The Dead Woods Review (2026)

GPS delivered us unerringly to the driveway of The Dead Woods. Fire barrels, parking staff, and signage also announced our arrival. The entrance of the attraction sat across the street from the free parking area, where a food truck set up shop.

Once across the street, the ticketing and queue looked clearly obvious to us as well. Their Facebook page contained most of the basic info needed. There was no website, and no online ticketing – it’s a cash-only operation. Be advised, this attraction requires the signing of a waiver.

The Dead Woods always has a family enterprise sort of feel; we know many family members work together here. We had chats with many of the talkative and friendly people making up the cast and crew. Roaming actors and a killer Halloween soundtrack provided most of the queue entertainment. We should have recorded some of our team doing’ The Time Warp with Chucky!

Fire barrels, dark ‘n’ creepy lighting, Halloween hits playlist, neat-o props including a glowing spider web far above our heads in some tree cover, photo ops, tractors, trailers, and tents – one of which housed a fortune teller doing readings for $10 – created an atmosphere ripe for haunting and suggested the setting to be equal parts junkyard, temporary settlement, and farm.

The queue shelter, complete with skulls on the walls and the rare luxury of some actual seating, somewhat resembled a sinister covered bridge. The rules reading came by way of a recording featuring a weirdly distorted voice – creepily delivered and with some amusing lines about visitors who pee their pants and other such unfortunate circumstances.

The theme when we last visited two years ago, an alien invasion story, presented an interesting premise that we thought did not totally connect with this attraction’s strengths and overall vibe. A Classic Comeback, on the other hand, really landed in their wheelhouse and they smacked it out of the park.

We had tons of fun figuring out and yelling out the movies, even as we dodged and/or cheered on our favorite characters. And talk about deep cuts! We’ve never seen a tribute to 70s proto-slasher Black Christmas or John Carpenter’s awesome follow-up to Halloween, The Fog. Well done, folks.

It seems like this sort of thing should have come up before somewhere, but we cannot remember any other attraction that has put together an entire, 30-minute show where every single scene represented a film. No random monsters, no clown popping up in a cornfield, nothing other than a whole program of cinematic adaptations. We have never given out a 10 in immersion before, but we thought the absolute dedication to the theme here warranted a perfect score for the ‘clear storyline/cohesive themes’ criterion – one of four sub scores in this category.

The film-filled fun carried along with the immersion as we became wrapped up in anticipating and recognizing the next scene. As with most trails, the natural environment of the woods did much of the heavy lifting; at one point, it became disconcertingly clear just how far the woods went back beyond the trail.

Navigating the two black mazes – which were very much black and very many mazes – slowed the momentum for us, as did the frustration of ‘find the exit’ fake-outs after the first few instances. Anyone who reads our reviews regularly knows we suck hard at mazes. We know some people love this stuff, and we acknowledge the tradition of mazes in haunts all the way from their beginnings, but it was just a little too much of the same thing for us when we wanted to get to the next film screening.

In a neat and atmospheric touch, much of the experience was lit by tiki torches, inside the attraction and out. We also came across some effective strobing, those inky black mazes, and the sensational use of a laser swamp to create the mist-laden church from The Fog: a perfect melding of effect to set to theme.

The outstanding Pet Sematary set featured little critter skeletons, eerie animal noises, and …was that a zebra toward the back? Wild! We didn’t know the sequel was Safari Sematary!

While we passed by a fair amount of the old-school black tarp-covered walls that recall haunts of the 70s, solidly built structures sprinkled around the trail represented various homes, huts, and such. We crossed a bridge and saw some interesting props like a tiny, robed skeleton set against a tree on top of a footstool.

The core element of The Dead Woods is its dead-icated cast. Each character looked just like their silver screen/scream counterpart and exhibited the proper behaviors as well. The imposingly tall Michael silently stalked, stopped, and stared, hulking Jason lumbered after us, Leatherface went berserk with the saw, the zombies from George Romero’s Dead series slowly staggered and crawled around, and the Jackal from 13 Ghosts just plain acted nutso and unnerved us with a wicked laugh.

Blake and his ghastly, ghostly, leprous crew looked appropriately hideous and acted insidiously threatening in the foggy church. Billy (Saw) and Sam (Trick ‘r Treat) were just the right size for their characters and showed up accessorized as well, Sam holding a jagged lollipop and Billy rolling around on that trademark trike. We saw a horrible melty-faced victim in The House of Wax.

Ghostface hunted down Sidney with the theatrical running and dagger raising we recognized from Scream. The Exorcist’s Reagan revealed a revolting visage with green puke remnants dried up on her chin.

A delightfully done-up Buffalo Bill gave us the dead eyes, the iconic dance, and the classic flat-affect line: “It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.” And speaking of classic lines, we did get to hear “Heeeeere’s Johnny!” from Mr. Torrance, the failed writer/hotel-sitter/axe-attacker of The Shining.

Freddy put a fright into us, and we came across one of those bizarre Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Hey all you film stars, you’re ready for your close-up – great performance, it’s a wrap!

This was probably our least scary trip here, but being super ‘scurry’ is not the only route to haunt success. The Dead Woods still offered a sizable slice of spookiness and more than made up the difference in the theme’s fun factor – making it easily our most memorable visit.

There were still plenty of frights to be had. A well-placed and well-timed car horn had us hopping and the Pet Sematary felt creepy and disturbing. Michael produced a great lunge scare. The Jackal freaked us out by frantically bouncing off the walls and shrieking and cackling up a storm.

The Fog-bound spirits were creepy as hell, Leatherface impressed with a frenzied and very real-looking stab into the gut of his victim, Freddy popped out of nowhere for a good jump scare, and both Carrie and the Creeper from Jeepers Creepers managed good startles. The zombies did too, someway …how did they just suddenly appear when they’re so damn slow??

We moved through this movie marathon in 35 minutes. While some of that time consisted of stumbling around black mazes and struggling to find exits, there was still more than enough filmic entertainment content. Looking at it another way, they covered 30 total movies (which included a couple outside the attraction), so we were treated to approximately one new movie scene every minute!

With a $20 general admission price, this attraction came up with the highest MPD, or minutes of in-attraction entertainment per dollar spent, of our season so far at 1.75 – and judging by years past, they probably won’t be seriously challenged for this team’s top spot. Anything over 1.5 is outstanding and 1.75 is frankly tremendous.

Fast pass is $30, and again, please keep in mind the tickets are cash only. There wasn’t too big of a crowd the night we were there, but if that happens when you go, $30 is still a pretty good deal that also surpasses the $1-for-1-minute ratio that we like to see. It’s very rare to see even the fast pass price exceeding our 1.0 benchmark. Fans of horror movies need to go to The Dead Woods this season. Just about the only thing missing is the buttered popcorn!