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.

theater holidays

Movie Review

The End of Oak Street can't live up to its Spielberg inspirations

Photo by Daniel McFadden

Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway in The End of Oak Street.

Steven Spielberg is the iconic director of the last 50 years, so it’s no surprise that many other filmmakers have borrowed from his classic films. But most of the time those come in the form of references or homages, not straight up theft, which is what it feels like watching The End of Oak Street play out in front of your eyes.

Set in the early 1980s in an idyllic suburban neighborhood of an unnamed city, Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) are parents to two teenagers, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery). They’re also possibly heading toward divorce, as Audrey is secretly writing a novel with a thinly-veiled plot about their life, and Brian is cagey about having to earn extra money with a pizza delivery job.

That all gets put on the backburner when a mysterious event takes their entire neighborhood back to the time of dinosaurs. Armed with little more than a shotgun and sledgehammer, Audrey and Brian do their best to keep the family safe in their house. But the longer the ordeal goes on, circumstances force them out onto the streets and into the increasing danger that’s all around them.

Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, the film tries immensely hard to be like the Spielberg movies its filmmaker clearly adores, but fails at almost every turn. It never earns the broken family in ‘80s suburbia vibes that were prevalent in E.T., going all in right away in the opening scene with a neighborhood block party that feels forced. Other elements like a bully who has it out for Brian, the family dog that disappears, and an angry neighbor come across as the tropes they are and not as organic parts of the plot.

When it finally gets to its dinosaur sequences, they pale in comparison to those found in Jurassic Park. The strange manner in which the dinosaurs appear is a big part of that, but the action involving them forgoes ominous moments that could build tension for those that play up gore in an unexpected way for a PG-13 movie. Many of the attacks have so little emotional meaning that they come off as comical, which is entertaining but in a hollow way.

As if those weren’t enough, Mitchell - perhaps at the behest of producer J.J. Abrams (who made his own Spielbergian film, Super 8) - tries to honor Spielberg in other ways. Just like in Jaws, he employs the use of a split diopter lens, which keeps characters in both the foreground and background in focus. But instead of using it judiciously, it’s brought out in three separate scenes, including a laughable one with the four family members where it turns into overkill.

Hathaway, coming off of a role in The Odyssey that could earn her an Oscar nomination, is the best part of this film. But even her evident skills are dragged down by the ridiculousness of the story, which requires hysterics that even she can’t sell. McGregor can normally be counted on for a good performance, but he gives several line readings with strange cadences that make his already-underwritten character come off worse. Stella and Convery are okay, but their roles are unmemorable overall.

Mitchell and his team can never settle on exactly what type of film they were trying to make, and so even though The End of Oak Street has a few moments that work, they’re surrounded by many others that don’t. In trying to emulate Spielberg - there’s even a blatant Back to the Future (produced by Spielberg) rip-off towards the end - all Mitchell has done is show how difficult it is to be the master.

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The End of Oak Street opens in theaters on August 14.