After last year's The Hot Mess Chronicles, a Viking funeral of sorts for its former Halloween mainstay, the Abreact comes back to the well this year with The Hot Mess Chronicles 2. This installment features four brand-new short plays, selected through a submissions process in collaboration with Planet Ant Theatre. The varied offerings are presented episodically by an ensemble cast of five, without a unifying theme or thread; this way, the show is able to be both harmlessly funny and soul-stirringly creepy, some to greater effect than others.

The production's first act is plainly its weakest, with two pieces full of quick, short scenes that require long, dark pauses to set up their sight gags and cutaways. "The ‘Screwed’ Tape Letters," an update of the adjacently named C.S. Lewis novel, concerns a minion new to Hell unable to claim the soul of a criminally boring human (Josh Campos and Brian Papandrea, respectively, who also penned the play). This interpretation doesn't add much perspective to the story, serving mostly as a vehicle for some running jokes and absurd-death gags; the highlight is James Nanys as a wasted, laid-back Satan, who’s somehow threatening even as he maintains a level of relaxation that rivals The Big Lebowski’s Dude. Next is "The Way to Win Over Annie" by Steven Blackwell, a romance told in flashbacks with a delicate Sarah Galloway as the title character, the seemingly heaven-sent girl. Whatever foreshadowing is inherent in the script is swallowed by extremely casual staging of the expository present-day scenes — the bleak and strangely funny ending is indeed a surprise, but sadly not of the should've-seen-it-coming variety. Director Mike McGettigan seems trapped in very literal staging for these two pieces; the lack of fluidity saps the scenes of polish and causes some unexpected drag.

Not content to leave its Ringwald home inactive, Who Wants Cake? has actually mounted a second, concurrent production this Halloween season: Conor McPherson's Shining City. Although markedly smaller and subtler than the company's blood-smeared Evil Dead: The Musical, this "contemporary ghost story" is no second-string production. With the right attention to atmosphere and a foundation of noteworthy performances, this understated piece masks its considerable power to rattle the suggestible viewer.

The structure of McPherson's long one-act script is in itself daring, fleshing out parallel stories and leaving it to the viewer to puzzle out how and why they complement and inform each other. The action takes place in the office of new therapist Ian (Jamie Richards) and follows the progress of recently widowed patient John (Joe Bailey), who fears his late wife is haunting him. Sessions with John are balanced by scenes from Ian’s personal life, including a blazing fight with Neasa (Cassandra McCarthy), the mother of his child, and a hesitant, clumsy scene with a stranger (Matthew Turner Shelton). Contrasting scenes in which Ian participates with ones in which he merely listens is certainly an interesting choice, one that deepens the character and reminds the viewer that this isn’t some kind of horror movie — life goes on as usual, even when one person is battling with literal and figurative ghosts.

Halloween is a time to celebrate the unexplained and/or supernatural, but fright and danger can just as easily originate from the better demons of our corruptible human nature. This season, Planet Ant Theatre delights in a manmade horror show in Nightmare Box, an assortment of original short plays by local writers. Not quite it-could-happen-to-YOU cautionary tale, but certainly not a bloodbath for its own sake, the production is an examination of the dark and depraved motivations of people who could, at first, almost pass for normal.

The structure of this two-act play intersperses the title piece, a hero’s journey to prevent a mystery-shrouded event of mythical proportions, among half a dozen stand-alone vignettes. Playwrights Dave Davies, Margaret Edwartowski, Kelly Rossi, Marke Sobolewski, and Shawn Handlon (who also directs) present a handful of characters and scenarios that seem far removed from real life, but each has a kernel of humanity at its core that makes it — if improbable — still frighteningly believable. As the production was created via a call for submissions, it’s understandable that the resulting show is a bit at a loss for unifying tone. A grab bag of styles ranges from aggressive confrontation to feather-light black comedy to unveiling intimate horror; twist endings and staggering reveals abound. Although the production has a few gory surprises in store, the intrigue relies in large part on story and character, preying on emotional and intellectual fear responses rather than resorting to shock value.

"Dying is easy; comedy is hard"? Try both at once. In large part, what makes Evil Dead: The Musical such cultish fun is its dedication to reproducing the original horror films' gore and suspense, woven right into the utterly insane campiness of its silly tunes and raunchy dialogue. They could scare the wits out of you if they wanted to, and they don't mind letting you know it.

After its madly successful production last year, Who Wants Cake? has partnered with Olympia Entertainment and resurrected the musical for another Halloween run, but this time the Deadites have taken to downtown Detroit's City Theatre. With some of the same cast, the same director (Joe Plambeck), and the same creative team, the result is a production that looks and feels happily familiar, but plays out on an enormous stage that set designer Tommy LeRoy makes into a playground for Jen and Ted Hansen's mystical array of special effects. Everything is supersized, from the cabin walls to the knick-knack assortments to the taxidermied moose head, with no drop in quality. Blood fountains, Michele LeRoy's dazzling lighting, sound effects, and an unseen three-piece band exist together in practically perfect harmony with a hardworking cast that captures the delicate balance between homage and mockery.

Meadow Brook Theatre certainly enjoys its spooky-scary this time of year, and indeed, its production of Dracula, A Rock Opera (by John R. Briggs, in collaboration with Dennis West) excels in its moments of fright and danger. The audience gets a glimpse of it in a foreboding early scene in which Transylvanian villagers painstakingly explain to foreigner Jonathan Harker (Eric Gutman) exactly what Dracula is and what he does...if only Harker had listened. However, the play's biggest accomplishment is a thrilling graveyard confrontation between vampire hunters and their prey — the staging and special effects considerably heighten the tension and make for a spine-tingling experience. Director Travis W. Walter clearly knows how to do suspense, and revels in the kill-or-be-killed standoffs between good and evil.

Unfortunately for a production that so champions its action scenes, much of the show feels frustratingly inactive by comparison. Most of the first act concerns Jonathan corresponding with his faraway love, Wilhelmina (Andrea Mellos), and slowly — really slowly — coming to realize what every viewer already knows by virtue of the show title. The story also pauses to concern itself with the marriage of Lucy (Katie Hardy) and Arthur (Rusty Mewha) and her corresponding rejection of Dr. Seward (Caleb Gilbert), a plot point that simply drags in contrast to the exciting parts and has almost no tangible effect on later interactions. The fault may lie in a combination of audience familiarity and format: because the viewer already knows the basics of the story, the details of the performance are what matter, but it's hard to subtly play awakening comprehension when the score requires one to essentially wail it. Rock opera has little room for nuance, which is too bad because several of these scenes feel like marking time without it.