St Valentine's Nightmare by Hell's Gate Horror
St Valentine’s Nightmare was the first event for new company Hell’s Gate Horror and opened for 1 just night in Dundee. Based in the city’s botanical gardens, we wrapped ourselves up warm and headed out into the cold, dark and wet gardens.
What followed was a promenade experience where we walked from scene to scene looking for the five Aspects of Love – the elements that would help close a recently opened portal to Hell. Along the way we were assaulted by a number of different "Purge" type characters alongside some killer clowns, spooky characters and a few undead zombies. At various points, we were asked to complete certain tasks and these added an element of room escape/puzzle to the experience. For example in a forest clearing full of clowns we could see a combination safe that we needed to get into. We were told to look around for dolls in the clearing, and once we had collected them, 5 of them had numbers on. These would make up the combination for the safe but with no clues, that left us with over 120 different combinations to try. Not helpful in the cold and dark with the host just encouraging us to try faster - without clues!
The elements we had been collecting included eyes, vials of adrenaline and later on we had to rummage through a “body” to find a heart. Unfortunately this turned out to be a real animal heart that was raw and still a bit bloody. It was cool in a way to see it, but we then had to continue the show with a glove that was wet from raw meat!
By the time we had collected some of the 5 aspects (we either missed part of the show or an actor forgot to give us one of the pieces we needed) - we arrived and potentially closed the portal to hell. This kind of involved throwing the body parts on the floor and being chased down a wet grassy slope to the exit.
Within about 30 minutes or so, we were out and were left wondering if we had missed some big finale or set-piece. Certainly along the way we experienced some great jump scares (the cannon was the most effective) but there was also a lot of walking around in the dark with not a lot happening. Clearly the designers wanted to make an event that ran for a certain length but it might have been more prudent to shorten the experience and increase the time interacting with the actors. As it was – for the size of the attraction, it probably needed about another dozen or so actors just to reduce the downtime between scenes.
For a first venture, Hell's Gate Horror had some cool ideas which we would love to see them expand on in future attractions. We loved the concept of the mini quests along the way and some of the scares and jumps were cleverly executed in the darkness. We really look forward to seeing what the team come up with next.
What followed was a promenade experience where we walked from scene to scene looking for the five Aspects of Love – the elements that would help close a recently opened portal to Hell. Along the way we were assaulted by a number of different "Purge" type characters alongside some killer clowns, spooky characters and a few undead zombies. At various points, we were asked to complete certain tasks and these added an element of room escape/puzzle to the experience. For example in a forest clearing full of clowns we could see a combination safe that we needed to get into. We were told to look around for dolls in the clearing, and once we had collected them, 5 of them had numbers on. These would make up the combination for the safe but with no clues, that left us with over 120 different combinations to try. Not helpful in the cold and dark with the host just encouraging us to try faster - without clues!
The elements we had been collecting included eyes, vials of adrenaline and later on we had to rummage through a “body” to find a heart. Unfortunately this turned out to be a real animal heart that was raw and still a bit bloody. It was cool in a way to see it, but we then had to continue the show with a glove that was wet from raw meat!
By the time we had collected some of the 5 aspects (we either missed part of the show or an actor forgot to give us one of the pieces we needed) - we arrived and potentially closed the portal to hell. This kind of involved throwing the body parts on the floor and being chased down a wet grassy slope to the exit.
Within about 30 minutes or so, we were out and were left wondering if we had missed some big finale or set-piece. Certainly along the way we experienced some great jump scares (the cannon was the most effective) but there was also a lot of walking around in the dark with not a lot happening. Clearly the designers wanted to make an event that ran for a certain length but it might have been more prudent to shorten the experience and increase the time interacting with the actors. As it was – for the size of the attraction, it probably needed about another dozen or so actors just to reduce the downtime between scenes.
For a first venture, Hell's Gate Horror had some cool ideas which we would love to see them expand on in future attractions. We loved the concept of the mini quests along the way and some of the scares and jumps were cleverly executed in the darkness. We really look forward to seeing what the team come up with next.
Links
Hell's Gate Horror website
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