Universal Studios Turned Being Trapped with James Franco into a Haunted Attraction
It’s October now, which means that the temporary haunted house business is in full swing. If you’re not interested in exploring the monster-filled dreamscape of the dude from Fever Pitch, there’s always Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights. The popular annual attraction features various spooky mazes inspired by movies and TV shows including A Quiet Place, Insidious and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, which may or may not end with a scare actor dressed as Dan Aykroyd popping out of a wall and forcing you to buy his vodka.
The event rarely takes inspiration from comedies, but in 2015, Universal unveiled a haunted maze based on a Seth Rogen movie. While one could argue that The Green Hornet is Rogen’s most horrifying work to date, the maze was actually themed around This Is the End.
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This Is the End starred Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride and Jay Baruchel as fictional versions of themselves contending with a Biblical apocalypse after a Hollywood party. But it’s not exactly scary. There is a scene in which the gang attempts to exorcise Jonah Hill, but it’s played for laughs, not horror. In retrospect, the freakiest part of This Is the End, is the fact that its storyline involves being trapped inside of Franco’s house.
Yeah, the central premise of the movie, which portrays Franco as a comically lecherous skeezeball, plays way differently now than it did when it came out back in 2013, due to the long list of allegations against Franco.
The maze may be even weirder than the movie, in hindsight. Rogen and Franco partnered with Universal to make This Is the End 3D, which promised a “maze experience that will come to life in hypnotic 3D.” I mean, all the mazes are technically in 3D, but sure. One thing other mazes definitely didn’t have: a replica of Michael Cera’s bloody impaled corpse near the entrance.
Guests would have to wind their way through a recreation of Franco’s bachelor pad, occasionally being startled by actors and spit on by a Jonah Hill dummy. Come to think of it, no other haunted house could ever come close to the abject horror of being covered in Hill’s saliva. Also scary: There are TVs throughout the maze playing Franco’s confessional video diaries.
It is objectively strange that there was a haunted maze featuring a glow in the dark Freaks and Geeks mural, as well as an axe-wielding scare actor pretending to be beloved former child star Emma Watson, who robs Rogen and company in the movie.
There were also a bunch of demons, but for all we know, they were just trying to get the hell out of Franco’s house.
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