Murder House Productions presents Ghosted - Reply or Die: 2022 Review Inbox
Murder House Productions, Los Angeles, CA
Today, we drop in on one of our favorite haunts--a partnership that we've had the pleasure of covering for the past five years as they've brought their sumptuously beautiful, technologically advanced, intimately synchronized productions from a home haunt stage in Thousand Oaks into a professional, commercial setting right in Los Angeles' Mid-City district. We're talking about Murder House Productions, the brainchild of Aurora Persichetti and Kyle Warner, which has produced its Halloween Horror Nights-caliber haunts based on both intellectual properties and original stories over the years and always knocked each one out of the park.
This year’s Murder House Productions haunted house is definitely a scream!
When we last checked in with MHP, last year, they were celebrating a second run of Shook, their LGBTQ+ tribute haunt collaboration with Twisted Haunts, which took guests through the movies Babadook, Sleepaway Camp, and Carrie. Running in June for Pride Month and again in July as an encore, Shook was the most extensive haunted house yet from Murder House Productions, and it really showcased the prowess that Aurora, Kyle, and Twisted Haunt's Zion Fenwick could unleash on a professional platform. Later in the year, MHP eschewed a traditional Halloween season haunt to pursue professional opportunities assisting JFI Productions with scenic, effects, and sound design and integration in their immersive theater experiences like Creep L.A. and a couple of special, limited time and select audience productions. Anyone who attended any of those events were able to witness some of Aurora and Kyle's handiwork and expertise executed with stunning and exceptional proficiency.
This year, MHP is back for Halloween season with an original concept haunted house that was originally conceived as a February haunt that could tie into Valentine's Day. But when further development started growing the idea and the execution both in detail and in scale, Kyle and Aurora shifted it to the traditional autumn spooky period for release instead.
Ghosted: Reply or Die takes guests into an ominous alternate world where the ghosted are ensnared.
Their newest creation, Ghosted: Reply or Die, is a sardonic, tongue-in-cheek look at the modern world of online dating and present day relationships and what might happen when they're severed without warning. Using a science fiction based, inter-dimensional transportive environment as an analogy, Ghosted examines the dramatic consequences that the practice of "ghosting" can have on people's psyche and sense of self-reality.
In this MHP original story, visitors are guests of EntyP Research Laboratories (pronounced "En-Type"), who are participating in human scientific trials in their latest experiment that involves sending volunteers through a specially constructed portal into a newly-discovered paranormal universe where people who have been ghosted have been trapped. As time has progressed, this world has grown more and more populated--and also more and more bitter and sinister and vengeful, threatening to explode into our world with vindictive malice. EntyP's solution is to enlist volunteers to venture into this other side and link the ghosted with those who ghosted them, dissolving their negative energy and restoring balance to the linked realms.
Before guests enter EntyP Research Laboratories, they must first undergo screening.
The Ghosted experience begins before guests even enter the maze. As they wait in line, EntyP lab doctors approach and pre-screen them with a series of polling questions, mostly related to guests' past experiences with either being ghosted or ghosting others and with various dating apps and relationship sites. Stern and business-focused and just a little bit odd, these staff members play off the whole interdimensional travel as just another run-of-the-mill lab trial. Ultimately, as guests make their way into the EntyP laboratory lobby, the doctors deliver a final exposition on the purpose of the test subjects' mission and wish them all a subtly foreboding valediction.
Nothing is as it seems in the Ghosted realm.
Inside, guests watch a little video that is meant to further explain their endeavor, all as the system computer attempts to boot up the passageway through which guests will pass to enter the Ghosted dominion. Naturally, a critical failure ensues, and with billowing smoke and blaring sirens, guests are summoned to the next room, where a grotesque rift has opened up between our reality and the Ghosted domain. There is nowhere else to go but forwarded, so into this netherrealm everyone goes!
The remainder of the maze is a surreal sojourn through dark caverns embedded with smart phones and various mobile devices; lost souls searching for those who ghosted them who suddenly turn into vengeful, demonic wraiths; horrid creatures mixing organic and cybernetic appearances; and mirror environments that seem downright Escher-esque. The entire ambiance feels like a strange fever dream blending into a visceral nightmare, and the tension builds as guests venture deeper and deeper into the Ghosted realm, almost drawn forward like moths to a glowing, pulsating light.
The dramatic climax of the maze pits guests against the Ghosted Queen herself, a creepy, long-clawed, silent hag of a fiend clutching a smartphone and spreading her acrimonious energy through an apocalyptic explosion that knocks guests back into our world--only with disastrous results. Indeed, sometimes, when romance or a formerly-held-dear relationship ends without warning and without closure, it can very much feel like the end of the world. In Ghosted, it basically is.
The Ghosted Queen looms tall with silent malice.
Murder House Productions has always been known for their impressive mastery and integration of lighting, audio, theatrical, and trigger effects, blending practical sets and multi-media projections and soundscapes to enhance their haunted house environments and create a cutting-edge and spellbinding experiences. Ever the perfectionists, Aurora and Kyle have refined and improved and expanded their craft with each maze they've developed, seeking to choreograph and stage the haunter experience with ever-increasing exquisite precision.
Well, look, now you’ve gone and made a mess…
The theatrical set work this year may be MHP's best and most immersive yet. Aurora and Kyle opted to move away from the nature-centric settings that most of their past mazes have used, intentionally choosing a laboratory and sci-fi atmosphere for something fresh. But the organic aesthetic of Aurora's previous scene designs still shows through, especially in the Ghosted dimension. There will inevitably be a comparison between some of the sets in the maze and Stranger Things, especially with the concept and the visuals of venturing into a desecrated parallel universe populated by monstrous and vitriolic creatures. But Ghosted takes familiar motifs that have been featured in plenty of stories and shows and movies and executes them in a unique and resourceful and vividly dazzling style that is truly their own. And the experience is all the more gripping for it.
The scares in Ghosted are fun too. We have criticized Halloween Horror Nights in the past for its overuse and almost sole reliance on boo box scares, and MHP uses this tactic too. But the difference is that a maze like Ghosted employs said jump scares as only part of its storytelling deployment and uses them selectively and randomly enough that they still remain effective.
The set and creature design throughout the maze is unsettling and gnarled.
In Ghosted, MHP has created a sublime, pristine, and sensational haunt that amazes and astounds with its mix of otherworldly sets, unnerving scareactors, and inventive storyline. This maze is focused and deliberate, setting about its goals and delivering with wonderful efficiency. Guests walk through one group at a time, maintaining an isolated proximity that makes the maze feel tailored directly to them and only them. As a result, each group receives personal attention and direction, making their experience all the more memorable. In a season where the independent haunts have produced some amazingly strong showings, Murder House Production's Ghosted: Reply or Die ranks right up there among the best of them.
Don’t ghost this maze. Murder House Production’s latest haunt is an absolute stellar feat!
Murder House Productions is located at 2525 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90018 and continues its run of Ghosted the next two Fridays through Sundays, October 21 - 23 and 28 - 30. It is not open on Halloween night. Tickets must be purchased online in advance and are only $15 per person plus fees--a steal given the quality of this amazing haunt. There is street parking available around the site. Guests arriving will wait outside the gate by the green-lit corridor until they are let into the inner queue.
Architect. Photographer. Disney nerd. Haunt enthusiast. Travel bugged. Concert fiend. Asian.
