"We take it to the subsequent degree," Murdy tells The Hollywood Reporter. "There are sections of this home which can be fairly wild."
Inside “The Weeknd: After Hours Nightmare” home at Halloween Horror Nights in Los Angeles is among the “most outrageous” scenes the Common Studios Hollywood occasion has achieved.
That’s in response to John Murdy, inventive director for HHN in Hollywood, who teamed with Abel Tesfaye (recognized professionally as The Weeknd) to create a real-life nightmare based mostly on the singer’s 2020 album for this 12 months’s occasion.
“We take it to the subsequent degree,” Murdy tells The Hollywood Reporter of the expertise, which runs as a part of the bigger occasion by means of Oct. 31. “It’s in all probability probably the most surreal experiences we’ve created.”
In a press release given forward of HHN’s early September kickoff, The Weeknd shared that this mission was one in every of his skilled desires. “I all the time wished my very own Halloween Horror Nights haunted home as Halloween has all the time been vital to my music, so this can be a complete dream come to life,” he stated. “I really feel like my music movies have served as a launching pad for a collaboration like this, and I can not await individuals to expertise this insanity.”
The award-winning artist gave the Halloween Horror Nights inventive director fairly a bit to work with when he come to him with an concept for a home based mostly on his hit 2020 album, in addition to his newest launch Daybreak FM. With the assistance of super-producer Michael Dean, music from each albums had been remixed for the home, which itself is split into three sections impressed by a handful of After Hours music movies.
That features the commercial warehouse rave-set After Hours membership, which is “in all probability the closest to the literal music video,” in response to Murdy, and pulls from the “In Your Eyes” video. That’s earlier than it turns right into a bathroom-based cosmetic surgery nightmare that brings to life the terrifying two ladies from the “Too Late” video.
“It’s this loopy liposuction sequence and it’s probably the most outrageous scenes we’ve ever achieved,” he says of the second, set within the membership’s ladies’s rest room and options an “terrible” botched process that “simply drains” somebody. “However then while you go to the lads’s loos, they’re making an idealized boyfriend. There are completely different arms stitched onto his physique they usually’re utilizing The Weeknd’s head. It’s simply lifeless our bodies, lacking arms, heads in all places.”
The home ends with a Vegas-based part, dubbed the After Hours Lodge On line casino, which mixes components of “Heartless” and “Blinding Lights” and sees the carpet, at one level, actually climb the partitions.
“I spent a ton of time researching ugly Vegas carpet. Vegas is the king of the ugliest carpet on the earth,” Murdy says, laughing. “So we take you into that surroundings the place the curtains additionally come to life and attempt to assault you. By the very finish of the room, the structure has gone all loopy, the ground feels type of squishy and also you see The Weeknd’s big eye you thru the window.”
That feeling of disorientation and nervousness was impressed not simply by the artist’s trippy toad-licking expertise in “Heartless,” however by Murdy’s personal time within the metropolis throughout a interval within the ’90s after they had been making an attempt to make it a “family-friendly vacation spot.”
“I needed to keep in Vegas for weeks at a time and could be doing nights engaged on a mission. With the ‘ding, ding, ding, ding’ of the slot machines, after some time, you are feeling such as you’re going loopy. I wished to copy that,” he says.
It’s a musical and visible expertise the workforce was excited to appreciate for the annual occasion, however for it to work, it couldn’t be achieved in a literal method. “L.A. is a superb place. It’s an incredible metropolis. There’s all this power, however there’s a darkness to it, too. That’s what After Hours faucets into,” he says. “It gave us a transparent roadmap of the place to go, however not be a literal replica. We wished to create an expertise that was impressed by all these issues, however then put by means of the lens of Horror Nights.”
Murdy and the Common Studios Hollywood’s HHN workforce already had expertise working with musicians on music-injected homes. Legendary Weapons ‘n’ Roses guitarist Slash often collaborates with the park on the soundtracks to its mazes, however Murdy has additionally achieved homes immediately themed round rockers. Two for his childhood hero Alice Cooper — “Welcome to My Nightmare” based mostly on his well-known ’70s idea album and a 3D home based mostly on Alice Cooper Goes to Hell — and one for Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne’s reunion album and tour.
“These artists, there's a direct and apparent connection to horror. All it's important to do is have a look at a Black Sabbath or Alice Cooper who’s well-known for inventing shock rock with the stage present,” he tells THR. “So we simply translated their songs and albums right into a haunted home.”
The Weeknd, he says, was completely different, and each the workforce in L.A. — together with manufacturing designer Chris Williams and Common Studio Orlando’s HHN inventive workforce, led by Charles Grey and Michael Aiello — knew that after they sat all the way down to hash out how they had been going to infuse the musician’s model right into a Horror Nights home.
Whereas Murdy says he was accustomed to Tesfaye’s sound from the radio and the 2021 Tremendous Bowl halftime present, after the artist reached out to him about doubtlessly doing a home, he dug just a little deeper and located that musically, The Weeknd spanned fairly a couple of genres. He additionally found that although After Hours movies weren't solely outrageous however thematically related.
“The Weeknd thinks very cinematically. He has a very good data of movie and was giving me very particular references,” Murdy recollects. “He would say, ‘Nicely, for this, I used to be desirous about Clockwork Orange or Concern and Loathing in Las Vegas.’ And you may return and watch the movies for like ‘Heartless’and see Concern and Loathing. And even ‘Save Your Tears,’ he advised me that’s like Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Vast Shut and it’s there within the masquerade viewers members.”
“He had a really particular imaginative and prescient of what he wished to do, which is nice,” the HHN L.A. inventive director added. “I really like collaborating with individuals who come to us with an concept.”