Nyctophobia 2013 (Review)

To find the the very best haunted houses in New York, you sometimes have to venture away from the city. I've been stuck within the city limits, but with the help of The Raven and Black Cat and Survivor Bailey Squared we all jam-packed into a car and road tripped to the various haunts of Long Island a few weeks back. Our second stop was Nyctophobia, an interactive experience I've been dying to try for the last few years.  It changes year after year and what people experienced in 2011 is long gone.  So with some excitement, I headed to my first Nyctophobia haunt.

Nyctophobia is not a haunted house.

That's the tagline this year though in years past, Nyctophobia brought the interactive horror like experience to eastern Long Island.  But creator Eric Striffler has changed it up and this "not a haunted house" resembles more of an audience participation in an real life movie. Part scavenger hunt, part ARG,  the experience itself was absolutely entertaining though the story and timing could use more work.

I immediately tweeted this right after it was over.

@NyctophobiaLI was an interactive mystery that is a cross between the last of us and j-horror without the j. Inventive and creative
— the jaded viewer (@jadedviewer) October 12, 2013

Nyctophobia had elements of the PS3 game The Last of Us which cinematically were outstanding. Slight moaning and sounds through the woods will have you jumping on a broken twig in the dead of night. The J-horror I compared the haunt to is in reference to Japanese horror, which tend to use flashbacks to unveil the horror stalking those cell phone obsessed Japanese teenagers. Blended together, they were very different and somehow got muddled as the story developed. It's the hunt that got me giddy.

With "S" and "C" from The Raven and Black Cat, myself and fellow Survivor Bailey Squared, our valiant group of four ventured to the far reaches of LI. Arriving late, we sat in our car, then were approached with a waiver and clipboard and we emphatically all signed on the dotted line.

And it was a go. I won't go into details until after their run is over.  Expect a walkthrough soon.

But if you ever wanted to act as 4 "teenagers" in a mystery, Nyctophobia 2013 makes it happen. We all participated and each had our own "scenes" by sharing the experience together. I got to interact in one scene with an actor and eventually we all "escaped" from the potential dangers set up for us. We drove from one scene to another piecing together clues that would lead us to our next destination. in In one scene, darkness and a wooded path was a mesmerizing cinematic touch and the ending led to an uber jump scare that had one of us stepping back.

The story for 2013's Nyctophobia was hard to comprehend. The clues were there but not easily digestible as you were going through it. We all listened intently but still couldn't understand who was who and what we needed to do to progress the story. I'm sure it's been fixed but I think it could have evolved into a full on IRL theatrical experience that had you improving lines to progress the story. Like a real life Star Trek holodeck. It's not until after did we get it and realized who and what it was all about.

Nyctophobia is definitely not a haunted house. It probably falls into that Sleep No More and Then She Fell category but instead of immersive theatre, it's immersive cinema. The Gen Y Millennials are short attention spanned and need the quick cut Michael Bay explosions. They also need the horror movies that have less build up and more kill scenes. They want the torture porn and instead got slow burn Ti West cinema.  This generation can't appreciate the methodical plotting of good indie horror. It's kind of sad. But if you want to enjoy Nyctophobia, you'll need to take it slow, enjoy the build up and make your own conversations between you and your friends entertaining. Somebody has to be comic relief right?

I will say that it did end abruptly. It seemed like it could have lasted more than an hour but we completed it in less than that. I would suggest it head into the more digital realm, maybe use more text messages, tweets and social media to lead a team to their next destination. As much as the horror myth of having no cell signal is ever evident in movies, it's not the case IRL.

Nyctophobia is going to evolve the interactive immersive cinema experience into a must go event. Striffler will make sure of that. This wave of interactive theater is clearly only beginning and talented artists are redefining the conventions of our entertainment. I'm excited to see what's next and believe when your partaking in a world constructed for you and your friends, we've only seen a glimpse of what's to come.

And I'll be excited if Nyctophobia is leading the way.

The Vitals

• The official site
• Like Nyctophobia on Facebook
• Follow on Twitter
• Nyctophobia is in Jamesport, NY.
• Check the Facebook page for any available openings and tickets.

Categories: choose your own adventure, haunted house, interactive horror movie, long island, nyctophobia

Hey Horror Blogosphere: Choose Your Own Horror-venture!

Remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books? Weren't they awesome? It was like a video game but in book form. You'd read a few pages and then you'd have to make a decision on what to do next. Depending on your choice, you'd either succeed or you'd pretty much die horribly. The trick was you'd have to pick the choice that seemed more harder or dedicated in order to progress. I usually did the opposite. I'd pick the choice that seem to get me to the goal quicker which of course was totally freakin wrong.

I'm fond of these books and I wanted to see if we could do our own choose your own adventure book. But in this case, it's choose your own horror-venture.

I'll write a passage and will give you 3 different choices/endings and you write the ending of your choosing (pun intended!). The 3 choices or endings are in the same vain of the choices you'd get in the book. You could write a happily ever after choice/ending, another could be an open ended ending or it could be a completely miserable surefire death ending. It's up to you.

Hell if you wanted to write up your choice and continue to write a passage with a few more choices you could do that too. I just want to see what we all come up with. It's like a game of TELEPHONE sorta. It would be interesting to see what would develop from the story I wrote below.

Be sure to send me the link to your post with your choice/ending. It can be a paragraph or a few, it's up to you. Let's see what the horror blogosphere can come up with. If you don't have a blog and want to participate, leave your choice/ending in the comments.

I'm not sure if this will work but hell I think all of you are damn creative. And it should be fun.

The Detention Dungeon

You and your friend Terry are in detention. Seems Mr. Smith didn't appreciate your comment about gerbils in a blender and now your stuck in detention. You've been passing the time pretending to study your textbook "Animal Extinctions of the Last 20 Years" but in reality you are tweeting to one of your 106 followers.

Terry asks "how long do you think we'll be here for?"
"I don't you know" you respond, feeling angsty after drinking your 2nd Red Bull.

Mr. Smith puts down his newspaper and gets up. He's got a pulsating forehead and his mustache seems more twitchy. You're a little scared because this time he seems more serious. He usually talks big but he's a big softy inside.

"Gerbils huh?" Mr. Smith starts. "If you really think that's funny, maybe something more than detention is needed for the both of you."

"Detention is fine," says Terry. Terry has told you on numerous occasions that she doesn't like Mr. Smith, who recently gave her a "D" on her paper. You feel this is a waste of time and your gerbil comment (which garnered lots of chuckles from the class) was freakin awesome.

"No, I don't think detention will do. I am going to have to have Mr. Lasher talk to you. I think he's the only one who can discipline the both of you" yammered Mr. Smith. You watch him collect his newspaper and pick up his bag and open the door. He sticks his head through the door one last time.

"You both stay here you hear until Mr. Lasher arrives."

You and Terry look at each other at the same time. Oh Mr. Lasher. You've never actually seen Mr. Lasher. The rumor was the really bad kids got a "serious talk" from him and we're never the same again. Some kids who "talked" to him usually became robotic and kept to themselves after talking to this unseen teacher. They also started muttering things under their breath and talking to people who weren't there. It was all weird. One kid even developed a speech impediment after talking to Mr. Lasher.

One thing's for sure, you didn't want to talk to him.

"C'mon, Terry I don't have a good feeling about this. I don't want to talk to Mr. Lasher" you say.
"You spooked by the urban legend? Terry asks in a sarcastic way.
"No" you respond, "but the kids who have talked to him are not right. Let's get outta here right now." you demand.

You quickly grab your backpack and your phone and crouch down as you open the door. Terry gives a sigh shrug and follows you out. You quickly dash to the exit but it's padlocked. You need to find another way out.

You start to hear footsteps and they're getting closer. It could be your heart pounding but Terry confirms your suspicions. Which way to go. You need to find an exit before the infamous Mr. Lasher arrives.

If you decide to go to the gym, turn the page to this blog: The Moon is a Dead World

If you decide to go to the cafeteria, turn the page this blog: Four of Them

If you decide to go to the biology lab, turn the page this blog: Enter The Man-Cave

**********************************

OK it up to you. Pick your choice: the gym, the cafeteria or the biology lab and write up what happens. You can keep the story going or you can write an ending. I get the feeling we're not going to see a lot of happy endings.

Once you're done, send me the link and I'll insert your link to the choice you picked. All I asked is when you do, please link back to my site (http://jadedviewer.blogspot.com) or to this post. It'd be fun to get a lot of the horror blogosphere involved. So if you can retweet and post links to get people to try this little experiment, the more the better.

Happy Choosing!

Categories: choose your own adventure, horror blog, horror blogging, jadedviewer, jadedviewer.com, links from the horrorsphere, the horror continuum, the jaded viewer