Eli Roth’s Haunted House: Trick VR Treat review – laughably low-rent

Eli Roth’s first crack at a VR experience is a schlock fest with laughably low-rent grindhouse vibes. When I first heard about it, I assumed the horror specialist had crafted an experience inspired by an amusement park haunted house—like one of those cart rides that take you along a track, with all sorts of crazy crap coming out of the walls. Or like one of those tackily decorated venues crowds walk through, with Halloweenish decorations and two-bit actors. Instead it’s another example of a motion picture director expecting to import filmmaking language into VR with minimal revision.

It unfolds from a first-person perspective, the view embodying a Halloween trick-or-treater who, with a bunch of friends, enters a haunted house where a hag-like witch imprisons guests and transforms them into dolls. The building contains many oddities, from children stuck in the walls—their protruding hands groping at the air—to a room that, signposting its lineage to the Brothers Grimm and Hansel and Gretel, fills up with candy pouring in from the ceiling (while kids stare into the camera screaming “eat, eat, eeeaatttt!”). Like Robert Rodriguez’s The Limit, Haunted House: Trick VR Treat is a non-interactive video presented in 180 degrees.

Throughout the 12 minute experience Roth generously deploys direct address, which in motion pictures breaks the fourth wall but in VR has the opposite effect, intensifying our relationship with the content. Several characters speak directly to us, such as fellow trick-or-treaters and ghouls inside the house—including the wonky-nosed witch herself. Two minutes in, a man in a monk-like outfit enters a room, blabbering about losing his kids inside the house, in a panicked spiel beginning “don’t just stand there, give me god damned hand!” But we can’t, of course; we have no agency in this world and are essentially an embodied ghost, able to observe but never interact. 

The moment immediately following this provides some insight into what Roth may have intended the broader experience to be like. A little girl runs up to the camera shouting “this way, this way!” The camera darts down the hallway after her as various hands smash through the wall, its full throttle charge continuing into the next space, rollicking down the middle of two long rows of clothes. This reflects the fourth configuration of the virtual bubble, as identified by Laurent Lescop, with the viewer or player in a fixed position while the bubble is moving. 

This popular configuration is deeply embedded in the structures of theme park amusements—think roller coaster and riverboat rides. It’s always visually interesting, at least momentarily, deriving visceral impact from contrasting our stillness (we don’t move from our seats) with the constant motion of the vessel we’re situated in (it won’t stop moving). 

If all of Trick VR Treat had been crafted using this one technique, it might’ve felt uninspiring and boilerplate: not conceptually dissimilar to the many “helicopter ride” style 360 videos produced early in the present era of VR. But at least it would have felt more attuned to its funhouse style antecedents. And maybe it would have felt like an actual VR experience.