THE OVERALL EVENT…

WOO – Value for money | WOO – Roaming Characters | BOO – Entertainment

We don’t often get to visit The Village of the Cursed and this is our first time visiting under their new name, slightly adjusted from what they were named previously. This event is created by several couples who have come together to create something terrifying. The event has been running for a number of years, changing locations along its way but has over 10 years of experience behind them.

We attended on their opening night and after parking up in the field, we made our way to the station facade front where we waited to go in. You get your tickets checked at the ticket office before heading through the first maze, before getting into the main event arena for the evening. The intro maze is certainly something different to your usual offering, as you are forced to do this introductory maze right at the start, whilst the rest are optional and in any order.

They had a handful of the roaming characters about, the main ones we interacted with were a Jack the Ripper style character, who was pretty spooky and had lots of questionable objects in his bag. Then you also had the main station master, who wandered around with his light, sarcastic and witty comments. It was nice for them to have some of the team out, adding more to the event and keeping everything lighthearted and funny.

Unfortunately, the entertainment was not much. They had a DJ playing popular songs and some side shows of axe throwing and archery but that was all. We feel like some shows would be great to keep people sticking around just a little longer and enjoying the whole Halloween atmosphere.

Although the price for 7 attractions is great value, and even though the mazes can be a little short, getting 7 mazes in an evening is always great fun to see different styles, themes and techniques used. The drinks were super affordable also!

The Inner Sanctum

WOO – Costume & Makeup

The Inner Sanctum was our first maze and again, the costumes and makeup were about what we expected to see in this maze. Featuring nuns, they were clear cut of what they were and had some pretty scary features when hiding in the dark, which we loved to see.

BOO – Lighting & SFX

Outside of the ending scene which had some use of light, the maze featured next to no special effects, which was disappointing to see. These types of mazes can be made really well with a bit more lighting or effect based moments, so would love to see it come back with something more in this department.

WOO – Actor Performance

The intro and outro characters, along with one character who seemed to roam with us across the whole maze were standouts here. They managed to get the odd jump scare and create some pretty freaky moments.

Doom-Entia

WOO – Actor Performance

The team here also did a great job overall in creating some scary performances. With some set scenes and how they built into the story, they made it work and were very convincing in their roles.

BOO – Lighting & SFX

The lighting seemed very simple and again another maze where special effects rarely featured inside, which the whole event needs to improve.

WOO – Storytelling

The world they tried to create was loosely linked to the dementia and doom theme combined. We don’t believe this was offensive as if you go round, there is very little relating that style or offense. There were more story elements added in and it was one of the better story based mazes of our evening.

The Inn-Formassmurder

WOO – Actor Performance

The creepy team here managed to do it once more, creating a top-notch performance with some storytelling involved in the opening scene.

BOO – Audio

There was a lack of audio here, more so compared to the other attractions, and it felt like the weakest element.

WOO – Costume & Makeup

From the opening scene, the costume was noticeable and quite prominent. We liked how this featured across the maze and was one of the stronger elements.