- Feb 15, 2012
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Halloween Horror Nights 29 General Discussion
- Thread starter Brian G.
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- Mar 30, 2015
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I'm just a bearded fat guy, and I can be pretty scary.
- Jun 28, 2017
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so apparently a drop tower prop for zombieland MIGHT indeed happen.
- May 10, 2018
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Maybe they could fit one near the bus stop, since they usually put something there that doesn't block anything and after seeing them fit the Vamp 85 stage there, I don't doubt they'd act the drop tower there, it'd be a cool visual.
- Mar 27, 2019
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Re Vikings.. you all convinced me. Let me state, for the record, that I have never doubted A&D's ability to scare us all. I look forward to this event every year, and I have never been disappointed (the closest I came to disappointed was when all the streets were the Walking Dead.. but I'm over it). It's not that I lack imagination.. maybe I was just stuck in common tropes, and I needed a little nudging to show me the way. Thank you all.
I totally get how the zones may not pop on paper, but am reserving judgement until I see where things are going. Even the one I'm least interested in, the R. Zombie one, could turn out to be a lot of fun. A few good scareactors can turn a zone from ok to awesome. There was a guy who looked like Evan Peters with a huge cell phone randomly spewing funny lines in the Vamp zone last year and a couple of guys in Chucky zone quizzing each other on the rules of Fight Club that really enhanced my experiences in said zones.
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So what you're talking about here are archetypes, and to your point, there's nothing inherently scary or "horror" about any of these things. I mean, very few things in general are inherently scary, especially in entertainment—you have to frame and present things a certain way, and then they can "become horror," like you say. There has to be a context, and if you squint hard enough, I think it's definitely possible to envision vikings in a "horror" context. The difference between vikings and pretty much everything you list here is precisely that sense of context, and more importantly, a sense of tradition or history. Combine "hotels + horror," or "doctors + horror," or "children + horror," and your average horror fan can infer the relation because of the familiarity that's already in place; they can anticipate what "[fill in the blank] + horror" might entail because there's a context. It's easy to connect those dots.
I took a couple shots at the idea, but I was just joking around and I'm really not here to argue whether a vikings SZ will be effective or scary or whatever—I live in Los Angeles so unless it's coming here, it doesn't make a difference to me—but I do push back against the idea that people are being unreasonable if they consider the idea of "vikings" to be out of place within a horror-themed event. It's not like there's a wealth of viking-related horror content to draw from or, more importantly, relate to. I mean, they should wait until they experience it before judging, sure, but skepticism is justified.
- Jul 27, 2015
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I didn't say, "unreasonable." I'll say it's surprising. I'll also agree with the idea that, as @Joe said, "...a lot of people are lacking imagination or trust with entertainment." And I'll say that for the exact same point you provide.
The "context" of [blank]+horror initiates somewhere. That's true. And while history and tradition can be a component of that initiation, it is not the ONLY initiation. If it were, then everything in horror would based entirely on real-life situations. Every horror movie would be the story of Ed Gein and only that. There would be no Victor Frankenstein. Or Invisible Man. Or Alien and Predator. Or Gillman. Or even zombies. Those things exists because someone looked at something WITHOUT context and applied "horror" to it. It wasn't done for them.
If someone has to rely on (as you say), "the familiarity that's already in place," the implication is that that someone cannot create that relationship on their own; ie - they "lack imagination."
And it goes even further than that. Most "horror" (as an additive to any situation) is based on empathy - looking at something and imagining how scary or painful it would be to have that happen to you. The Purge is scary because we imagine walking through our streets with everyone out to kill us. Hostel is unnerving because we imagine ourselves getting tortured. Freddy Kruger is terrifying because he can invade our own dreams. That's why it works. Even if we apply that to history, Ed Gein repulses because we imagine someone we know doing the same thing. The Donner Party compels because we wonder what would drive US to do that. However, if you don't know who Ed Gein is, if you don't know who the Donner Party is, your failure to empathize and create the horror associated with it is on you; its not on Ed Gein or the Donner Party.
So, if you don't know that Vikings' fought for the glory of their gods of War and Death, if you don't know that the term "berserker" is based on their fighting style, if you don't know they raided as far as Baghdad and Canada - destroying villages and taking slaves as they went, then you wouldn't be able to (again) imagine any of those things happening to YOU.
Roanoke is a fantastic example. On paper, it is literally, it is "pioneer settlement overrun with wendigos." What's a wendigo? It's a spirit that makes people cannibals. And? Do you know what a cannibal is? Why is it based after a city in Virginia? If you don't know what any of those things are, of course you won't be able to apply the "horror" filter. That requires YOU to fill in the blanks and provide your own additional context in order to understand how it works.
EDIT - Skepticism for how something can be presented is completely justified. Skeptism toward how something can be "horror," sorry, says more about an individual.
- Apr 29, 2016
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Man. I guess the lesson is...don't insult vikings when Legacy is around.
- Jul 27, 2015
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Better yet, don't say, "That's not horror."
I literally wrote treatments for haunted houses based on Shakespeare, the Hunger Games, and an animation studio. Anything can be horror.
- May 6, 2019
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If they are going to add a drop tower I hope they add carnie games overrun by zombies around that area so it dosen't look that out of place.
- Jan 23, 2019
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I think the argument that 'anything can be horror' pretty much ends with the film Rubber.
A film about a rubber tyre that can kill with its mind.
Once an inanimate rubber tyre becomes horror, anything can.
A film about a rubber tyre that can kill with its mind.
Once an inanimate rubber tyre becomes horror, anything can.
I think we agree on a lot of points here, and when I said "history and tradition," I was referring to the history and tradition of horror entertainment, specifically. Again, unless I'm missing something, there's not a lot of viking-related stuff to be found there, which (fair or not) is the thing that's generating skepticism, which I don't find it even remotely surprising. It's not like someone can say, "Oh, a viking scare zone, I can envision how that will work based on this other viking-related stuff I've experienced before." The reason something like Roanoke works isn't the specificity of that event, it's actually the lack thereof. It's the idea—the context—of a group of people mysteriously disappearing in the woods without a trace. The wendigo, cannibalism—that's all window dressing. You can swap the wendigo for UFOs and cannibalism for Satanism, or whatever else. (Plenty of people have with that story, after all.) What's the context for vikings? They were seafaring Norsemen most active in 10th century Scandinavia. Pop culture depicts them as big, bearded blonde people who raped and pillaged and carried swords. Do we need to know about all that stuff you laid out about their culture in order to enjoy a viking SZ, or think that it will be effective as a "horror" experience? No, but I do think we need some past iteration of them as horror figures in order to more naturally connect those dots, and it's not like there's a wealth to choose from.
That said, your point is totally valid—not only should we use our imaginations, or provide our own context, but these ideas have to start somewhere, and there's no reason to think vikings won't work or are somehow off-limits. Although (forgive the sidebar), I do think you can trace a lot of these archetypes back to a single point of origin. The Ed Gein example is great, but think about zombies—we wouldn't have them without Haitian folklore. Every piece of zombie-related horror content is extrapolated from that very specific aspect of Haitian culture—even if most of the iterations bear no resemblance to that original concept, it's the extrapolation that matters. So, Frankenstein: Shelley was inspired by the galvanism and alchemy at the real Castle Frankenstein in Germany; Invisible Man: Wells based a lot of the book on Plato's Republic. And there are re-imaginings of both of those stores, and then re-imaginings of those stories. Point being, there are plenty of "real-life situations" that kickstart these concepts, which are then repackaged and reprogrammed over and over and over. That's how context is generated. I don't think vikings have provided much context for horror entertainment, at least not obviously, so again, I don't find the skepticism surprising at all.
- May 24, 2018
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Well this isn’t 100% true. People have all different kinds of fears, Clowns, Spiders, Dolls, Doctors, etc. So what you say is somewhat true it’s not fully true.
Y’all are overthinking the Vikings way too much.
Vikings can be anything. Zombie Vikings, cannibal Vikings, werewolf Vikings, vampire Vikings. That’s Legacy’s point. All that is being rumored as of now is that it’s Viking related. We have no idea on the twist.
Fear and horror aren’t on level playing fields. Someone can fear a doll as normal as a Barbie, but the creators job is to scare everyone; and a normal doll won’t cut it.
Vikings can be anything. Zombie Vikings, cannibal Vikings, werewolf Vikings, vampire Vikings. That’s Legacy’s point. All that is being rumored as of now is that it’s Viking related. We have no idea on the twist.
Fear and horror aren’t on level playing fields. Someone can fear a doll as normal as a Barbie, but the creators job is to scare everyone; and a normal doll won’t cut it.
- May 24, 2018
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I think your missing my point. Horror has a different meaning to everyone. “Clowns” are horror to some while to other not so much. Same with most almost everything else. For example last year some people liked the DE
Z house while IMO it wasn’t that good. What is and isn’t horror is based on opinions. Was Get Out horror?
- Apr 29, 2016
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I feel that Peele answered that one for us.
https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3543862/jordan-peele-feels-get-social-thriller-says-us-full-horror-
movie/
I think your missing my point. Horror has a different meaning to everyone. “Clowns” are horror to some while to other not so much. Same with most almost everything else. For example last year some people liked the DE
Well now we’re jumping into a different conversation. Your original post was about fears - implying that’s why we get houses with clowns, dolls, etc. I’ve always stated horror is subjective.
And no, Get Out is a suspense, not horror.
One thing I am liking about the Vikings as a scare zone is after looking a few things up and seeing about a ritual they would do I believe was called a Blood Eagle where they would split a person from spine and the ribs and then previewed something like this. Which if they do something like this, it is very creepy and scary and horror to me. So I look forward towards a Viking scarezone and I am sure there will be a lot of scary and terrorizing scare actors, that can give us some great scares.. 
