Here’s What You Need To Know About The Weeknd’s ‘After Hours’ Nightmare At Halloween Horror Nights

“I said to Abel that we wanted to use his music videos as inspiration,” enthused John Murdy, Creative Director of Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood. He added, “Then we’d put them through the Halloween Horror Nights filter and turn that dial up on the horror side,” enthused John Murdy, Creative Director of Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood.

Acclaimed artist and producer The Weeknd, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, has teamed up with theme park creatives to bring The Weeknd: After Hours Nightmare to life. It’s a haunted house inspired by several tracks from his similarly titled record-breaking album and it features at Universal Studios in Los Angeles and Orlando.

I was given a behind-the-scenes tour of the LA installation ahead of Halloween Horror Nights kicking off on Thursday, September 8, 2022. The separately ticketed event runs through Monday, October 31, 2022. Here are a few key things Murdy was keen to share about creating The Weeknd: After Hours Nightmare.

How it started

We started talking about this a little over a year ago when his folks reached out to us. He had an interest in this already. That happens all the time now with Halloween Horror Nights. We have a lot of celebrities that are huge fans of this event. You can almost set your watch by their appearance at the event, and you know they’re going to come every year. However, I had no idea that he was a fan.

How “After Hours” and Halloween Horror Nights cross over

Honestly, off the top of my head, I had a very peripheral knowledge of his music. I knew the hits and everything but I didn’t know much about him, so I spent about an hour and a half on a video call just getting to know him, which was cool. You often do things like that, and there are 20 people on the call, but it was just me and him, one-on-one. It was a call to get to know each other, but I wanted to know if he had an idea, and he did. Across the board, he’s very personally involved in everything he does. What he wanted to do is he wanted to take “After Hours” and focus on that. He explained how he conceived it to be a universe; if you watch all the music videos, they connect. I started researching him like crazy. I watched all the music videos, and that was when the light bulb went off. If you watch the one for “In Your Eyes,” that video plays like an 80s slasher. If you watch After Hours, the little short film he did to launch the album, that also plays like a horror film.

The inspirations behind “After Hours” and the Halloween Horror Nights haunted house

One of the things Abel did that was beneficial for me was to give me all the things that inspired him when he was creating the album, and it was almost all cinematic. He’s got a really good knowledge of cinema history, and I think he aspired to be a director at one point. He probably will end up being a director. There was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, A Clockwork Orange, 12 Monkeys, and his favorite movie is Jacob’s Ladder, so you start putting all that together. After our initial conversation, I went away for a couple of weeks with my counterparts in Orlando, and this year, we collaborated creatively a lot more than we usually do.

Creating the concept with The Weeknd

My production designer and art director, Chris Williams, Mike Aiello, and Charles Gray from Orlando, and I had a series of brainstorming sessions. It was awesome because Charles and Mike had ideas that Chris and I didn’t have and vice versa. We came back, and my opening line to Abel when I pitched it to him was, ‘If we could be inside your head when you were creating After Hours, what would that look like? What would that feel like? Would we even survive that experience?’ What spoke to me, being somebody who lives in Ireland now but was born and raised in LA, was that I understood it was about this image-obsessed star culture of Hollywood and the extraordinary lengths people go to preserve that youth and beauty. We wanted to play into that big time. It’s about surviving LA and what happens when you become a huge star, and it’s about Vegas, and the excesses of it play a significant role in his music videos. I spent a lot of time in Las Vegas working there, perhaps too much, when they wanted to turn it into a theme park.

First impressions count

Since it started with the album, I’ve always wanted to do this as a façade. I want to do a vinyl album of “After Hours,” open to the inner gatefold. The version we used for this happens to be the limited edition, white, blood-splattered vinyl version of the album. We decided to create The Weeknd’s album cover giant-sized so that you’re literally walking into the album. Above our heads on the catwalks are all these intelligent light fixtures hanging all over the place because the vibe we wanted to create when you come in here is that it’s a party. For the casual fan who doesn’t know The Weeknd like hardcore fans, that’s precisely what they would expect. We wanted them to come here and go, ‘What is this? How is this horror?’ and then take it twisted. After Hours Nightmare is about a third larger than a typical Halloween Horror Nights haunted house. So this is a big house, and it’s pretty close to being the biggest we’ve ever done.

The Weeknd has already checked it out

Abel was here yesterday, and I walked him and his crew through. I got a call over the weekend, and they were like, ‘Can we come Monday?’ and I was like, ‘We’re not done but okay.’ He’s super excited. He loves Halloween so this is the ultimate wish fulfillment for him in some ways. If you follow his Instagram, you’ll know he goes to extreme lengths and has professional makeup artists make him up. He’s done Serpico and did Sherman Klump from The Nutty Professor one year in full Rick Baker makeup. I always find that, whether it’s filmmakers or music stars like Black Sabbath back in 2013 when we’re working with them and Ozzy Osbourne or directors like Jordan Peele, they love this and go nuts over it. It’s because you get an instant reaction when you go to a Horror Nights haunted house. You can see the people and how they’re reacting to it in real-time, whereas if you’re making an album or a movie, you’re in isolation so much, so you don’t get that audience feel until maybe you go to a premiere or you’re touring a record. I sent him my creative narrative for him to read and bless. The next thing we did was the character design, I sent all that to him and then the scenic elevations, so he’s been involved every step of the way and more than a lot of folks.

What lies in wait for fans? CONT
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AINS SPOILERS!

What we did thematically is divide After Hours Nightmare into three main sections the After Hours club, which I mentioned, is inspired by the music video “In Your Eyes.” Then we have the After Hours Hotel Casino, which is inspired by “Heartless” and “Blinding Lights,” and the Vegas section of this, and then in the last section, we’re going to go to his After Hours station. That is inspired by the short film he did to launch the album, which is pretty much like the Metro here in LA.

In the first scene, seated in a chair, like in A Clockwork Orange style, is an animated figure of The Weeknd. He’s got this headset contraption on and cables coming out of his head that feed into panels of meters and video monitors. The idea is that everything inside his head is being sucked out. It’s inspired by a music video he did with Kenny G. We call this scene ‘Nightmare Extraction.’ The second scene is in a club and is inspired by his music video for “In Your Eyes,” where he’s a slasher character. Then we head back of house, and The Weeknd is stalking that girl with the blonde wig from that video. That is the jump scare part of that area. The “Too Late” video inspires the next bit, and we go to the women’s restroom, which is also tagged ‘Cosmetic Surgery.’ This is where we start riffing on LA culture, plastic surgery, and appearance in the ultimate disgusting gross away. Then we’re in the men’s restroom that says ‘Body Optimization’ in graffiti on the door. Any guy who came in this bathroom, the girls cut off their head and arms, and they’re using all those body pieces to create the ideal man. Now we leave the club environment and go to the Vegas section. The message is that if you stay in Vegas too long, it will not end well. We take you into a mirror maze inspired by The Weeknd’s Super Bowl performance and there are the guys with bandaged faces. I said to Abel that we wanted to use his music videos as inspiration, but then we’d put them through the Halloween Horror Nights filter and turn that dial up on the horror side. Next, we take you into the lounge area, and The Weeknd is serenading a large toad. When he licks the toad, the whole room changes, and it’s this entire nightmare scenario. We go into a hallway in a casino, and things get weirder as we go, he’s starting to transform, and that brings us to the last section, After Hours station. You go through a door that says No Entry, and you’re in what appears to be a metro subway train before appearing to bring you right back to where you started, except it’s all covered in blood, and there are a few final surprises.