Strewn markers and papers cover the desk in Erin Templeton’s bedroom. The last entry in the missing ballet dancer’s “dream log” is a deadly premonition – a man wearing a crown entering her room to write an indecipherable message in blood. welcome to the blumhouse live

Under normal circumstances, a dream is just a dream. But the young dancer interns for Dr. Evelyn Vack, a controversial neurologist studying memory recovery and implantation – and the doctor’s granddaughter was the last person to see Erin alive. As the detective in charge of the case, I decide to pay the Vack family a visit at their home and lab, collectively known as The Blumhouse.

Welcome to the Blumhouse Live is an interactive, virtual event created by Little Cinema for Blumhouse Productions to promote their new partnership with Amazon to release eight new films directly to Amazon Prime’s streaming service. Themes and references to the first four movies in the series – The Lie, Nocturne, Black Box, and Evil Eye – are loosely tied together to build the narrative, with plenty of Easter eggs for fans of other Blumhouse properties, such as Insidious and Get Out.

A dossier begins the experience well before the doors to the house open to investigators. Inside is a trove of information, from police reports to a complex Vack family tree. Along with keys to solve future puzzles, there are opportunities to get a head start on the case, and work through phone numbers hidden in the records. But the most crucial piece of data included in the booklet outlines the ultimate goal of the event: find four symbols to unlock the attic, which contains the truth about Erin’s fate.

The format “inside” the house itself has a flood of users investigating the Vack residence in various rooms simultaneously, with a chat log used in each room to interact with not only each other, but occasionally the characters, as well. With just a simple click to move about the house, the rooms feel distinct and have an essence of entering the unknown with each move, mainly due to the use of mixed media throughout the experience. In one room, participants may be interacting with a live actor on webcam, in the next they may experience the memories of a character in a virtual room-scale browser app.

With the high volume of users engaging with the house as they so choose, the designed controls to keep everyone entertained and progressing are admirable. Certain rooms will lock and unlock. Rooms previously explored may change tone over the course of the night, with a previous light conversation suddenly turning somber or even violent due to prompts from the users.

The highlight of this execution is an event that occurs in the garage. While previous rooms are as innocuous as a therapist making cocktails or a tarot card reader predicting the future of those in the chat, guests who enter the garage at the right time find Erin’s stepfather, Jonathan, tied to a chair with a crossbow pointed at his heart. His head is locked inside a metal container, sealed with a padlock. And in a twist that would make Jigsaw blush, two rotary saw blades hang above the box, aimed to slam into their victim’s temples. This room is told in first-person view, with an investigator attempting to free Jonathan by finding the numbers to the padlock with assistance from the users.

The stunts performed in this scene are the most scarring moments of the experience. There’s a certain moral guilt in instructing a nameless, faceless person on the other side of a webcam to reach inside a jar to retrieve a tarot card, just to watch them be pinched by the scorpion standing guard. While the team during my experience was able to solve the number puzzle in time to free Jonathan, our brave avatar cut her feet by walking on glass, and was nearly maimed by a suitcase bomb. Walking into these chaotic scenarios after previously watching a prima ballerina in her private studio just moments before demonstrates the brilliant design that allows for a natural, user-controlled dichotomy of tension.

The plot accelerates in the back half of the experience – from a missing person case to a full exploration of the metaphysical – outlining the Vack family’s multi-generational curse that drives twins to be born in every era, with the less talented one perishing prematurely. A complicated weave of this blight, Erin’s disappearance and Evelyn’s research lead to extending the scope of the experience far beyond a whodunit, which only makes the truth hidden in the attic far more enticing.

From what I could glean from the chat logs, it seemed that there was an even split among the players on whether they were able to unlock the attic and discover Erin’s ultimate fate. Many lamented that the task was a fair bit harder than they were expecting. For a free event being used as an advertisement for Amazon Prime, the content was possibly too dense for the time allotted for a non-enthusiast audience. For those that did unlock the attic’s ending video, however, there seemed to be a real sense of accomplishment and satisfaction with the experience as a whole.

In fact, it feels almost belittling to consider Welcome to the Blumhouse Live as promotional material. There were moments in which I legitimately connected with an actor through the chat; I felt like I contributed to the story; and I had second-hand fear for a stranger trying to reach past a live scorpion. The word “advertisement” feels almost dirty for something that was the highlight of my day. Yet I didn’t pay for it. And in every room, posters and flyers for the films that Amazon is banking on me watching reminded me who footed the bill so that I could have this experience.

ARGs and interactive exhibits are old hat now for marketing teams, but this virtual format feels so similar to what other immersive artists are creating that it’s hard not to declare this art of equal validity – shoehorned Whiplash posters included. To do something that is aligned with the pulse of an artistic industry and do it on a scale and production level that only Amazon can bring is impressive… even if I’m the mark in the end.

Welcome to the Blumhouse Live’s commitment to a complex narrative, large-scale world-building, and logistical management blur the lines between art and advertisement. Authentic stories and reactions combine with a carefully crafted design to empower the individual in a sea of other users. As an outreach from a brand and as an artistic experience, Little Cinema’s Welcome to the Blumhouse Live succeeds on all fronts.

Welcome to the Blumhouse Live has concluded. Check out our Event Guide for more Halloween and horror events throughout the year.

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