Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Haunted House review: Fear Factory Insanitarium in The Colony

By Alex Bentley

Pegasus News will be reviewing nearly a dozen haunted houses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area over the next two weeks. Next up: Fear Factory Insanitarium in The Colony.

Fear Factory Insanitarium is put on by the Lakeside Community Theatre at the Lakeside Arts Center in The Colony, an unassuming building that was inexcusably left pretty bare on the outside. Except for a couple of stocks, there was nothing remotely scary outside.

This haunted house is supposedly a clown-based scarefest, although clowns were in suspiciously short supply on my visit. The website sets up a grand story for the house, but this story is not repeated on-site, so you can be forgiven if the theme isn’t overly clear when you go through.

The Price: $15 or $13 if, like me, you print off a $2 off coupon from the website. It’s not much, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.

The Line: Until I read Laura’s review of The Cutting Edge, I was all set to take Fear Factory to task for their slow line, as the time from the moment we bought our tickets to when we exited the building was just over 1 ½ hours, with what seemed like a relatively small crowd. Employees took in groups of 5-6 people, each assigned a specific number, every five minutes or so, which doesn’t seem that bad until you have to sit around for over an hour next to groups of teenagers acting like – well, teenagers. The good news, at least for a movie-lover like me, is that they had set up a projector, small screen and seats to show movies such as Beetlejuice and Ghostbusters to ease the lengthy waiting time. Solid decision – much better than twiddling your thumbs (or wiggling your ears) all that time.

The Haunt: Warning – Fear Factory employs multiple strobe lights in their haunted house. And they really want you to be aware of this fact. There’s a long warning sheet when you buy your tickets, and the person who lets you into the building warns you yet again just before going in. In case you had any doubt, the first room you enter has the most blinding strobe light you’ll ever encounter. It’s made doubly bad by a character droning on for a few minutes to urge you not to grab stuff off the walls or get in the faces of the actors trying to scare you, something they should really tell you outside so as not to sear off any retinas.

Once the house starts for real, it’s all pretty standard stuff. Groups are led through a series of hallways with curtains used to block your way, probably giving fits to anyone with a real sense of claustrophobia. One room was especially confusing, as white curtains were everywhere without a clear sense of how to go forward. Hint: When you have to ask the actors for directions when going through a haunted house, it kind of takes away the scariness of it all.

None of the scares are too over-the-top or gory – most entail banging on walls as you pass or, as we found out since we were at the back of our group, actors coming up behind you. The best room was one that was pitch black with what felt like punching bags, possibly substituting for dead bodies, hung throughout.

The only real disappointment is the quickness of the house – felt like the whole thing took less than 10 minutes. The end left more than a little to be desired, too, as it took you outside well before the actual exit – scares don’t come quite as easily once you aren’t surrounded by the unknown.

Wet-Your-Pants Factor: Very little chance of having a urinary accident in this place unless you’re very young (they recommend kids 10 and under stay home) or go into an epileptic fit from the strobe lights. A few of the rooms have some decent imagination to them, but the wait and quickness of the experience override anything you see there.

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• Holidays > Halloween