HHN '17 - Employee Preview Night

[horrornights789]

Blumhouse of Horrors seems to be ok. I'm soooo disappointed with Sinister though, just the fact that the snuff films were barely involved. Purge was basically the Gauntlet, and Happy Death Day reminded me of 2015 Halloween in a way(mirror finale, one killer, pops from everywhere) and the finale for it looked pretty creepy. AHS Roanoke looked good but for a house based on one season I expected more; the fact that Scathach and the Chens don't seem to be in the maze makes me a little sad. Also, how far into the maze are the Polks? I didn't see them. However, AHS is good and easily one of the better houses this year.

 

[rageofthegods]

It's weird though, from the presentation leaks over on HHN they said that Sinister would have the tree hanging and the lawnmower scene...and if you look at the better quality videos, you can see some editing involved. Maybe the effects were out of order?

 

[horrornights789]

It's weird though, from the presentation leaks over on HHN they said that Sinister would have the tree hanging and the lawnmower scene...and if you look at the better quality videos, you can see some editing involved. Maybe the effects were out of order?

I'd hope so... because I remember hearing about the hanging tree. From what I saw the church and ending of 1 were the only snuff films; with the rest of the section being what looks like black walls and the Baghuul

 

[Wesker69]

Okay... so after watching the footage from last nights EP, here are my thoughts on what I saw. Not going to be very detailed since it is just dress rehearsal. My judgements are just based on first look. I'm not as nice due to the fact that I know they could do better.

SCAREZONES:
HELL-O-WEEN - Terrible. Underwhelmingly lackluster. Scareactors look like I've seen them before (and not in a good way). Epic fail. Upper Lot construction (Shrek/ASS) or not, there is no excuse for not putting effort into this SZ as far as scenic goes. Especially if you put your "opening ceremony" so far back into the park. Flame bar is severely missed.

TOXIC TUNNEL - Deja vu. Exact same thing as last year's tunnel. Its a nice banner. But seriously though, they could've found a way to have some form of themeing. Toxic barrels anyone? Even 2014's TWD tunnel ended up with themeing!

URBAN INFERNO - Cluster-f**k conga-line layout. Great themeing. Too many spurts of nothing but walls. Could've & should've just been an outdoor maze like last year's "Purge: Gauntlet of Fear" maze. It'd just need to be reworked a bit. Sadly the best SZ out of the three.

MAZES:
TITANS OF TERROR - Good details. Interesting. Not terrible. Could've been better. Has potential.
BLUMHOUSE - Terrible execution. Underwhelming. Purge is the only part done well.
INSIDIOUS - Meh... Underwhelming. Should've been part of Blumhouse. Waste of maze location.
SHINING - Has potential. Interesting. Not terrible. Looks better than expected. Hedge maze looks awful.
AHS - Very bloody. Lots of pigs. Yay blair witch stick people. Meh.
ASHvsED - Has potential. Could be scary.
SAW - Has potential. Possibly intense. Very bloody. Gross. A lot of "show scene" traps.

TITANS OF TERROR TRAM: HOSTED BY CHUCKY
Whoville - Nice set up. Needs more. Chainsaw minions need different masks, look stupid
Bates Motel - Great use of the set. Unnecessary excessive "show scene" deaths, waste of scareactors.
Psycho house - Great TCM set up.
WoW - Only time multiple Freddy Kruegers is acceptable. Could've used the character more/better.
Finale - Nice TCM set up. Too repetitive with TCM characters. Unnecessary show-scene kills.

 

[rageofthegods]

So, would you say it's a decent, if disappointing year overall?

 

[horrornights789]

So, would you say it's a decent, if disappointing year overall?

Decent lineup, still has room bl for improvement but it's a solid lineup. I wish AvED would've been ED 2 so it wouldn't be as confusing, and I wish either (a) Sinister got its own maze so more could be utilized or (b) Conjuring took place of Insidious and Insidious was pushed into BoH.

 

[Wesker69]

My issue with Blumhouse is that there is NOTHING resembling a movie theatre past the facade. If you want to recreate a scene from a film.. then dammit, MAKE US GO THROUGH THE SCREEN OR BEHIND IT! I'm allowed to be nitpicky & bitchy about this maze due to having seen a much better execution of a movie theatre maze with Orlando's 2009 "Silver Screams". Now that was far from perfect & was just a fancier "All Nite Die-In", BUT it was executed better than this crap!

The Purge section was great (probably even better in person). I LOVED last year's "Gauntlet of Fear" maze, so i'll be extra judgey with this section. After the theatre facade though, the whole maze just goes to ! I feel like they needed to include Insidious & devote each movie with its own theatre. There should be a movie poster in a (PURGED???) theatre hallway then a scene from that film. Basically how Silver Screams did it. The finale should feature something from every movie, including purge. Or Purgers themed to those films.

Eitherway... they really over-complicated a very simple maze. We'll see how it is in person on friday.

 

[DTH]

Blumhouse was just a cruddy idea from inception without including Get Out and/or Split, nuff saiddddd (watch it be my favorite maze bahahaha). Heck, this was even their one chance to use Paranormal Activity and they threw it away for a property they've used four years in a row, a promo, and a 2-movie franchise nobody cares about anymore.

 

[Wesker69]

Blumhouse was just a cruddy idea from inception without including Get Out and/or Split, nuff saiddddd (watch it be my favorite maze bahahaha). Heck, this was even their one chance to use Paranormal Activity and they threw it away for a property they've used four years in a row, a promo, and a 2-movie franchise nobody cares about anymore.

^thats not accurate all. Blumhouse is perfectly fine, its just that the execution past The Purge is just completely god-awful. There was completely no reason what-so-ever for them to NEED "Get Out"/"Split". They wouldn't have added anything of substance. Paranormal Activity should never be used.

The problem isn't with the 3 IPs they chose to use, again it was the execution. Thats it. If anything, they would've been better off including Insidious to free up JP for a completely different maze (preferably The Thing. or Killer Klowns. or even Alice Cooper ...who just released a new album). The concept for Blumhouse is solid, just poorly poorly handled.

Honestly, as "good" as Titans of Terror looks, even that suffers from the same issue as Blumhouse., Each IP is split up into its own realm. Both mazes HAVE an overall "theme", but don't execute it properly. I'd possibly let Titans slide a bit for being a replacement maze, buuuuuut... its also the Big 3 which should've been pretty damn simple to handle. It seems to completely forget what was set up at the beginning when you reach the end. Just like Blumhouse.

The unfortunate part is... both Titans & Blumhouse are easy fixes. It just clearly needed an outside brain to fix what Murdy/Chris over-complicated. Another reason why Hollywood really needs an actual "team" like Orlando.

 

[horrornights789]

My issue with Blumhouse is that there is NOTHING resembling a movie theatre past the facade. If you want to recreate a scene from a film.. then dammit, MAKE US GO THROUGH THE SCREEN OR BEHIND IT! I'm allowed to be nitpicky & bitchy about this maze due to having seen a much better execution of a movie theatre maze with Orlando's 2009 "Silver Screams". Now that was far from perfect & was just a fancier "All Nite Die-In", BUT it was executed better than this crap!

The Purge section was great (probably even better in person). I LOVED last year's "Gauntlet of Fear" maze, so i'll be extra judgey with this section. After the theatre facade though, the whole maze just goes to ! I feel like they needed to include Insidious & devote each movie with its own theatre. There should be a movie poster in a (PURGED???) theatre hallway then a scene from that film. Basically how Silver Screams did it. The finale should feature something from every movie, including purge. Or Purgers themed to those films.

Eitherway... they really over-complicated a very simple maze. We'll see how it is in person on friday.

I thought this house was gonna be like Silver Screams, that way they could've utilized more films from Blumhouse. The transitions for Blumhouse are very cool using the movie posters as actual scenes. After seeing Awkward Arsic's BoH video(which was actually really good filming of the maze), it's actually a good maze. The Sinister section is very dark and is Baghuul city, with only 2 snuff films and 3 kids. HDD has a scene with 50 Cent's song In Da Club, so it's pretty good. Purge is good too. However, the finale is WEAK. I don't know who's idea it was to end the maze with a random Big Daddy purger... while we were still in the Sinister section. BoH is a good house, but certain aspects are a little underwhelming and there's a TON of dummies in that house and Roanoke.

 

[hhnlover]

^thats not accurate all. Blumhouse is perfectly fine, its just that the execution past The Purge is just completely god-awful. There was completely no reason what-so-ever for them to NEED "Get Out"/"Split". They wouldn't have added anything of substance. Paranormal Activity should never be used.

The problem isn't with the 3 IPs they chose to use, again it was the execution. Thats it. If anything, they would've been better off including Insidious to free up JP for a completely different maze (preferably The Thing. or Killer Klowns. or even Alice Cooper ...who just released a new album). The concept for Blumhouse is solid, just poorly poorly handled.

Honestly, as "good" as Titans of Terror looks, even that suffers from the same issue as Blumhouse., Each IP is split up into its own realm. Both mazes HAVE an overall "theme", but don't execute it properly. I'd possibly let Titans slide a bit for being a replacement maze, buuuuuut... its also the Big 3 which should've been pretty damn simple to handle. It seems to completely forget what was set up at the beginning when you reach the end. Just like Blumhouse.

The unfortunate part is... both Titans & Blumhouse are easy fixes. It just clearly needed an outside brain to fix what Murdy/Chris over-complicated. Another reason why Hollywood really needs an actual "team" like Orlando.

hey wesker based off the footage what would you change in the mazes?

 

[hhnlover]

after watching the saw walkthrough multiple times i suggest some changes [ spoilers ]
razor wire - back in 09 the guy was thrashing around, in this one he just stares, i think he should press on the cage and thrash around,

blank hallway - in the hallway between the reverse bear trap and the rack i heard some sounds from the angel trap, i think they were gonna put it there but couldn't due to space issues,

rack - in 10 the head of the device will actually move left and right to simulate the neck breaking, for some reason this one didn't.

water cube - in 09 the guy will try and reach out for help but in here his hands are strapped down, he should have been able to reach out and try to act like he needs help.

bathroom - the biggest dissapointment in the maze, there wasn't even any actors in here, just multiple dummys, add either a hoffman actor chained up or replace it with the 09 scene

 

[Teebin]

So, I take it that this is the first year with no walking dead?

 

[hhnlover]

So, I take it that this is the first year with no walking dead?

well if you don't count the walking dead attraction this is actually the second year without walking dead

 

[k_peek_2000]

So, I take it that this is the first year with no walking dead?

They add more zombies in it during HHN so it's been advertised as a maze the past 2 years.

 

[Wesker69]

I thought this house was gonna be like Silver Screams. The transitions for Blumhouse are very cool using the movie posters as actual scenes. it's actually a good maze. HDD has a scene with 50 Cent's song In Da Club, so it's pretty good.

- Thats what you get for thinking. IF it had been like Silver Screams, as I said, the issues this maze has would more or less be fixed.

- I'm just going to sigh heavily at you for saying the "movie posters" were "very cool". It was a lazy transition and again, wasn't even "movie theatre"-esque like Silver Screams. It was a wall that just happened to say the name of said movie & is easily missable/forgettable.

- No. Its not actually a good maze. Its a generic, thrown together with very little effort maze. The scareactors are the only thing that will save this maze.

- The fact that you said "its pretty good" because it has 50cents song "In Da Club" included just makes me want to drink. Heavily.

 

[chris.g]

Orlando made the best of the crappy IPs this year while we made the worst out of it... this is a very very depressing, magic-less year... however will reserve my opinion for Saturday.

 

[ChaseTuff]

Orlando made the best of the crappy IPs this year while we made the worst out of it... this is a very very depressing, magic-less year... however will reserve my opinion for Saturday.

I mean, our Blumhouse dosen't sound so pretty either.

 

[horrornights789]

- Thats what you get for thinking. IF it had been like Silver Screams, as I said, the issues this maze has would more or less be fixed.

- I'm just going to sigh heavily at you for saying the "movie posters" were "very cool". It was a lazy transition and again, wasn't even "movie theatre"-esque like Silver Screams. It was a wall that just happened to say the name of said movie & is easily missable/forgettable.

- No. Its not actually a good maze. Its a generic, thrown together with very little effort maze. The scareactors are the only thing that will save this maze.

- The fact that you said "its pretty good" because it has 50cents song "In Da Club" included just makes me want to drink. Heavily.

Sorry for trying to make the best of a maze nobody wanted

 

[k_peek_2000]

Sorry for trying to make the best of a maze nobody wanted

The more people "try to make the best" out of terrible mazes, the more terrible mazes we'll end up with in the future.