Halloween Frights

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

Reindeer Manor Halloween Park in Red Oak

Reindeer Manor in Red Oak is one of nine haunted houses in Dallas-Fort Worth guaranteed to deliver scares this Halloween season.

Photo courtesy of Reindeer Manor Halloween Park

No matter where you live in Dallas-Fort Worth, you're not far from a great haunted house. The sheer number and quality of them might allow us to lay claim to the best haunted house-area in the country.

We've rounded up some the best haunted houses for your enjoyment and/or terror. This is not a complete list of area haunted houses, but it's one that features the best of the best.

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

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 V
Most haunted houses go the standard zombie, clown, or serial killer route, but not Dan's Haunted House in Lake Dallas. They have a Japanese demon theme, with a continuing storyline involving terrifying samurai, frightening spirits, ghostly yōkai, and sinister creatures that inhabit the Japanese waters. All good haunted houses try to up their game each year, and Dan's does so by constantly changing things up.

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 produce a genuine theatrical experience. Themed around the Witch of Coven Manor, it almost guarantees you're not likely to see higher quality scares or more attention to detail anywhere in the area. Even better, you can come back at Christmas, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, and other times of year to enjoy other holiday-themed terror.

Hangman's House of Horrors
Some haunted houses come and go, but Hangman's House of Horrors seems to be eternal. Celebrating its 30th anniversary, the haunted house in north Fort Worth 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 Haunted 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 offers two haunted attractions for the price of one, with the original Moxley Manor joined this year by a second called Big Top Terror.

Reindeer Manor Halloween Park
Don't get fooled by the cute and cuddly name of this haunted house complex in Red Oak; it just masks the horrors it has in store. The oldest haunted attraction in Texas, celebrating its 45th anniversary, 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
Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington will transform and feature 20 chilling attractions, including four new ones, that promise to deliver spine-chilling scares. There will be activities for the entire family throughout the day, then thrills and terror after the sun goes down. Ghouls are set free for their daily hunting rituals once the dark of night washes over the park.

Slaughter House Farms / Zombie Safari
Right next to door to each other in Forney are two haunted attractions guaranteed to get your blood pressure up. Slaughter House Farms has a grisly theme revolving around clowns, one that anyone with coulrophobia would probably do their best to avoid. Zombie Safari is not a haunted house, but a takeover of Cousins Paintball Park at which you can ride around on "Zombie Response Vehicles" shooting at roaming zombies without fear of being shot back.

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Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first but not by much

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films likeM3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

movies film

Halloween Frights

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

Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first but not by much

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