Kimberly Anne TanEvent Review: Museum of Horrors
It’s 6.50pm. A queue of at least 20 teenagers are already snaking through the ground floor of *SCAPE, eager to get into The Ground Theatre. This time, the energized crowd isn’t getting ready for a concert but steeling themselves for a performance of a much different nature. They’re 10 minutes away from entering *SCAPE’s Museum of Horrors. Shivers.
Back again for its 5th installment, the Halloween scare house revolves around the tale of a relic that leaves chaos, dismemberment and death in its wake. In fact, even non-visitors to the haunted house are treated to glimpses of its horrific powers, as “corpses” and various haunts litter the external entrance to *SCAPE.
7pm finally arrives, and the first group of unsuspecting visitors slips through the doors. The rest of the visitors waiting outside are treated to unnerving screams that reach us through the thin walls. A good 10 minutes later, the first group of girls comes barreling through the exit, their faces a mixture of excitement and fear.
“It’s pretty scary!” laughs Luna, one of the first people to experience the Museum on its opening night. “Don’t come here if you don’t like being scared.”
And surprise surprise, this writer is stunned at how a relatively low-budget affair had produced such an effective scare-house. In fact, the Museum of Horrors does run on a tight budget, as its organizers proudly admit.
To put it into perspective, one mechanized demon statue used at Night Safari’s Halloween event a few years back cost US$20,000 (S$25,600) alone, according to event organizer Reno Tan. “In comparison, my entire set-up here costs less than that,” confides Tan, who has been organizing every *SCAPE Halloween event for the past 5 years under his costume company Movie Mania.
“*SCAPE was third in the local Halloween [haunted house] scene… until USS came and wiped everyone out,” he jokes. But for just $20,000, Tan and his team have put together a solid haunted house that is, for all intents and purposes, genuinely terrifying.
The house incorporates a mix of scare techniques that are certain to creep out even the toughest visitor. Immune to actors in costumes or gory props? The last room in the house, or the “Dark Room” as the staff calls it, is designed to make you near-blind to your surroundings. Even if you’re not easily scared, a 3D room of UV lights and twisted clowns (*SCAPE was the first to do it back in 2012) will make you appreciate the effects that the Museum achieves considering its sparse budget.
Everything about this Halloween event makes it perfect for youths who may not want to spend too much of their allowance on a Halloween event. Tickets cost a mere $15, a very reasonable price for a long walk through the eerie rooms. Even the staff are youths, with the youngest scare actor 15 years old.
Simple tricks of the trade such as radio-controlled cars with scary creatures attached to their tops made these fantastic scares.
The ingenuity displayed in the Museum has to be the rocking chair in the room modeled after the bedroom in the movie Annabelle. The chair rocks on its own as you walk by it. A simple sensor from a baby monitor attached to a fishing line detects nearby movement. When you walk past, the line is pulled taut and the chair rocks back and forth.
*SCAPE’s Museum of Horrors is a fantastic haunted house for the budget-conscious Halloween-lover. The only gripe this writer had is the supposed theme of the relic seems to have nothing to do with the house at all. Then again, who really goes through a haunted house for the story?
Effectively bridging the gap between quality and affordability, *SCAPE’s Museum of Horrors V: The Relic is a must for all horror fans this Halloween.
Photographs courtesy of *SCAPE
Information:
Ticket Price: S$15
Event Run: 24 Oct – 2 Nov, 7pm – 10.30pm (11.30pm on Oct 31st)
Venue: *Scape The Ground Theatre