BackLounge Review | Scary House
Lounge reviews the room of funhouse horrors at Phoenix Market City in Mumbai
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There may be some people who are able to tell sense from nonsense when faced with a zombie, but I have never had the slightest ability to suspend disbelief when dealing with genre horror. As a child I regularly chattered in terror when a Ramsay Brothers film came on cable, and flew from the room whenever The Zee Horror Show was mentioned. The thought of heads that can turn 360 degrees on their necks, or ghosts whose feet face the wrong way, can keep me “awaker than a bad conscience," in the words of Anne of Green Gables.
So I walked into Scary House, the room of funhouse horrors at Phoenix Market City in Mumbai, with a brave smile. I came out wearing a light sheen of sweat, certain that all of Kurla must have heard my shriek when one of many ghostly apparitions accosted me on my walk through this dark, super-gothic house of horrors (I shrieked “Hello!").
The Scary House experience begins when they lock a door behind you, plunging you into pitch darkness, at which point a still, black-clad body in the corner begins to rustle, and then starts to groan as it edges closer, coming close enough to touch. Then it’s pretty much all like that. My elevated, er, sensitivity to this sort of gurning, gibbering horror made it difficult for me to distinguish between one scare and another, so I sense that horror connoisseurs of suspense may find their enjoyment a little unvarying, but if you are the sort of discerning person who finds a long white wig and a pockmarked mask a lesser horror than, say, a clanking chain and clattering bedposts, you will find the buildup satisfying.
The walk takes you through narrow, dark alleys—one of the “monsters", who are mostly played by young men, helpfully rattled “Right side. Right siiiiiide," to indicate the correct exit—up and down bumpy ramps, and creaking wooden steps, where the only light comes from sickly red lamps highlighting plaster-of-Paris models of the usual array of torture victims, trailing intestines, contorted faces frozen in abject pain, and so on. For about 10 minutes, guided only by live zombies and poltergeists, you fumble through the house, mostly wondering if you will ever see daylight again, and saying “Thank you" to signal that you have had enough of the moaning and the breathing down the necks. Helpful tip: The ghosts don’t listen.
If the testimony of a scaredy-cat adult means nothing, the tween boys having a birthday party, who stumbled out of the house after us, were red-cheeked from suppressing squeals of their own. Children in large groups who aren’t sensitive to pretend violence will be well entertained.
They might also enjoy Storm, the new 5D theatre next door, which is currently playing a short film, Tsunami in D City, full of the physical experiences of wind in your hair, tumbling vehicles, and—spoiler—a misty spray of water in your face when D City is plunged underwater. Please don’t watch it if you have ever been in an actual natural disaster, though.
Talk plastic
Entry tickets to Scary House are priced at ₹ 60 for children; ₹ 80 for high school and college students; and ₹ 100 for adults. Tickets to Storm 5D theatre are priced at ₹ 150 each.
Scary House and Storm, Phoenix Market City, LBS Road, Kurla(W), Mumbai.
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