This week we hit up two of Southern California’s Spooky Season perennials, which you can find in their own section at the top. Then it’s the “regular” Rundown — whatever regular means in this place — with the next two chapters in Hunt a Killer’s Murder On Ice in Blake’s inbox, Rodrick plays the Squid Game in London, and a taste of Juliet’s full take on Boston Bar Bloodsuckers in LA.
Last week’s Rundown, the one with A Winning Combo Of Light, Satire, Science & Cuisine? Find it here.
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Spooky Season SoCal Theme Park Roundup
Halloween Horror Nights — Universal Studios Hollywood
Starting at $72; Hollywood, CA; Through October 31
It’s that time of the year again, and Halloween Horror Nights is back at Universal Studios Hollywood to help ring in Spooky Season. If you’ve been to Horror Nights, once, twice (or a lot more), you know what to expect. The format of the event and the mazes is pretty set in stone at this point: You’ll get mazes with movie quality sets based on popular franchises (though there are more original mazes this year) and jump scares with loud noises and flashing lights.
No matter how much I wish the event would throw some variety into the scares or style of mazes, or hell, even having a larger break between groups to let the scares pop, that’s unlikely to happen at this point. That’s probably due to audience expectations, the economics of the event, and guest experience more than anything else, but people still seem into it. The event is as popular as ever, and selling out nights in September! LA fucking loves Halloween.
Here are some thoughts on this year’s mazes:
Terror Tram — I normally wouldn’t mention Terror Tram, but this year you get to walk through the Jupiter’s Claim set from Nope and that’s just rad. That section also aims for fewer scares and more creeps with a mashup of Get Out, Us, and Nope that works better than it sounds.
La Llorona: The Weeping Woman — While the name is different, I think this is basically a repeat of the La Llorona maze from 2012. That’s a good thing though because it is excellent. This one tells the story of La Llorona and uses that to infuse it with a ton of atmosphere, great creature design, and good scares.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space — A repeat of a maze from a few years ago, and based on the 1980s cult classic, this one fulfills the “comedy” slot this year. And it is fun! The clowns are both unsettling and goofy, there are some good gags because it’s not entirely married to the Horror Nights style of scares, and it smells like a carnival throughout.
Universal Monsters: Legends Collide — On paper putting Dracula, The Wolf Man, and The Mummy together in a maze seems like a winner. Unfortunately it’s kind of a whiff and never lives up to the potential of putting those titans together on the coolness or scary scales.
The Weeknd: After Hours Nightmare — The inclusion of this one might elicit some huhs, but it does have precedent with previous mazes based on Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath’s work. I don’t really follow the Weeknd, but did get a dose of his music videos in line, and they are definitely horror-influenced, so this is a better fit than it seems at first glance. Where La Llorona has a specific atmosphere, this one’s got a specific personality. It’s got some weird, fun stuff in it that’s clearly drawing from the Weeknd’s style and the maze is better for it. Plus, it’s got some interesting gags, some good scares, and you get to recreate the infamous mirror scene from the Weeknd’s Super Bowl halftime show.
— Kevin Gossett, LA Reviews Editor
Knott’s Scary Farm — Knott’s Berry Farm
Starting at $59; Buena Park, CA; through Oct. 31st
The granddaddy of all theme park haunts, Knott’s Scary Farm this year sees two new mazes while giving a send-off to two of its stable. If only the new work were as good as the departing ones.
We start with Grimoire, which has a cool enough concept: some very 80’s teenagers at a campground have stumbled upon a cursed book that rips a hole in the fabric of space-time (and a nearby tent) and sends you hurtling through history, and its pages, hounded by demons the whole way through. The maze itself, from a production standpoint, is top notch. Unfortunately by the time we ran through on opening night, the various showstopping bottleneck moments, where actors were set to give story beats were being treated as little more than speed bumps on the road to the next switchback. A disappointing execution on what could have been the night’s standout. Watch a walkthrough to get the intended effect after you’ve gone through if you go. It’s what I did. Made it all make sense.
Bloodline 1842, a shooting gallery of vampires that has a similar “stop n’ go” flow fares a bit better. The show flow works here, but the soundtrack is turned up to 12, drowning out the actors — so many actors! — who shout instructions at the crowd of twenty patrons all wielding toy blasters. It all feels like what should be a cool game, but with so many people blasting away there’s no time for the actors to give a real sense of interacting with us. Nor is there anything like a high score at the end. The guns part feels pointless by about midway through, making me wish they had skipped the half-baked interaction and went for something that really showed off the actually cool actor-driven set pieces.
Underwhelmed by the new, we found ourselves enjoying the old. It’s a shame that Dark Ride, with its “theme park kiddie ride gone wrong” theme is being sent to the Big Haunt in the Sky. It may be campy, but its also perfect in context. Pumpkin Eater, also leaving, is bizarre enough that it’s grown on me. Meanwhile, the standout in the bunch this year is Origins, which shows that Knott’s can do storytelling and scares, effects and sheer creepiness hand in hand. It’s a modern classic, and hopefully won’t be retired for a generation.
Our biggest disappointment of the night was Mesmer, which was our hands down favorite from last year. It’s been given a slight makeover, but one that proves that greatness is a delicate formula. By adding some generic gore and char thrown in right from the start, the team has obliterated the Lynchian vibes of the original and downgraded it to Generic Haunt Aesthetics that deflate the whole affair. It would have been better for them to just scrap Mesmer than let this abomination shamble forth from the circle of Hell known as the “focus group.”
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On balance Scary Farm is still a strong offering this year, if not quite all it could be.
— Noah Nelson, Publisher & Podcast Host
Your Regular Rundown
Boston Bar Bloodsuckers — Cricklewood Immersive
$50–125; The Roguelike Tavern, Burbank, CA; Through Oct. 2
Boston Bar Bloodsuckers is a great time, marrying the best parts of a murder mystery with a scripted sitcom parody. If you enjoyed Cricklewood Immersive’s last show, The Sleepover, you’ll find yourself grinning along with this one, too.
Pinning an entire show around the fact that “Cheers” has a character named Lilith, the name of the mother of all vampires in numerous vampire shows, TV shows, and books, is the kind of thing that might occur to me if I were really, really high. It’s brilliant, and I love it.
Upon Lilith’s arrival, scenes play out among the regulars, illuminating underlying tensions between the long-time friends. You’ll want to pay attention not just to pick up clues, but because, well, it’s good. The actors nail their respective “Cheers” counterparts, and the script has a number of genuinely funny moments.
After the verdict, definitely stick around for some nostalgic TV theme karaoke, and maybe some poutine and a cocktail. Roguelike’s a great bar full of nerds and immersive fans, which, if you’re reading this, we suspect you are. It’s cool, us too.
— Juliet Bennet Rylah, from her full review
Murder on Ice Box Two and Three — Hunt a Killer
$195+; At-Home Experience
With the second and third boxes, Murder on Ice falls into a comfortable rythm. Each box highlights a suspect (an ice skating darling with some online skeletons and his closet and his overbearing mother in these boxes), and try to do your best to clear them. While I was expecting clear exonerations to enable process of elimination, Murder on Ice surprised me and provided some ambiguity.
The writing continues to be uniformly strong. Hunt a Killer’s grasp on Twitter lingo, fan culture, and the parasocial world of celebrity gossip is second to none. However, the puzzles were a bit more hit and miss in these boxes. Box two had only one significant puzzle (and a few very small challenges), while box three was built around a brilliant central puzzle that required a wide array of skills to tackle. Still, they served the narrative thrust and kept my player group engaged.
The one surprising twist is the building tension of the story. Having never played a Hunt a Killer box before, I had assumed we’d be dealing with one murder. While the rest of the cast lives for now, brewing legal trouble and emerging threats against other cast members complicate the story. As I’ve started to develop a working theory of the crime here at the half way point, this is a smart move. Even if future chapters confirm my answer, I’ll still be on the edge of my seat. Even the clear villains, murderers or not, are lovable, and I’m rooting for them to hold on until the finale.
This sense of surprise extends throughout the experience. Every time I feel like I have my footing, a new curveball or unexpected use of a prop throws me off balance. Having only played one-shots, I doubted a series capacity to hold my interest. Today, though, I check my mail every day fingers crossed I’ll be able to dive into box four.
— Blake Weil, East Coast Curator at Large
Squid Game at Immersive Gamebox — Immersive Gamebox
From £34; London & Manchester UK, Various US cites ; Ongoing
The breakout South Korean Netflix series has inspired a number of spin offs, like that crypto coin that turned out to be a scam, or that Mr. Beast video that cost 3.5 million dollars to make. People who want to throw themselves into Squid Game’s world of bleak hope may have missed what creator Hwang Dong-hyuk was trying to say about our neo-liberal capitalist society, but in the same breath… it does look kinda fun.
That’s where Immersive Gamebox comes in. Started in 2019, they offer a variety of different playable challenges at their 16+ global locations. Among these is now a licensed Squid Game experience. This one is not for the technophiles, as the state of the art visual motion capture system produces little more functionality than an Xbox Kinect. Those who approach the experience with more openness might appreciate the accessible nature of the tech and gentle immersion, on par with digital putt putt. Just as one might start out a game of crazy golf under the auspices of tongue in cheek nostalgia, falling backwards into the memory of childhood birthday parties and the phantom taste of slightly stale sponge cake, ironic enjoyments giving way to sincere pleasure, so could this be a satisfactory group outing.
All six children’s games from the first season are represented. Although the ludic translation is stretched in places to meet Immersive Gamebox’s specific form of intereration, pains have been taken to differentiate each mini-game offering. We saw many a 10 year old running around with a ‘Front Man’ mask during the Autumn of 2021, and it’s that audience, that is too young to fully appreciate the oozing psycho-dramatic tension of the show itself, that might get the most out of this particular spin off.
— Roderick Morgan, London Correspondent
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