A Good Case Of Cabin Fever with ‘Evil Dead 2’ and ‘Cabin in the Woods’ (Review)

I’m not an outdoorsman. Never have and never will be. My idea of “exploring nature” is going to the nearest city park. And because I’m a true City Slicker, one of my few touchstones to understanding people who visit the great outdoors comes from slasher films. In particular, it’s specific horror films involving those who stay in dank and nasty cabins in the woods. And we all know how those cabin visits end. (As far as I’m concerned, that’s what always happens to anyone staying in a cabin overnight.)

Yet, I’ve constantly been intrigued by the cabins themselves in these movies. They always have secret depths and complexity that’s unearthed as the film goes on and the body count rises. These cabins consistently have hidden doorways to forgotten rooms or have secret messages that need decoding in order to escape. It quickly dawns on me how slasher film cabins are the “original” escape rooms, although one the audience passively witnesses rather than actively plays.

It’s this match made in Heaven (or, maybe, “match made in Hell” being a better thematic fit) that Hourglass Escapes and Escape World have adapted their spooky cabin in the woods escape rooms for online audiences. Joined by a team of other No Proscenium Correspondents, we assist our trapped host avatars from escaping two different yet equally enjoyable cabins, setting aside their website issues.

Our first cabin is the officially licensed Evil Dead 2 escape room from Hourglass Escapes based in Seattle. Its premise is that the Knowby cabin featured in the Evil Dead franchise has suddenly reappeared. Both the players and our host avatar Shemp (Seth Wolfson) are part of Gnostic Research of the Occult, Omens, Vampires, and Yetis (also known as G.R.O.O.V.Y.). Foolishly, Shemp has run off to visit the cabin without us, finding himself trapped, and only able to connect with us online for help.

(Minor spoilers follow.)

First things first: if you’re a fan of the Evil Dead franchise, you have to play this room. Hourglass Escapes absolutely nails recreating not only the Knowby cabin but the feeling of being in the film. There’s an incredible amount of fan service and attention to detail at work, with nods to the franchise and Easter eggs hidden throughout the room. (And some are deep cut references, too, because afterwards our host avatar walks around pointing them out; because of this I realize I missed half of them during our playthrough.)

But the experience’s greatest success is capturing the movie’s tone and humor. While frightful and spooky, the experience is laced with Sam Raimi’s patent goofy and gory black humor. As an example (and a minor spoiler), let’s just say there’s some “hand acting” at work at one point that sums up Raimi’s style in a nutshell.

The puzzles here strike me as being on the easier and friendlier side. That’s not to say we weren’t stumped at times, requiring us to stop and think for a moment. I simply never worried we were spending too much time solving any one problem. And because the thematic Evil Dead 2 elements of the room are so strongly present in everything, it allows natural connections between clues and puzzles to be made. For every obstacle Shemp encounters, it makes sense how and why it’s been done up rather than us collectively going “Oh look, someone decided to put a padlock on the fridge for no reason…”

The cherry on top of the experience is Shemp. Not only is Wolfson helpful in guiding us through the room but is a joy to “play along with” during the experience. A quick rapport is established between Shemp and us, making me feel like we’re all part of the same G.R.O.O.V.Y. organization.

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While Hourglass Escapes does a great job pivoting their physical escape room to be played online, their online components haven’t received the same amount of attention. Before the experience, we’re provided a link that will help us manage and examine clues. Yet when clicking on the link, my browser warns me (and at least two other of my fellow players) that the site is malicious. While probably a problem with the rush to build the experience, there’s no way to play without allowing and granting the site permission to access our computers. Hopefully the evils found in the Knowby Cabin will stay there and not be found on our hard drives later. We also found ourselves lacking a convenient timer, one element that’s essential to playing an escape room. While there’s a small FM radio clock counting down the time left, it’s placed high up on a corner shelf in the room. While that’s probably fine for players physically in the room, online players can only see it if our host avatar looks at it. Overall, we had no sense of how much time was left, which I did start to get stressed about 30 minutes in.

After dealing with the Knowby cabin, we next sought to escape from a second cabin, with Amsterdam-based Escape World’s Cabin In The Woods. Escape World’s cabin takes its cues right out of a slasher film beat by beat. We’re online viewers of Psychic Ricky’s (Pepijn van de Weerd) Twitch-like livestream, tuning in to watch him explore this seemingly quiet and quaint rustic cabin. Ricky is convinced that the reports of mystic energy from this cabin are the real deal. But when the door slams shut behind Ricky, he becomes our host avatar as we help him try to escape before the impending doom Ricky senses consumes him.

I love how this escape room feels like a real cabin: the sparseness of material objects, the wood paneling not meeting exactly so the darkness of the night slips in through the seams, resulting in a quiet stillness that’s very unnerving. And once Ricky is trapped in the cabin, I’m actually afraid for him. I believe that if we don’t help him escape he’ll suffer a terrible slasher film fate. As spooky secrets are revealed in exploring the cabin, even from the safety of my home office, I’m frightened of what could be lurking behind each new found corner.

Based upon my experience, Cabin in the Woods aims to be an escape room for more moderately experienced players. Each puzzle is challenging, requiring a decent balance of trial-and-error and thought to be put into it. There’s even one that stumps the entire NoPro team. It takes time and effort to figure out the intended solution, which only makes solving it all that more rewarding. Yet, there’s a large and noticeable puzzle that’s available only to in-person players of this game. While I understand not removing puzzles from the experience for online audiences, making it crystal clear to us that it wasn’t “in play” would’ve made a huge difference as I kept coming back to it.

My biggest issue with Cabin in the Woods is the facilitator of the experience, Ricky. He’s of course receptive to our requests and funny throughout the experience, with two recurring bits making me chuckle throughout. Yet he seems too wrapped up in giving a performance as every action includes extraneous commentary or is overly dramatically executed. We escape with three minutes to spare, but at least ten minutes is eaten up by van de Weerd’s acting. Additionally, when what needs to happen next is painfully obvious to us, we still have to tell Ricky what to do in extreme detail. At one point, we guide him for two excruciating minutes in putting an eight-piece jigsaw puzzle together. At best, that jigsaw puzzle takes 15 seconds to complete in person. So I wonder if this slow action is done to make the experience feel more cinematic. There’s certainly a rising tension dependent upon whether Ricky will make it through alive. If that’s Escape World’s goal, I applaud them for trying to add depth to the experience for online audiences, but wonder if it could be toned down to prevent player frustration.

As for hosting Cabin in the Woods online, Escape World has their own well-designed web site where everything from the livestream, the inventory, and the timer are all in one window. It makes playing a breeze as I don’t get lost in different windows and miss something. Yet, it’s a mixed bag as some of the NoPro team aren’t able to see the timer while others aren’t seeing the items appearing in the inventory. While I’m sure the Internet connection between Amsterdam and the United States is an uncontrollable and understandably part of the problem, it’s odd that each of us were having different issues with the web site.

And overall, I found that playing an escape remotely via a live avatar provides a very different experience. Because we can only see what the host avatar shows us, this forces our team to work collectively. And before each experience, we’re asked either to dress up or review contextual information about the room with the facilitator. Having a live in-character host is a delight compared to a bored employee rattling off a speech about why we’re trapped in the room. While the pandemic has forced a lot of unfortunate changes and struggles on the escape room industry, I hope creators take note of how valuable these elements can be not only useful to online experiences but also the physical ones as well.

So if you’re a fan of horror and spooky films or just a big escape room fan, Hourglass Escapes and Escape World both have which are checking out during Halloween season. While both have web site interface problems, the tech issues didn’t eclipse the fun and joy I had in escaping these cabins. I had such a blast that this City Slicker finally understands the allure of why people stay in cabins in the woods (even when they’re obviously deadly).

Evil Dead 2 Escape Room Live is ongoing. Tickets are $30 per person.

Cabin in the Woods is ongoing. Tickets are $67 for a private booking that can include up to 6 people.

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