FreeForm’s Halloween Road Offers a Fun Escape into Your Favorite Halloween Movies

A Christmas tree, a vibrant red heart, and a brilliant four-leaf clover, all painted on trees, stand as sentries to the gaping smile of a giant jack o lantern. Our car drives forward, entering the mouth, and we are swallowed whole. In another world, thirty pumpkins line the fence of an old Victorian home. Next to it, a gothic cemetery filled with crumbling gravestones, thick fog, and a patchwork woman posed delicately on the grass. And there’s Jack, the Pumpkin King, his dog Zero not far behind. He stands atop the curling edge of a hill, backlit against an orange moon. We are now in Halloween Town. Halloween Road

The FreeForm Television network kicks off their 31 Nights of Halloween programming every year with an Immersive Experience in Los Angeles. Last Year they brought Halloween Town to the Hollywood Athletic Club with an Instagram Palace that delivered photo opportunities, cocktails, and even a Drag Night. With the covid-19 restrictions this year, FreeForm had to retool their experience and came up with Halloween Road: A Drive-Thru Halloween Experience with scenes from A Nightmare Before Christmas, Hocus Pocus, Beetlejuice, The Addams Family and Ghostbusters.

Halloween Road captures the nostalgia of your favorite Halloween films. While the main features are Nightmare before Christmas and Hocus Pocus, there is a generous sprinkling of other films, such as Beetlejuice, The Addams Family, and Ghostbusters thrown in, offering a photo opportunity for fans of these films. But Halloween Road isn’t just about the movies, it’s also an opportunity for kids and adults alike to go trick-or-treating, spin Oogie Boogie’s wheel for prizes or tricks, watch a Hocus Pocus stage show, and take plenty of pictures in the worlds of these movies.
Upon arrival, your car was checked in and everyone received a black canvas goody bag filled with promo materials, temporary tattoos, and a list of scavenger hunt items you were encouraged to search for throughout the drive. These range from finding Thing from The Addams Family to locating clever details hidden within the sets. A Spotify playlist was also provided with the soundtrack to A Nightmare Before Christmas to ensure you were in the right mood for the drive—a nice addition for any Drive-Thru experience and one that The Bite LA used to perfection as well.

On your path, your car is encouraged to drive slowly to see all the gorgeous sets, as well as stop at photo booths, spin Oogie’s wheel, and trick-or-treat at various stations. The photo booths take a picture of your car and then superimpose your car and its inhabitants into Halloween Town from A Nightmare Before Christmas or in front of a freeform Halloween Road banner. Oogie’s wheel offers a trick, a treat, and a special prize. While we don’t know what the other two were, our treat was two pop-up cards of scenes from Hocus Pocus and Nightmare before Christmas. As for the four trick-or-treat stations, a large claw was extended from either the right or left of your car, allowing your family, friends, or you to grab a small goodie bag of candy. With four stations, everyone in your car should be able to get a bag of bite-sized treats for themselves.

The entire event occurs in the wooded area surround the Heritage Square Museum as well as the road down the center of the historic landmark itself. Heritage Square is the perfect location for this event as the Victorian manors provide the perfect backdrop for Halloween Town, Hocus Pocus, and especially, The Addams Family. There’s nothing like using actual locations for your haunt, and the authenticity of the manors here only make the fake cemeteries and sets feel that much more real.

To further enhance the setting, the houses are lit to perfection. The first half of the experience was simply lit with colored lights illuminating the themed displays and directing you down the path to the next station. Upon entering the Heritage Square grounds, the simple lighting was replaced with giant psychedelic projections that themed each of the houses to one of the featured movies. With deep purples and blues, Dr Finkelstein’s Silhouette is easily seen from within his lab. Looking at the Addams’ home, the lighting allows for a clear view of Wednesday Addams as she wanders her porch, looking upon all the new visitors just wishing they could enter her rod-iron gate. And of course, the swirling, snake-like black and white spiral is perfect to denote Beetlejuice, providing the perfect ending to this nostalgic haunted trail.

While you never left your car, the experience was able to elevate itself from a photography opportunity with trick-or-treating to an actual show with a few musical numbers performed by some wonderful drag queens (Dennis Tong and others). They were an absolute highlight, as they perfectly matched the costumes of the three Sanderson sisters. Watching the sisters dance across the stage, lip-syncing to “I put a Spell on You”, made me feel just like I was in the film.

Freeform’s Halloween Road is the perfect drive-down memory lane for the classic Halloween movies of our youth. The fact that FreeForm is able to obtain these IPs really elevates the experience as they can directly reference the subject matter and reproduce exact scenes from the movie with studio quality props. Combine that with some fun trick-or-treating, some amazing musical numbers, and a perfect location, this experience was well worth anyone’s time. While it only existed for a few short days, the experience will live on in the hearts of those who were able to attend.

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