With official tie-ins to Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, Halloween Haunt Fest 2025 aimed high with blockbuster horror sets — but P M BUCHAN found it a mix of brilliance and inconsistency
The UK’s inaugural Halloween Haunt Fest arrived in 2025 with extraordinary fanfare. Promoted as early as February as the UK’s most anticipated new immersive scream park, the launch was a masterclass in publicity, trailing news, promotional videos and scare maze reveals throughout the year.
Early announcement stories and marketing promised “sensational special effects, jaw dropping sets, and unexpected thrilling moments” across “four jaw-dropping interactive attractions.”
The coup that sealed its reputation was landing the license to operate the UK’s first official Texas Chainsaw Massacre scare maze, instantly putting this temporary Hertfordshire event in competition with the country’s established attractions.
For a first-year event to secure such a significant IP felt genuinely impressive, suggesting serious ambition and investment.
The vast majority of successful Halloween scare attractions in the UK are either linked to existing attractions: theme parks like Alton Towers Scarefest and Thorpe Park Fright Nights and family attractions like FEAR at Avon Valley and Farmaggedon; or housed inside repurposed structures like Salvation Z at Gloucester Prison and Scare City at the old Camelot Theme Park.
The existing infrastructure allows event organisers to focus their efforts on building effective scare mazes. Halloween Haunt Fest, however, which is based at Hertfordshire Showground and just 35 minutes by train from central London, is an all-new event made up like a music festival in a series of temporary tents and gazebos, all erected and constructed for this limited event.
That festival comparison is apt. If you’re looking for a horror-themed family night out, particularly if you’re new to scare mazes, you’re likely to have a decent time here.
With high-quality food trucks, fairground rides, bars and entertainment stages, the event infrastructure was well-executed.
Queuing systems functioned pretty well, lighting was professionally managed, facilities were adequate, and the overall site felt well organised to prepare visitors for a night of fun.
Roaming stars of Halloween Haunt Fest
Throughout the grounds you’ll meet miscreant actors, including the Mad Hatter, giant spiders, spirit walkers, zombie Barbie, and some of the most spirited chainsaw-wielding madmen of any horror attraction anywhere.
At no point during our visit did five minutes pass without somebody running full throttle from the actors with chainsaws. These roaming performers were unquestionably the highlight of the evening, bringing consistent energy and entertainment throughout.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The importance of immersion
Texas Chainsaw Massacre was both the night’s most ambitious maze and the clearest illustration of Halloween Haunt Fest’s central problem: they understood what horror fans wanted to see, but hadn’t invested in making it work.
The 1974 film original epitomised grindhouse style, with raw 16mm grain, brutal honesty, and oppressive Texas heat. One of its most iconic moments is Leatherface’s kill that culminated in the slam of a metal meat-locker door, with a sound and weight of awful finality. It’s a moment that strips away cinematic convention and presents murder as swift, mechanical slaughter. The door slam itself became shorthand for a new kind of horror: visceral and stripped of melodrama.
Halloween Haunt Fest recreated this scene and I was lucky enough to watch the set piece alone. Everything looked excellent, until the actor pulled shut a flimsy door that looked like wood wrapped in tin-foil, making no noise and looking like it might fall off the hinges. That single terrible prop epitomised the evening’s disconnect between ambition and execution.
The maze packed high-quality actors into set pieces that recreated key moments from the film, including a genuinely brilliant dining table scene with an exceptional grandpa costume, but overall the temporary structure and sparse dressing undermined immersion. Multiple opportunities to take wrong turns backstage didn’t help.
My group ran behind the wrong curtain and got lost, leaving me to experience most rooms alone, which inadvertently created the tension the design should have delivered intentionally.
Unfinished attractions: Sci-fi, witches, blood and honey
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey was sadly unfinished during our visit, boasting incredible masks and overbearing, well-cast actors in almost empty sets that felt like a DIY home Halloween haunt.
Given the quality of the first film in the series, the barren aesthetic and over-reliance on hanging pond liner felt oddly appropriate, but an outdoor section of the Texas Chainsaw maze proved the team could dress exterior spaces effectively when they chose to.
E.D.E.N. felt entirely suitable for families with young children but bore little resemblance to the trailers released in summer. Trying to pass wooden constructions off as futuristic spaceships resulted in something closer to Red Dwarf than genuine sci-fi.
The aliens bore a suspicious resemblance to Korok creatures from recent Zelda games, and the E.D.E.N. actors seemed oblivious to Cornwall’s world-famous Eden Project, which they invoked multiple times.
The Trials of Jane Wenham: The Hertfordshire Witch was the most consistent offering, with interactive sets, well-rehearsed actors, and an innovative layout that matched its theme. The efficacy of that maze proved that the designers had all the skills necessary to deliver an excellent experience.
The verdict: Right team, wrong priorities
Halloween Haunt Fest’s opening weekend revealed a curious paradox: competent event organizers who hadn’t invested adequately in the core attractions they’d spent months promoting. The site infrastructure, entertainment programming, food quality, and operational logistics all functioned professionally. The roaming actors brought genuine enthusiasm and skill to their roles.
What failed was the actual maze experience, the thing the marketing had positioned to compete with the best in the UK. Some masks were excellent, some actors performed admirably, but sparse sets and unconvincing props undermined what they were trying to achieve. The gap between understanding what the iconic Texas Chainsaw door slam means and investing in a metal door encapsulates the entire experience.
Based on the early press launch, Halloween Haunt Fest became a victim of its own success. The excitement generated by the Texas Chainsaw Massacre licence and marketing campaign positioned this as the UK’s most highly anticipated new scream park, ensuring the first visitors were experienced horror fans and influencers who travel internationally for scare attractions and are comparing to the best in the world.
I wouldn’t advise that hardcore enthusiasts make a special journey, but for families local to Hertfordshire seeking a first Halloween experience, the event offers enough entertainment value to justify a visit.
The team clearly understands horror, respects the source material, and can organise a slick event. What they needed, and what the entrance fees should have provided, was more investment in the mazes themselves and a tighter focus. A Texas Chainsaw Massacre maze that consistently reached the heights of the best elements on display would have been a nightmare-inducing, unforgettable experience.
P M BUCHAN is a writer whose stories have featured in Rue Morgue, Kerrang!, and SCREAM: The Horror Magazine. He writes about culture, horror and dark art here.
