Awaken: Bringing the fear out
A trip into Awaken felt like a return to a recurring nightmare. The outstanding waiting area returns. So does the hotel from Hell, the rickety old carnival, a derelict town, and numerous other sites of terror. What Awaken does well is make each of these returning areas feel new, and by adding a new area to the house, manages to make progress with an issue with the house from last year.
Awaken continues its run of having some unbelievable sets. The opening hotel section and its grungy underbelly can make your skin crawl. Rooms filled with vintage items and old-fashioned dolls make you feel like you have been taken back to a time. That is one of the strong aspects of Awaken. The sets are designed with so much detail and life that it is easy to be swept up into the story and believe you have been placed in one nightmare after another. Lighting is simple but effective. Combined with sounds and music that make sense, Awaken does a great job at setting just the right mood. One section of the house is a simple outdoor corridor with wooden walls with just enough lighting to guide you, while still being able to trick your eyes into believing that someone or something is watching you from though the cracks in the wooden planks. Combined with a simple soundtrack of voices whispering, it provides great tension that is broken by scares that prove to be effective.
Speaking of scares, this house gets them. Energetic actors that have melded into their roles are littered throughout the house. A maintenance man that guides you into the hotel is both hilarious and creepy. Clowns are loud and boisterous. In a quiet area filled with tension, hooded figures silently approach you from the darkness. The actors know what is needed to make their roles work and do a great job of keeping the horror of the house from becoming a series of standard scares that become stale. What also helps is that in being a return visitor, the house does a great job of changing up scares and where they come from. This makes it a rewarding house to visit for repeat visitors.
Last year, one of the issues with the house was length. While being a great house, the length was still a bit on the shorter side. This year sees a new section added to the house that helps with this problem. A new outdoor trail behind the house adds some extra time to the house. It is not just filler either, as it provides some good scares in open areas, and also introduces new effects like pyro to the attraction. Awaken must be commended for taking steps to make the house an even greater value.
There remains an issue that affects the house that carries over from last year. There are still some sections of the house that go on for too long without many scares. The 3d clown section returns, with almost no scares at all coming in the time inside this portion of the house. This area is easily the most egregious, but there are other sections where it seems like a minute or two will go by with little scares. This can throw the pacing of the house off, and is the only issue keeping this house from being a true powerhouse. Even with this issue, Awaken is showing signs of improving, continuing to have a beautifully designed house with great casting, and has managed to fix its length issue. Next year could see this house truly step out from the pack and stamp its mark on the Michigan haunt scene.
4.75 / 5
