason this house gets a top five spot. I would have loved an entire house based just on Freak Show. The other two parts are solid, but Freakshow steals the show.
6. Krampus (Opening Rank: 6, Midpoint Rank: 6)
Another house holding steady near the middle. Some real strong scenes, including maybe my second favorite of the entire event with the killer gingerbread man, but simply not scary, no costume variety, and some heavy pacing issues. The house just kind of.....ends. it weird, I cant remember any other house ever at HHN ending so suddenly and strangely. Still a lot to like though.
7. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Opening Rank: 1, Midpoint Rank: 4)
A house that started off incredible and fell like a rock, but still a very good house overall, just showed it flaws causing it to drop. I still adore the opening scene with the skulls and bizarre sights, and the smell in the house it gross yet awesome at the same time. However, this is the shortest house this year, which really ended up hurting, and like Halloween two, after repeated run throughs you started to notice how generically themed some of the rooms are.
8. The Walking Dead (Opening Rank: 9, Midpoint Rank: 8)
This is the second best Walking Dead house out of the five, and it still ends up as the second worst of the year which is a testament to how strong the house lineup is this year, and also a testament to how terrible some of the Walking Dead houses have been. Not much else to say, its a Walking Dead House, been there, done that.
9. Lunatics Playground (Opening Rank: 8, Midpoint Rank: 9)
The 5th 3-D house at HHN since 2010 and by far the worst. I didnt think there could be a worse 3-D house than Afterlife in 2013 but this one somehow managed.
My only real gripe with HHN this year is that literally everything involving Chance was awful. And I mean awful. Her house was awful. Her scarezone was awful. Her parkwide dialogue over the speakers is awful, and annoying as hell. Her merchandise was awful, it looks like shes throwing up the HHN logo.
