Halloween Fun

The 9 best Dallas-Fort Worth haunted houses for thrills and chills

Dallas-Fort Worth does not lack for great haunted houses. In fact, given the number of scare factories spread across the area, we might be able to claim the most per capita in the United States.

So where should you get your screams this Halloween season? We've rounded up the best for your enjoyment — or terror, as it were. It's not a complete list of DFW-area haunted houses, but rather one that guarantees genuine frights.

All of the haunted houses are open every weekend through Halloween; check each event page for additional dates and times.

The Boneyard Haunted House
Don't go looking for the Boneyard Haunted House in Arlington this year; it's now at Southwest Center Mall in Dallas. It features a great blend of high-tech effects and good, old-fashioned blood-and-guts scare tactics. The Boneyard promises to be even bigger in 2016, complete with new scenes, animatronics, and movie-quality props.

Cutting Edge Haunted House
Cutting Edge is a dark attraction filled with terrifying live actors, amazing special effects, and incredible monsters. Located in a 100-year-old abandoned meat-packing plant in Fort Worth, it is an intense, multistory, multithemed haunted house that uses the building's former tenant as wicked inspiration. Set aside some time for this one, as it takes visitors an average of 55 minutes to explore Cutting Edge.

Dan's Haunted House presents Twisted Fate: The Death of Unkle Kreep
Most haunted houses go the standard zombie, clown, or serial killer route, but not Dan's Haunted House in Lake Dallas. For three years running, there has been a Japanese demon theme, with a continuing storyline involving the eerily named Unkle Kreep. His fate this year is designed to creep out any and all visitors, which is what we want out of any good haunted house.

Dark Hour Haunted House
The rare year-round haunted house, Dark Hour in Plano boasts sets worthy of a Broadway production, professional actors, and a strategic use of technology to produces a genuine theatrical experience. Themed around the Witch of Coven Manor, you're not likely to see higher quality scares anywhere in the area.

Hangman's House of Horrors
Changing venues this year is Hangman's House of Horrors, now located north of downtown Fort Worth. It's an oldie but a goodie, celebrating its 28th year serving up scares. The haunted tour includes three separate attractions: the classic Hangman’s House of Horrors, No Place Like Home 3D, and Zombie Outbreak. Additionally, the 19-acre property will be transformed into a festival area featuring live bands, food trucks, free photos, festival activities, novelties, and more.

Moxley Manor Open House
The claim to fame for Moxley Manor in Bedford seems to be unique on this list: It was featured in the 2014 feature film The Houses October Built, about a group of friends traveling across the country looking for the best haunted houses. It promises a new level of fear this year, with the addition of the new Pitch Dark Haunted House.

Reindeer Manor Halloween Park
This haunted house complex in Red Oak may sound cute and cuddly, but that just masks the horrors it has in store. The oldest haunted attraction in Texas features three separate areas: Reindeer Manor Estate, 13th Street Morgue, and Dungeon of Doom, plus a bonus area called the Shadow House that has a terrifying pitch-black maze, where you have only a glow stick to light the way from the entrance to the exit.

Six Flags over Texas presents Fright Fest
You can combine your amusement park screams with terror screams at Six Flags Over Texas' annual Fright Fest. Young kids can enjoy fun Looney Tunes action during the day, and then the zombies, clowns, and other freaks come out at night to scare you at four separate attractions. For less intense fun, check out one of the Halloween-themed shows.

Slaughter House/J&F House of Terror
Slaughter House has moved from Deep Ellum to Garland, teaming up with another haunted house, J&F House of Terror, to double your scares. Slaughter House is now in its 16th year, making it the longest-running haunted house in Dallas County, and it will once again terrify with its group of murderous clowns. Not much is known about J&F House of Terror, but they're promising an all-new haunted maze.

Reindeer Manor Halloween Park in Red Oak has three separate attractions to scare visitors.

Photo courtesy of Reindeer Manor Halloween Park

Reindeer Manor Halloween Park in Red Oak has three separate attractions to scare visitors.

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Movie Review

Comedy all-stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd can't save Anaconda sequel

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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