Bray Wyatt has been part of two PPV cinematic bouts. One worked masterfully while the other was a huge swing and a miss.
The most talked-about “match” of WrestleMania 36 was the Firefly Fun House Match, wherein Bray Wyatt (and his alter ego The Fiend) subjected John Cena to a rundown of his own career (among other things) in an absurdist short film that involved numerous parodies of wrestling tropes and a Vince McMahon puppet. It was groundbreaking, but it wasn’t the first “cinematic” match Bray Wyatt was involved in.
At the 2017 Payback pay-per-view, Wyatt took on Randy Orton in a no-DQ bout called the House of Horrors Match, which started in a creepy house and ended at the arena. It was way less acclaimed than the Firefly Fun House Match, so let’s look at the two and evaluate why one works and the other doesn’t.
10 Firefly Fun House: Entirely Cinematic
The Firefly Fun House Match begins in the WWE Performance Center with a fake-out John Cena entrance before immediately transitioning into the actual Fun House and getting down to absurdist business. It’s a match that entirely depends on set dressing, editing, sudden costume changes and shifts in visual style to tell its story, thus justifying its “experimental” format. If they tried to do it with a live audience and Michael Cole and JBL talking over it, it wouldn’t be the same.
9 House of Horrors: Too Much of a “Real” Match
Despite all the creepy smash cuts to mangled dolls and dilapidated walls, House of Horrors is just two wrestlers having an Extreme Rules match with a different background -- all pummeling and throwing one another into furniture. What is the difference between this match and the Orton/Edge match at WrestleMania 36, besides length? It’s alright for what it is, but what leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth is that the competitors have to make their way back to the arena and win the match in the ring, giving the whole experience a watered-down feel.
8 Firefly Fun House: Perfectly Produced
With its myriad post-production tricks, stock sound effects, and use of worn-down old WWE props like the rusty blue steel cage bars and the old Smackdown set with the fist, the Firefly Fun House Match is a perfectly produced piece.
It all looks pretty great, except for the parts where it’s intentionally supposed to look not great, and makes superb use of one of the best production crews in pro wrestling to make something exceptionally weird for WWE. It’s like David Lynch was hired to make Southpaw Regional Wrestling.
7 House of Horrors: Not That Well-Produced
Aside from the aforementioned “disturbing” insert shots spliced into the footage, the House of Horrors Match isn’t as slick as it should be. It feels like the set designers did their best to dress a kind of crappy looking suburban house to look like something out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but it’s hard to get past the presence of carpet (!) on the floors and an extremely normal kitchen where someone scrawled FOLLOW THE BUZZARDS or whatever on the fridge. Plus, it’s shot like a regular WWE backstage brawl, complete with trademark needlessly jerky camera movements and parts where you can see the cameraman’s shadow.
6 Firefly Fun House: Self-Aware
When it comes to tone, most WWE content is either deadly serious or a MadTV sketch. The Firefly Fun House is, to quote Bray Wyatt himself, “the color red in a world of black and white” thanks to its strong sense of self-awareness. It has more in common with something like the Final (or Ultimate) Deletion. The Firefly Fun House match is focused and has a serious intent, but also knows its execution is playful and silly.
5 House of Horrors: Not That Scary
There may be no commentary over the cinematic parts of the House of Horrors Match, but you can sort of feel the whole thing try to convince you that it’s a harrowing experience, like when vanilla commentators say stuff like “This is a truly disturbing display” when there’s a regular beatdown with a kendo stick happening on the entrance ramp. It may be because of WWE’s PG restrictions on content, but there’s nothing all that horrific about Bray Wyatt pushing a dirty refrigerator on top of a guy.
4 Firefly Fun House: Great Use of Character
The Firefly Fun House match may go down as one of the best kinds of things WWE’s ever produced thanks to its bold deconstruction of the John Cena character. In recent years, WWE’s come to acknowledge that Cena’s years on top of the company have turned him into a divisive figure, and here WWE finally embraces that by having Bray Wyatt use it all against him -- his dopey debut against Kurt Angle, his rapper gimmick, his often heelish behavior as a face -- all while comparing him to the biggest secret heel in wrestling history, Hulk Hogan.
Plus, the fact that John Cena’s promise to expose the most “overhyped” and “entitled” wrestler in WWE history turned out to be ultimately in reference to himself is an incredible revelation.
3 House of Horrors: Could Have Been Anyone
Bray Wyatt is such an all-time great wrestling villain because he’s not only a physical force but also a psychological threat whether or not you decide to buy into the supernatural powers. Randy Orton is a psychopath who’s closer to being a serial killer than he is to being John Cena. There’s a story to be told in having the theatrical Wyatt and the uncaring Orton clash, but the House of Horrors did not do that. As it is, you could have switched out Randy Orton for Roman Reigns and it would have been the same exact match.
2 Firefly Fun House: John Cena Lost -- Hard
The ending to the Firefly Fun House match is wild. After deconstructing John Cena’s entire wrestling persona for 15 minutes, The Fiend finally appears and takes him down with a Mandible Claw. The Fiend stands triumphant over Big Match John, and Cena simply vanishes, as if deleted in the Matt Hardy style. Cena hasn’t been seen on WWE television since and has hinted at retirement on social media. More than just a novelty match, it was a match that felt like it mattered because it was about the characters as much as it was an Adult Swim flavored spectacle.
1 House of Horrors: Did Not Affect Its Characters
Conversely, what was gained from the House of Horrors match? Bray Wyatt dominated in the cinematic portion and Randy Orton dominated in the in-ring portion -- that is, until the Singh Brothers and Jinder Mahal interfered, allowing Wyatt to hit a quick Sister Abigail for the pin. So ultimately, this elaborate horror movie cinematic match didn’t really accomplish anything narratively except to help Randy Orton pivot into a title feud with Jinder Mahal. That’s just regular WWE stuff, man.