There are people who say Bride was only good because of how the crowd was pulsed through. Okay, well, the crowd was pulsed through and the house rocked. That's like saying "oh ET is good because it had a fantastic score" or "Indian Jones was good because it had great locations." Yes, that's all a part of what made those movies good and the pulsing was a part of why Brides was so good.
For me pulsing did not make or brake the house.
My praise for Bride's does not come from hitting scares, but ditching the commonly used tropes, the "escape" or "survive" situation we often find ourselves in within these houses. But pulsing is still great don't get me wrong here. And those tropes are subjectively changed and tweaked? It's not a horrible thing, it just become repetitive.
In Brides we are an outsider looking at a series of events unfold, it feels like a cinematic story, and it's easy to pick up on. Pretty much a watered down film, which is great because we do not get to smell and (sometimes) touch and feel our environments in a movie.
I have gone to HHN and H-O-S every year for the past 4 years with my Father and sometimes I ask him "What did you think that house was about?" just because it's fun to see his point of view, he usually gives me the basic understandable answer that we needed to "escape" or "survive" a certain location. But then, I asked him about Bride's, he said that it was about "loss and dedication".
I was kind of blown away.
Some will argue that you don't always have to have a great plot to have fun in a house, in which I agree, but to me, Brides as an experience was other worldly, definitely not what I was expecting. It was not the scariest house, but the house people can connect to.
I can see the formula being used again in years to come, but most likely not in the houses we are apparently getting this year.