‘SPOOK SHOW 17’ Review: Homegrown DIY Doc On An Extreme Haunt
The haunt season is approaching. Like most of you reading this, you have probably been to a haunted attraction. In St. Louis, we have one of the most nationally recognized haunted attractions in America, The Darkness Haunted House. I’ve always been fascinated with haunted attractions since I was younger. My first job was working a maze erected on a softball field. There’s always been a fascination with how these businesses create these attractions and, more importantly, what their dynamic is with the actors. While October is definitely “prime-time”, this preparation takes months prior to October.
In the past 20 years, haunts have changed a bit. Sure, there are traditional locations like The Darkness, but there are subsets of “extreme haunts” that are more interactive or make you sign a waiver to get in. As someone who has seen a lot of documentaries on haunted attractions, when the opportunity to check out Spook Show 17’s first episode came across the DTB desk, I wasn’t startled. I dove in.
Doing a docu-series/web series isn’t anything new for these attractions (a really great one that pops up every season is Days of the Living Dead). In fact, you might even be seeing more and more of it. Obviously, this is a very visual and sensory experience and just writing about it wouldn’t really do justice. The creators behind haunts definitely don’t want to describe the terrors you will experience, they want you to see them. Of course, location is a big hurdle for people to get over.
You may remember a haunt called “The 17th Door” from a recent haunt doc “Haunters: The Art of the Scare” before that documentary started going down the rabbit hole with an extreme haunt called McKamey Manor. The 17th Door is an extreme haunt as well that does require all participants that enter to have completed a waiver. While it is an extreme haunt, it isn’t as sadistic and “homemade” as McKamey Manor.
Spook Show 17’s first episode introduces us to the owners/operators of The 17th Door – Robbie, Heather, and Adam. Robbie starts off saying how “Reality TV sucks pretty hard” but as he explains his distaste for it, he starts to really reveal that while the idea might be great, Robbie decides to invest money into buying 4K cameras and camera gear. Essentially he has some of his staff become cameramen and documentarians for the haunt season of 2019. The 17th Door is located in Fullerton, California and our first episode starts off in May as they are beginning work on their sets. They make the decision to scrap some rooms and build new ones to keep everything fresh.
Most haunters are problem-solvers and if you’re not, you’ll learn quickly. Things go wrong. Designs don’t pan out. My assumption is that, as we get more episodes, viewers of this whole web series will get to see that. What Spook Show 17 does very well is showing all the hard work that goes into this that usually gets unnoticed. In the first episode, there are some slight cringe moments that may rub some potential viewers the wrong way and there are times when it feels a bit staged (what Reality show isn’t?) to inject some drama or there are comments that probably didn’t need to be documented. The first episode, and the only episode we had access to for this review, is a bit lengthy at 55 minutes. With the series containing 14 episodes, that’s a lot of time to invest and it might really appeal to a very select, niche group of people. The first episode is mainly an introduction to the crew of the haunt. It’s uncensored and unapologetic. You learn about the backgrounds of some of the main crew members and how they got to this point. There is definitely a fly or flight attitude with Robbie and a lot of that is probably due to the fact that these businesses don’t have tons of time to make sure everyone is comfortable and can work under pressure. You either have it or you don’t.
The first episode weaves in and out giving you background of the attraction, the workers, and even the filming of these episodes. With the 55-minute runtime, we only see snippets of what is to come for the series and this season. With that said, there are definitely some editorial hurdles you may have to leap over. This web series is obviously a homegrown effort, and I think that is some of the charm the episode (and series) brings out. But there are things shown that feel like filler or things that could’ve been left on the cutting room floor, especially some of the questionable statements and jokes made that are un-PC. Again, we don’t know the runtime of each episode but it definitely will feel a bit lengthy for some viewers. For others that are more interested in seeing how these operations work, this is like an all-access backstage pass and, for myself, it is a welcome watch as long as you know it’s not only documenting the progression of building the haunt for the season but also familiarizing yourself with the crew in addition to documenting the making of a reality show. It may be a little too much but as a web series and could come across as lacking direction. The web series episode that we got to review really does feel like it is taking the same approach to the creation of The 17th Door, producing a product that is simple but effective.
The Review
'SPOOK SHOW 17' Review
Andy Triefenbach
Andy Triefenbach is the Editor-in-Chief and owner of DestroytheBrain.com. In addition to his role on the site, he also programs St. Louis' monthly horror & exploitation theatrical midnight program, Late Nite Grindhouse. Coming from a household of a sci-fi father and a horror/supernatural loving mother, Andy's path to loving genre film was clear. He misses VHS and his personal Saturday night 6 tape movie marathons from his youth.