Throughout October, Warner Bros. Movie World on the Gold Coast will be hosting their annual Fright Night events – where they open up their park at nighttime on weekends and host a number of spooky events alongside a number of rides. One of the main attractions that have been held each year are horror mazes, where groups of people walk through a labyrinth of paths with the sole purpose of being scared by what lays within them. The theme park have this year been collaborating with ZeniMax Australia / Bethesda Softworks (ANZ) to produce a special maze based on upcoming survival-horror video game The Evil Within.
While several hundred kilometers away from the theme park, a small section of the maze was replicated at the Bethesda booth during this weekends EB Games Expo, which was exclusively dedicated to promoting The Evil Within. With a bit of spare time on my hands in-between interviews, I decided to check the maze out, having enjoyed several of the horror mazes that Movie World and their Gold Coast competition have provided theme park goers over the years. Overall I can say that it will be a very different experience for two groups of people.
The first thing to note was that a majority of the people coming out of the other side of the maze seemed genuinely scared or at least short of breath. After asking my lady managing the booth, this maze was supposedly a 90 second snippet of a maze which was approximately eleven or twelve minutes in length… suddenly my interest was piqued and was left for the next five minutes pondering how people would go in the full version if there were people streaming out of the short preview looking horrified. What was more riveting to me however was that the group I paired off with seemed to be quite worried about our impending trip into the unknown. This alone turned this maze into something much more memorable.
I have to give the maze creators credit… in terms of horror-inspired environments they managed to get the “bloody warehouse” vibe almost perfect, and in itself also managed to get some interesting responses from my companions throughout the trip. While there were a few nondescript corridors which helped build the suspense that something could be lurking around the corridors, the props used and the occasional bloody scene were well done and gave the impression that it was the environment and not just the actors contributing to the overall experience.
Of course, the actors play their roles as psychopathic killers very well… perhaps a little bit too realistic for some. There were just two actors in the entire maze that came out during the latter half of the trip. The first one to surprise the group (Pictured at the top of this post) started chasing the group wielding what seemed to be a butchers knife – causing the other three members of my group to go running off and leaving me in fits of hysterics as I ran to catch up to them. The second also did a similar action of scaring and then chasing the group. The snippet of the full maze was pretty simple in its approach (Although I assume there is much more to be scared about / enjoy during the full experience), however the environment and appearances of the actors made it much more eerie and scarier than any other horror maze I have personally experienced to date.
From this preview alone, I can say that if you are one to easily be scared then you can expect to scream multiple times as your ‘fight or flight’ responses begin kicking in. But if you are not one to easily be scared… then I highly recommend teaming up with people who seem hesitant about entering…. it will likely be a very hilarious and possibly frightening experience for yourself as well.
This “The Evil Within” inspired maze will be available during the Warner Bros. Movie World Fright Nights on every Friday and Saturday night in October until Halloween. There are a number of ticket packages available via the Movie World website and ticket providers. Certain special passes also include one free entry into the event.
