The Haunted Vineyard 2004
Ontario, California
The Haunted Vineyard is a classic haunted house that relies spooky mood,
carefully crafted ambience, and the bountiful energy of it actors to
frighten guests with wonderful success. You will hardly find any gore,
nor
will you find that much blood at the Haunted Vineyard. Your ears will
not be
bombarded by a thumping techno soundtrack, a revving chainsaw, or the
constant sounds of pneumatic powered special effects. If any of those
things
were to be present at The Haunted Vineyard it would ruin the whole wonderful
thing.
The entire haunt revolves around mood and ambience to set a frightful,
creepy
tone making the guests easy prey for the actors to scare. Many things
are
used to achieve this effect. They have a nice little back-story that
they
have printed up, available to anyone who wants a copy (though you probably
won't be able to read it until you get to someplace with brighter light).
The front area is themed well to get the guests in the mood, complete
with
smoke and roamers. Every group I witnessed Friday night were already
getting
antsy and scared before they even went into the haunt thanks to the
theming
of the front area (and screams coming from inside). The haunt itself
is
filled wall to wall with visual details, so many you will not see them
all
in one pass through the haunt. Imagine the best looking section or room
of a
haunted attraction you have been to, now apply that to an entire haunt
and
that is the feeling you get visually from the Haunted Vineyard. You
can tell
it is a labor of love because the more frightened guests are probably
not
going to notice 80% of it, not consciously at least. While walking through
the haunt you will not see anything that will break your suspension
of
reality.
It even seems that the few special effects that they do have were designed
with the mood in mind. The mechanical effects that are in the house
are
decidedly low-tech, but all work perfectly in their job to scare you.
As a
result you don't have that "wooshing" noise of the pneumatics
that many of
today's more advanced special effects make, killing the mood. One other
upshot of this is also that they are less likely to breakdown.
Audibly, the sounds are there merely to enhance the mood, not to overshadow
it. Some of the things I remember hearing were hushed whispers, animal
noises, and a child's giggle. Of course all of these sounds were in
appropriate places.
Of course, all the mood and ambience in the world don't mean a darn
thing if
you don't have the scares to bring it all home. For the most part, they
deliver the goods. From the very first scare (which they used a nice,
unexpected piece of misdirection) until the last all the actors scared
the
guests with zeal and gusto. Energy is over 50% of the scare and their
actors
seem to realize that part. Hopefully, as they become more comfortable
in
their parts, some of them will also realize that holding character beyond
the initial scare is every bit as important. A lot of times the actor
would
attack the front or middle of the group and get a nice scare out of
them,
but then they would just stand there occasionally shaking their noisemaker
at the remainder of the group walking by. If there is a chink in the
proverbial armor, this is it. You are one of, "Secundo's creatures
of the
night," and while someone can still see you, you should act like
one. The
important thing is that the energy and zeal is there and you can't teach
actors that. You can teach them how to better stay in character and
how to
better work a group of people.
Back to the scares in general, there is one other thing that I thought
was
done quite well and that was the fact that scares come at you from ALL
sides
and from all angles. Up high and down low, nowhere are you safe from
the
scares. And to ensure that you don't see the scares coming, a great
use of
light and dark as well as obstacles make sure that your vision is not
clear
enough to make out a scare before its time.
The costumes were simple yet effective, and like the set decorations
left no
detail unaccounted for. Most of the actors wore masks while a few wore
makeup. The makeup looked great on those monsters wearing it. One zombie
looked like he walked off of the set for Dawn of the Dead. The masks
were
all good for their purpose and all of them fit for the areas they were
in
(almost nothing tweaks me more than a mask or make-up effect done simply
because it looks cool regardless of whether or not it fits the theme).
Specific things I liked:
* The cornfield - Cornfields make for good creepy set pieces in general.
The
scares they put in here are some of their best;
* The (child's?) bedroom - There is a great scare here made even better
by
an actor with great energy.
* The claustrophobic area - The thing I loved about this is that it
GRADUALLY becomes more and more claustrophobic until you are in a rather
tight room with a well-done scare.
* The Roamers out front - You two did a great job of setting the tone
and
never breaking character (at least not when I was looking).
Specific things I was less than thrilled with:
* The garden area - Towards the end of the maze there is a hallway that
has
what appears to be thick bushes on either side. I thought this would
be a
good place to scare the pants off of people, but all we got were some
rustling shrubberies. Also in a room, I believe right before that hallway
there is a mechanical effect that has a body swing out over the guests.
I
think it may be a little hard to notice between the flashing strobe
and the
fact that the mechanism is quiet. There is nothing to draw attention
to it.
I only saw it because I glimpsed the cable for the effect and visually
followed it.
Nit-picks:
* too many noisemakers - This could just be me, but I don't find pennies
in
a can nearly as frightening as a good guttural yell.
* Too many masks - The masks looked good, but I find masks severely
limit the
expressiveness and scariness an actor can potentially convey.
This haunt is a great one to go to. It definitely should be on people's
short list of haunts to see this year. And with the price being only
$12
($10 with a coupon and $5 for repeat visits that same night) it is a
good
deal.
If all of the haunts I go to this year are anywhere as good as The Haunted
Vineyard, then this should be a very good Halloween season, indeed.
--Michael Keane
mkeane@socal.rr.com