Source: EW.com

The Weeknd and Universal Studios will take your breath away at this year's Halloween Horror Nights, where haunted houses will be themed to the surreal world of the pop superstar's 2020 album After Hours.

EW can exclusively reveal that both Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Orlando Resort will open The Weeknd: After Hours Nightmare walk-through attractions later this year as part of the annual Halloween Horror Nights celebration. There, guests will travel into the mind of the Canadian singer-songwriter to visit the twisted fantasies that inspired his hit album.

"I always wanted my own Halloween Horror Nights haunted house, as Halloween has always been significant to my music, so this is a total dream come to life," Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye said in an exclusive statement to EW. "I feel like my music videos have served as a launching pad for a collaboration like this, and I cannot wait for people to experience this madness!"

As Halloween Horror Nights executive producer John Murdy and Orlando senior show director Charles Gray exclusively tell EW, the single-house experience at both parks expands on the grim world The Weeknd built through After Hours' visuals (think bandaged maniacs, excessive plastic surgery terrors, and, yes, red suits). They describe the journey as a "fever dream" hellscape about "surviving L.A." — and the horrors that come with it.

"What came out of it was extracting the nightmares: What would it be like if we were inside his head while he's creating this album?" says Gray, adding that The Weeknd's affinity for films like A Clockwork Orange, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Jacob's Ladder is on display throughout the project. "It isn't a retelling of the After Hours album; it's entering the nightmares that were the muse for his songs. "There's a lot of surrealistic, horrific imagery as we expanded upon scenarios inspired by the videos."

Soundtracked by six of The Weeknd's songs — "After Hours," "In Your Eyes," "Heartless," "Blinding Lights," "Save Your Tears" (solo version), and "Too Late" — the house is broken into three sections, preceded by an indoctrination into the performer's subconscious.

"The first thing we do once we enter the house proper is go into a sequence called Nightmare Extraction, where you see The Weeknd, almost like in Clockwork Orange, where he's strapped into a chair with a headset, and the headset is connected to all these different monitors. All this darkness going on inside his head creating this album is being sucked out, and you're seeing these images flash subliminally, like the whole thing is about to explode," explains Murdy, who says there will be an "articulated," lifelike figure of The Weeknd's body that will twitch as guests walk by. "All of that stuff that's getting pulled out of his head, we're going to have to face all of those things and dark places he went to in creating the album."

What follows is a trek through environments we've seen before in The Weeknd's music videos, but taken a step further. After Hours Club, for example, is an industrial warehouse lifting vibes from "In Your Eyes," including long "hallways in a dirty, dingy, warehouse club." ("And the bathrooms are nasty," per Gray.) Next, the Las Vegas-themed After Hours Hotel throbs with the sounds of "Heartless." The finale takes place in the After Hours Station, a subterranean metro tunnel that recalls the locale last seen in The Weeknd's disturbing After Hours short film.

There are live performers and effects around every corner as well. You'll meet "a horrific toad creature unlike anything you've ever seen before," Murdy promises, noting a particular moment lifted from the "Heartless" music video. Lizard heads and piranha faces proliferate the club, and textured bits of, well, "stuff" will dangle from above and graze your skin. You'll also be blasted in the face with high-pressure air and spurts of water, all to "make you think you're getting hit in the face with blood."

"It can get pretty tactile," Gray finishes. Have fun sleeping tonight.

confirmed

Neat, in page one, not for sale (trade only for a psa 10 1st ed 'Zard)

Whats universal halloween horror nights?

basically something Universal Studios does every October where they have a bunch of haunted houses/scare zones in their theme park.

In

Cant wait for folks to hate on this

They’re hating on it hard on twitter

White people are so weird man

No offense tommy boy

this is true

It’s ok

White people are in fact weird!

“Youre wasting an IP on the weeknd, YUCK”

The man cant do anything without getting hated 😭

is it just gonna be scary d***ged out white women?

wait what about a kiss land inspired attraction i dont think that would happen but it would be crazy

they just jealous their fav aint doing any of this

i cant stand the replies on every single twitter post: "make better music"

they are just bots. there is no way someone can comment that a second after he tweets

Howling

it's gonna be the weeknd singing in high pitch scaring all the normies

Well I’ll be going to my first universal horror nights

He wanna be MJ so badly

how does loving horror movies correlate to wanting to be like MJ?

Having his own section in a Horror Themed Amusement Park is exactly something MJ would do.

I mean true, but I don't see how this relates to just exclusively wanting to be like MJ. Abel always been a fan of the horror movie genre and used horror movie aesthetics throughout various different album rollouts.