This was my top house for a long time. An unbelievably beautiful house, with a solid and ambitious narrative to tell, and a great hook - This house uses the wide-scale and large-scope style of haunt design that found great success with Dead Man's Pier and Blood Moon, and limits the scope from a village to a singular mansion. This leads to rooms that feel awe-inspiring, true-to-life, and authentic. There is so much striking and genuinely great horror art here. The costumes are eerie, the locations feel unique and realized, the story is told effectively, and the atmosphere is thick. There are plenty of effects and rooms here I've never seen from the event before. Special mention to the Gargoyle bungee scare, using an intensive effect like that primarily for wow-factor and atmosphere is incredibly bold and I love its' use here.
Unfortunately, there's only so much I can enjoy a house that I am not scared of, and I was almost never scared here across the entire event run. Some performers were giving energetic performances that would simply be eaten away by the wide rooms and sets, built like the opposite of a Jason Universe room. Others were mostly static, used as atmosphere or for getting story across. I found myself marvelling at the sets, but not doing much more than that. Especially as the event run went on, that was increasingly dissappointing.
Still a very enjoyable house for spectacle alone, but not the all-timer or #1 I feel it had the potential to be. It was an incredible decision to have this act as the unofficial "event house" that the rest of the event derives its' vibes, motifs, and visual identity from. Those are all the best elements of the house, and together with Origins of Horror and the Tribute Store, I really do love the story they told with Sergio.