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Poltergeist


Mark M.
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The restless spirits of a realm beyond are overrunning Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights. Prepare to cross over as Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures’ (MGM) 1982 supernatural horror film Poltergeist becomes reality in a new haunted house.

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On 8/10/2018 at 6:49 AM, Nightcrawler said:

I wonder if they'll include the tree scene?
It's an iconic moment, but I'm not sure if it could translate into a House well.

A much larger scale version of the hands hallway from PS: Echoes of Shadybrook, maybe? With water for breaking glass?

Edited by OhHaiInternet95
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I am so incredibly curious how they will pull this off and what will be scaring/jumping at us. Just watched it last night and was so like that could be a good moment for the house but how will they do it...!? I am really curious about this one...hope it isn't a dud like the Exorcist was, for me anyways

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

just watched this movie for the first time this weekend. Holy Awful. Probably scary for its time but wow. Cringe worthy and i love 80's movies more than anything. BTTF and ghostbusters are my fav movies of all time.

Edited by CNYHHN315
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51 minutes ago, duh1011 said:

Isaw it for the first time recently and yeah, i dont think its aged well at all. Ill try to keep an open mind given the praise, but i was underwhelmed with the film which didn't do anything at all for me

totally pumped for the house. Seeing it in real life will be great. But the movie being a cult classic i just cant understand. Hardly got through it

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Like most people, I was curious to see how HHN was going to pull off this house when the original film had very little to work with. After experiencing all 10 haunted houses, this house is currently my house of the year.  The designers' interpretation of each scene is so creative. The house is definitely better than the movie.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Fantastic film, fantastic house.

 

I appreciate that they took creative liberties with this, it really feels like you're walking around the actual house from the movie.

 

The puppets are insane, and there are SO many.

 

The face melting scene was done exactly like how I wanted them to after I first watched the film weeks ago.

 

The only problems I had with this one is that I got a not-so-great run and that there are quite a bit of black hallways near the end.

 

I'll have to get some more runs until I can fairly judge it, but even on my bad run, this was great, possible HotY material.

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For those ragging on Poltergeist the movie...its definitely one of those that you have to grow up watching & appreciating. I was about 8 when this came out and the face peeling scene and giant monster face scared the bejeezuz outta me as a kid!  Now so many years later to see these come to life in a house...its quite the experience! 

 

Interesting tidbit, despite Tobe Hooper's name attached as director, its been determined this is Steven Spielberg's baby and its quite obvious when watching said film.

 

This is arguably my fav house of HHN28...hard to pick a favorite though, its like picking a favorite child. lol.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I just re-watched Poltergeist last night.  First and only other time I saw it was when it came out, around age 16.  I know a lot of younger people have seen it for the first time recently and gave it a big fat meh.  And I get that.  When I saw it back then there were parts that stuck with me.  Embedded in my brain.  

The kitchen chairs, the Beast monster, The tree, the mom being dragged up the wall and across the ceiling, the skeletons in the pool, and the clown.  Oh dear God, the clown.  That thing gave me such nightmares.  And as a 16 year old boy back then, that mom was a milf before milf was a thing.  This is probably a big reason I don't recall some other memorable scares from the movie...

 

After re-watching it as an adult, there are several things that completely slipped passed my 16 year old psyche back then:  Mom and dad were stoners,  Mom was pregnant with Dana at 15, and Dana is a total tramp - did you notice the big hickey on her neck when she got out of her boyfriend's car? Or how she "remembered" the Holiday Inn that the family never stayed at?

 

And here's the thing -  some of those were very short scenes, and they were so ingrained in my mind that I recalled them as being much more scary and elaborate as they were in the film.  I was shocked to see how little time they got in the movie, and how much time they spent in my head.

 

But Mike Aiello recognized that those were the key scenes, and maybe they snowballed in his mind like they did in mine.  Because he chose to focus on several of them.  Take the clown, for instance.  There was a single scene in the movie where the clown attacks Robbie and his arms wrap around Robbie's neck.  But when I went through the HHN house, the clown was everywhere, as were his bendy arms.  Walking through that house made me recall false memories of the clown - things that were never in the movie.  As I said in my trip review, it's as if Mike Aiello didn't just present scenes from the movie.  He presented his own nightmares from the movie.  And they were my nightmares also.

 

To me, when an IP house is able to take the movie scenes and build upon them (not just recreate them), that is when IP houses work.  As I finished that movie and Carol Anne's Theme played at the end, I was so longing to return to Orlando.  For me, this house remain GOAT.  It works on every single level.

 

I contrast that to Hollywood's presentation of Poltergeist, which was a paint by numbers effort.  Hollywood took great joy in remaking the sets from the movie and doing a generic pop scare.  In fact as you enter the admittedly beautiful facade of the house exterior and walk into the living room, they nailed it.  Down to the giant speakers on the wall, they got every part of the massive living room down.  And yet NOTHING happens in that room.  In Hollywood the clown was just there.  Just static.  No interaction.  No attacks.  Just there.  It was treated no differently than the Rubik's Cube.  Just a prop that happened to be in a movie.  

 

So you have two presentations of the exact same IP.  And here I am - the guy who hates IP houses. Finding one presentation GOAT and the other just another generic crappy IP house.  How can that be?  Well, you have one design team that scanned all the thousands of production stills and video captures, in an effort to replicate memorable scenes down to every leaf on a potted plant.  Scares?  Those can be added generically later.  And they were.  And the other team?  They recreated the EMOTION of the film.  They started with the scares, built the scene around it, and continued the scares well beyond the scene.  The moment I entered that soundstage and saw that the facade was the pool itself, with ice cold air and pelting RAIN, I felt this was going to be way beyond Poltergeist.  

 

Goddamn perfection.

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Even though I only got to do this and Stranger Things I think I enjoyed this house the most out of the two. It was a complete blast and seeing the different scenes from the movie be recreated was great. The very start where we began in the pool was great plus seeing the clown and beast monster constantly stalking us was amazing. Only thing I would change is the amount of people being let in as it ruined some of the scares. We could see the scare actors before we got upon them.

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On 10/16/2018 at 8:18 PM, SATX said:

Only thing I would change is the amount of people being let in as it ruined some of the scares. We could see the scare actors before we got upon them.

 

Which is why Poltergeist had an 80 minute wait on Wednesday at midnight vs 180 minutes.  Won't happen with Poltergeist, but on some nights where you can go into houses alone in the last 15 min of the event.  

 

Universal just added a night to the event - TUESDAY Oct 30.  I think that is going to be THE night to go this year.  Will probably be an empty park.

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20 hours ago, zombieman said:

Universal just added a night to the event - TUESDAY Oct 30.  I think that is going to be THE night to go this year.  Will probably be an empty park.

 

Why it may be true that the event has an added night, it would be more wise to go another night.

When dates are added this late in the run, it is hard for workers/SA's to rework their schedule around a night that wasn't previously scheduled. The event will still be fun, but may not be as good as it would be going on an already scheduled night.

 

If this is the only night you can go, then go for it, but it would be my recommendation to pick another night if at all possible.

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