And wow! From the get go this had me gripped. We were rushed into this warehouse and came across something resembling pennywise the clown who shoved us into another room where the plot began to unravel. A girl tied to a chair clearly possessed whilst these two army men told us what was happening. Straight away I felt at home, this felt amazing. Then BANG! We had to run out of the warehouse and away from the site... Unfortunately this is where things start to get very very unfulfilling due to unforeseen circumstances. The group became split. The faster runners reached the ‘scene’ before us and were allowed to keep running away whilst we were held back a little to partake in the story before being sent on our way. This led to virtually nothing, as we missed... everything... every twist and turn and plot point.
Lagging behind we never managed to catch up with the rest of the group which meant we missed one of the pivotal points in the story line because we didn’t have the pot of salt in which to capture the demon. Stopping to speak to the characters along the way deemed difficult as they struggled to adlib when we told them we had no salt. Willing to pretend for the sake of the story and a good time we carried on only to then come across what looked to be the events coordinator to be told that it was over and they believed the last group had already gone through. This was the most heart breaking thing to be told and completely took me out of the plot and the involvement. It was then so hard to immerse myself back into the game. For the rest of the ‘journey’ we continued to run from the infected and met a few more characters along the way with near misses into the canal.
The end was something to be desired, as, there wasn’t one? After coming out of the graveyard and walking through a residential area for what seemed like an eternity without guidance or signage to direct us, we were greeted by the zombified actors who had, a few seconds earlier, flew past us in a mini van.
I am in no way bashing the ‘Evil Rising’ experience, as I really did enjoy the beginning and the set up (much better than the established ‘Horror Camp Live’) but because of one mishap and no communication it did ruin the event for us as we didn’t experience anything other than being chased for miles by ‘the infected’. The funniest highlight was both myself and one of my best mates almost urinating on a zombie... no kidding, that nearly happened and, it would have happened if the actor hadn’t made a noise before we began... and when nearly peeing on a zombie is the highlight it’s a bit disappointing. It is a shame to not be able to give this event a better review as it had SO much potential, purely because we became the unfortunate ones that couldn’t run quick enough for the others, and the inability for the actors or coordinators to fix the problem that occurred. A suggestion would have been to maybe have someone run out from the point that we were told it was over a provide us with a salt pot so we could be involved in that part of the story. Alas it was their first event and obviously nothing goes without a few teething problems.
If my review is based around the first warehouse scene, it was phenomenal and more action like this with the amazing effects will go down a storm! This definitely won’t be my last experience with evil rising as I believe they have the ability, and WILL exceed this event almost indefinitely. I will be there next time have no doubts about that.
