Ecopocalypse

I’m an actor on set. Yes, «on set.»
Ecopocalypse is redefining what it means to be a haunted house. It’s a brilliant, refreshing idea, with an artistic, passionate crew, and a great guiding premise, and of course, plenty of creeps and thrills in store for patrons.
This’ll be one for the record books, folks.

Full disclosure: I worked tickets for the first week of this haunted house. I had no part in the creation or running of it and only got the job by replying to an ad on craigslist.
We had two opportunities to go through this show — once on opening night and once about a week later when they’d had time to fix everything people complained about during the first week. I honestly feel bad for people who only went during the first week because that was pretty terrible. Everything was disorganized, there were no lights, and we made it through the whole thing in about 10 minutes because we had no way of knowing we’d missed over half of the «experience.»
One week later and there were track lights on the floor, arrows to guide you around, and a guy to corral everyone for the lottery. So they fixed that and did so quite well, but it didn’t help that the show itself wasn’t so great. I would have been very upset if I’d actually had to pay for tickets to this and ended up in what felt like an overwrought, overacted high school theater production of a kind-​of-​sort-​of post-​apocalyptic Austin.
I’ll give it a shot next year if they’re back, but only if I can find a good deal without paying full price.

As some others have said, this place could use some refining. But considering it’s their first year, I thought they did a bang up job of bringing something fresh to the table of haunted houses and the like during Halloween.
We got a smoking deal of $ 10/​person on a Groupon deal, and you could go through as many times as you wanted.

It was about right for $ 10, but definitely not for full price. I really like the concept, definitely more disturbing and it lingered in my mind for much longer than the startle fest of House of Torment.
The biggest way to improve it would be to ditch the «choose your own adventure» part. After waiting in line, if you choose wrong you end up exiting the back door and have to wait in line all over again. I think we saw less than half of it, but didn’t have time to do it all over again. You do get to enter again for free, but really the story would be told better in a linear fashion.

The people who work here are very nice and respectable, that being said, I don’t think this shindig is worth the full price of $ 20. Fortunately, my friends and I purchased our tickets via Groupon and ended up paying $ 5 each, which I believe is a decent price for my experience. Had we paid the full price, I’d give this 0 stars.
At the start of the show (I say «show» because it felt more like a theatrical act rather than a gruesome, horrifying, haunted house which is meant to frighten the bejesus out of you) a young courteous girl asserts that this is not a «typical» haunted house due to the fact that you may choose your route, rather than a set path. Concept sounded nice but as we walked through we got lost many times and the actors often asked if we’ve seen this or that section.
To view all the scenes the girl provided us with two options:
a. Go through once and then exit and go through another time to see the ones that were missed, requiring you to go in the 15 minute line again
b. Go through while back tracking to the ones missed
This gave us the pretense of a large labyrinth with a wide variety of horrifying scenes. However, what I actually saw were a few premature attempts at recreating a sense of what would occur if crazies/​hipsters ran the town in some «zombie» infested town (there were no zombies). The only «frightening» part were the «cheap shots» where someone would jumped out of some corner or crack and make a loud noise.
Overall, I think it was worth the amount I paid, which was $ 5 and not the full $ 20. Give this place another few years to mature and maybe I’ll deem it worth the full price.
Some things that would improve my experience would be to have:
a. Better costumes for the actors because they lacked a sense of «struggle». This is supposed to be post-​apocalyptic. The ripped tights, suede boots with a ripped tank top just seemed too posed.
b. Fewer people in at a time. Due to the «make your own path thing» we often ran into another group or saw things out of order.
c. Scarier scenes with more viewer interactions and fewer theatrical acts.
d. Better lighting. Some areas were too lit while others were too dark. It would help concealing the fakeness of it all.
e. Better make-​up artistry and props. Gory scenes seemed unrealistic because the cheap materials were too noticeably plastic and rubber.
f. A better continuous flow or a storyline. Scenes were disjointed with many missed opportunities. For example, the crawl space/​tunnel could have been more than just cloth draped over some poles, no one even popped out.

This was fun! I got scared several times, and it was scarier in a more realistic way than say, House of Torment. I can totally imagine people going all crazy and how the world would be if our society collapsed. Just read The Road. It could happen. Anyway, I do have a few critiques. They said it was kind of a choose your own adventure thing, but I didn’t really get that. Also, I wish it had been a little bit longer. However, I screamed so much that my voice got hoarse and my mouth was dry. I have a sensitive startle reflex and I’m more creeped out by things that really could happen. This place has potential. I am sure next year it will be even better.

I think 3 stars is pretty accurate for this event. It wasn’t amazing, it wasn’t horrible, but it needs a bunch of improvement.
I had several people ask me what I thought about it afterwards, and I told them it felt like an artistic piece designed as a final thesis project rather than a fully formed and articulated event.
They had a vision, but it felt like there a bit too much concept, not enough texture, and not enough thought about execution.
I was not a big fan of the ‘choose your own adventure’ concept. It felt too haphazard and poorly laid out rather than an interactive pathway. It would have worked more on a self-​paced linear layout that emphasized depth in each room rather than stringing a bunch of places together and hoping it all made sense. The facility was also too dark without well lit paths to clearly show where you were supposed to go or even if pathways were options. There were a couple of times where I didn’t know if I was wandering behind the scenes accidentally or if I was supposed to go there. I would have invested a few bucks in getting rope lighting to place on the floor to clearly show what was a path… simply placing it next to the walls would have been a tremendous help. The arrows on the ground were also cheaply and poorly done.
They should have invested a bit of money in luminescent paint and black lights to make the arrows glow so you would know where you were going.
In the first room we entered, they tried to get us to sit down. Here’s one of the problems… its a scare-​fest… people aren’t going to willingly sit down… plus, there were two deaf people in my group and they had no freaking clue what was going on. I wasn’t with them and I don’t sign, but I felt bad for them nonetheless. They needed to provide each of the actors with a card to give them an idea of the area and what was being asked of them (especially given the large deaf population in Austin). I think it would have been more interesting that instead of trying to get people to sit down to creep them out as participant observers, to have another «group» that had previously «entered» already seated and being served so the people coming in could be passive observers… of course the seated group would be actors, but it would flow better.
I had no idea what the hell was going on in half the rooms I entered… dark and yelling. instead of working on the innate creepiness of situations, they tried to ramp up anxiety by having actors thump walls and another actor with a rubber whip thump the ground to create a jump scare from the patrons. J-​horror jump scares don’t really work more than once and after the first time it was pretty boring… as in… is that all you got… thump thump thump?
I suspected where this was going from the beginning because well… I’ve seen Soylent Green. The end scene was okay, but amateurishly done… actually, I’ve worked as an amateur doing theater effects years ago, and made bloodier, gorier, and more realistic scenes with less.
I think there is a good idea there, but it needs refining and more attention paid to the functionality of the event. The concept is generally fine, but it needs work.

I love this concept. It’s not your typical haunted house as this will really make you think. A typical haunted house would be like watching Chainsaw Massacre. Ecopocalypse is like watching Looper or Sixth Sense.

DO IT! I’m kind of a wimp, so it was scary, but what’s so cool is that it’s kind of a «choose your own adventure» walk-​through. You can go back through as many times as you want, so if you think you missed anything, you can catch it the next round. The post-​apocalyptic theme is awesome, and there are several actors throughout the setup to really put you into the scene.

I agree with Robin’s review. Although I understand that the cast had a message they wanted to share with the public but with Haunted Houses you want scary monsters and not messages. There was very little substance to this attraction, you would be herded into a room that did not progress anywhere, so you idled in the rooms with their cast acting out their bits. At one point, we were held in a room while a so-​called mob scene was being acted out. Words cannot explain the experience but definitely skip this attraction if it reappears next year. The closest I can come to explain my experience is LAME.
Totally not worth the discounted GroupOn of $ 10. This money is better spent quoting Miss Robin; at the local Austin Watering holes and not at Ecopocalypse.
**ALL THE POSITIVE REVIEWS ON Unilocal ARE ENDORSEMENTS BY CAST MEMBERS AND NOT PAYING CUSTOMERS.**

I like the idea, I think it has a lot of potential, and the actors give it an earnest attempt, but 20 dollars? Not at all worth it. I would have payed 5, maybe 10.
I heard that the conceptual work on this event lasted many months, but it doesn’t show. It seemed pretty thrown together. The acting style was cliché. You either encounter someone erratic, frantically talking to themselves or at you, or the ominous lurker. Not too much depth in this respect at all.
That the haunted house is billed as «Choose Your Own Adventure» is hugely misleading. The layout is such that you can pick different routes, but with each path you encounter the same standard haunted house stuff: someone pops out and yells something, banging and screaming, etc. Pretty weak.
I went through twice, and each time I was shuffled through in, max, 15 minutes.
I don’t want to be too hard on these guys, because I like this idea, and I want those involved to continue refining it, but I sincerely feel like I wasted twenty bucks.
I also think it’s a bit disingenuous that the bulk of positive reviews on here are from people involved in the show.

The epicoctipus is not just a haunted house, it is an event. Those of us that are living through the squalid and dire conditions of the octopipilops are having to live that way all day every day.
Many of us have lost our minds. Our hearts have been dedicated to the cause of furthering the survival of what little remains of humanity. There is a legend among the leaders, that we once had souls. But since the coming of the ecolopterix, most of us just wander hoping that we are not next.
We have been reduced to living as mere numbers in the ecterpuckerdips. And because of that we have had to form groups to keep from becoming like the ones tat simply went mad with denial.
I’m not in denial. I am just trying to warn people. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They said there would be enough. They said it would be different. But none of you ever listen to me because I smell like sausage and have a pet cockroach.
And…by the way… mean lady… it was a belly button hair and I was only trying to share with you because I have extra and hoarding is against the law in the ecopopaclypse.
Besides…everyone knows that it all changes according to the perception with which you view the saturation. If you don’t find what you were listening for, then it is probably because you didn’t look properly the first time.
You were probably already lost, but because you chose to follow the path that led to the thing you were trying to avoid, you forgot to smell my hat.
But you would have to experience it to understand!

People, this is NOT A HAUNTED HOUSE. If you go into Ecopocalypse thinking you are entering a haunted house to be scared by giant bloody monsters and chased out by a deformed person with a chainsaw, you will be gravely confused and disappointed. Don’t get me wrong; you will be chased, but by starving, dehydrated people. If you spent your money thinking you were going to have a House of Torment type experience, I’m sorry, but Ecopocalypse is clearly advertised as something different. And dare I say… something better. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I won’t discuss any specifics, but you should definitely check Ecopocalypse out for yourself.
I am not someone who gets scared by any horror movies. Monsters in regular haunted houses have no effect on me. However, Ecopocalypse is not a regular haunted house. I was telling my boyfriend last night that it’s more like a post-​apocalyptic interactive play. When you show up, they explain that it’s a choose-​your-​own-​adventure style walk-​through. You watch a scene unfold and then decide which direction you want to go from there (just like the R.L. Stine CYOA books I loved so much as a kid). The actors talk directly to you in all of the scenes which is great because you get to respond and interact directly with them and your responses really dictate how each scene goes. How cool is that?! In a regular haunted house, you just walk through and things happen to you. In Ecopocalypse, you really are a PART of this post-​apocalyptic world. I strongly recommend you interact with actors. You will get to know them, their personalities, and it’s just way more fun. I also loved that they let us walk through multiple times since it’s easy to miss some of the scenes the first time through (we did).
Speaking of interaction, the last scene is really really neat and calls for quite a bit of audience interaction. If you show up early for this scene, you get a chance to talk with a lot of the actors who stay in character and one of which is really, really creepy (a thin, blond guy who stood on stage hunched over and kept beckoning my boyfriend and I over with his finger while making an unsettling clicking sound with his mouth). When they call for a volunteer, go for it! My boyfriend did and he got a cool gift afterwards (I’m not sure how long these will last though).
Oh, and I want to address another review that complained that they spent no money on sets or costumes. 1) There were some barren sets filled with garbage (literally) because THIS IS A POST-​APOCALYPTIC ENVIRONMENT. It will be dirty and messy. 2) When sets were built (e.g. the kitchen scene, the final lottery scence), they were really well done and had great atmosphere. 3) People in a post-​apocalyptic world don’t wear complicated costumes. They wear dirty, tattered clothing because most of them are poor as hell so they have to wear what they can find. 4) They also don’t need to wear expensive prosthetics because they are meant to look like real people because they ARE real people. That’s the whole point of this place. It’s real people in what could one day be a very real situation.
I recommend Ecopocalypse to anyone who is tired of the same old, same old Halloween events. I definitely recommend it for fans of Fallout 3, The Road, The Book of Eli, Mad Max, etc. Heck, I even recommend it for fans of The Hunger Games! I loved it. I’ll be back for Halloween.
To the staff: Thanks so much for starting Ecopocalypse. It was a great experience, the actors were wonderful. We talked with both Pam and Peter and you were both sweet hearts! My only complaint is that it ended too quickly. Add more scenes next year, I didn’t want it to end!

Literally the biggest waste of my time and money (ahem, 20 freaking dollars) EVER. I just wanted to be scared, but ended up confused and disappointed. They spent NO time or money on any sort of decoration or costumes. The actors were terrible. One actor was basically stalking me while we were waiting in line to go in, was strangely smelling me, and then handed me a pubic hair. NOT EVEN KIDDING. Then, we got sucked into this weird scene with a girl serving us dinner at a dining table, and she proceeded to cough on a spoon and hand it to me (like, can i be excused?). Still, NOT KIDDING. Take my worthy advice, and do not go to this haunted house. I don’t even know what was ‘haunted’ about it. #canyouscratchthis?

Waste of money. Nuff’ said.

Seriously? Seemed like a bunch of high school drama kids looking for something to do on a Friday night. Don’t waste your money.

i went to this haunted house while in austin and at first i was confused… it is different than any other haunted house i have been to… and i love haunted houses! Instead of gore and spooky tricks, it is scary because of the actors and very real possibilites depicted. WOW, smart with traditional jump out of the corner scares and a final show that you have to wait around for and includes audience participation! i loved and am chilled by it… it’s like being in your own end of the world movie. This doesn’t even take into consideration the best lobster rolls at the end in the cool courtyard where they were playing spooky hollow! LOVED IT!

The preview that I experienced of this show back in mid October seemed very promising, but when I came for the actual show, I experienced one of the worst haunt productions I’ve ever seen. The bottom line is that I paid $ 20 for an experience that took about 10 minutes. It was not scary, and the production values (set design, costuming etc) were really low.

I’ve never been all that scared of the otherworldly, even as a child. I grew up sucking on my pacifier watching tales from the crypt and Bramstoker’s Dracula with a smile. Since I can remember my father took me and my brother every year to the Nightmare Factory here in Austin (sadly it’s now closed) and Cactus Jack’s Haunted Hay ride. What wakes me up in the middle of the night crying?
People.
There is nothing scarier to me than violent mobs of humans, devoid of reason and compassion, bent on destruction with complete lack of humanity. The things that scare me are real (thus REALLY scary), and are happening everyday– people hurting people. I’m terrified of being out of control and unable to alleviate mine or others pain. The panic and adrenaline associated with watching a loved one suffer and being present and willing, yet unable, to help. If you’re a parent, imagine not knowing where your child is or even if they’re alive, and no one willing or around to help. Imagine that going on for days, months, years.
This haunted house is one of a kind, as there are no monsters, only people. It’s a post-​apocalyptic Austin, all infrastructure destroyed, society deteriorated, food nonexistent, water scarce, plagued with disease and violence and desperation. As some of the few survivors the audience is left to wander through and fend for themselves as they learn more about the world after the end.

I am an actress in Ecopocalypse & have been helping set up for this fun haunt! A Completely different concept for a Haunted house. It strays from the traditional shock & leads more into a more psychological torment. There is no doubt when you leave that you will be making the connections with all the different characters & sets that you could very well see in a post apocolyptic world. There are so many details that tie into our story line. We have some amazing actors, actresses, producers, screen writers, special effects team, & set decorators/​builders. This is one fantastic crew that plans to knock your socks off!