Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – A haunted house recap: Going back to basics with BLOOD MANOR, TERRORVISION, and NIGHTMARE DOLLHOUSE

• By drediman
• October 26, 2023
• No Comments

This Halloween season, New Yorkers have available to them a wide variety of live entertainment options. Diverse shows like Renae Simone Jarrett’s Daphne, Edgar Oliver’s Rip Tide, Sankai Juku’s KŌSA, and Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More all present psychological terror and phantasmagorical/spectral visions in nuanced and relatively sophisticated ways — and in different genres of performance. On the flip side, the city also boasts a number of traditional haunted houses, which rely on bluntly staged artifice and brute shock tactics to induce a sense of horror. Although their merits as legitimate works of theater are debatable, there’s no denying the visceral thrill they invoke. Over the last week or so, I’ve had the opportunity to go back to basics, assessing three of the city’s flagship haunted houses. As always, here are my thoughts.

BLOOD MANOR
Through November 4

First up is Blood Manor (RECOMMENDED), the popular and dependably solid haunted house that’s celebrating its impressive 20th anniversary this Halloween season. Although perhaps the least cohesively themed of the three, it’s also the most viscerally unnerving of the trio of haunted houses I visited this fall — the attraction provides a constant barrage of bloody thrills that will have visitors gasping at every turn until they’re thrown back out onto the streets of Tribeca, disoriented at the fever dream that just transpired. In fact, the haunted house is more relentlessly assaultive than I remember in past years. For its big anniversary, Blood Manor seems to have been refreshed, expanding its sprawling layout (including a psychedelic portion during which visitors wear 3-D glasses) to feature three new rooms and updated with a new set of costumes.

TERRORVISION
Through November 5

Then uptown dab smack in the heart of the bustling Times Square area, you’ll find TerrorVision (RECOMMENDED), the brainchild of Will Munro and Katie McGeoch (the endeavor marks the duo’s second foray into New York’s haunted house market). Touted as the largest haunted house in New York City square footage-wise, it also boasts a smart premise — you enter a venue outfitted as “Horrorwood Studios” — in which visitors role play as actors auditioning for acting gigs in a horror television show. Suffice to say, things go awry as you wander the labyrinthine-like corridors of the “studio”. Despite the fact that it’s less consistently terrifying than the aforementioned Blood Manor, Munro and McGeoch’s creation still packs in the thrills while immersing you in a world in which artifice and real frights are cleverly blurred.

NIGHTMARE DOLLHOUSE
Through October 31

Lastly, we have Nightmare Dollhouse (RECOMMENDED), the latest in a line of immersive, theatrically-bent haunted houses from the folks at Psycho Clan. Even though it’s the least technically elaborate and physically expansive of the lot, the experience is, however, arguably the most psychologically astute of the three. Working with a smaller budget (the resourceful production is staged at Teatro SEA located on the Lower East Side, where Psycho Clan has set up shop for a number of Halloweens now), Nightmare Dollhouse has had to rely on intimate, disturbing interactions than over-the-top thrills. Obviously, this year’s theme are dolls — namely, with respect to their inherent creep-factor — which Nightmare Dollhouse capitalizes on with glee, thanks largely to a game cast. Indeed, each encounter is specifically rendered, resulting in a more consistently thoughtful and varied staged experience when compared to the aforementioned behemoths.