Azra Chambers of Horror: Dancing in the dark
It is easy to tell when you have arrived at Azra. The DJ can by heard from a good distance away, beckoning you to the line like the mythical siren. You immediately pick up the vibe that this place wants you to have fun and party till you die. That feeling carries over into the house, where it is obvious the cast is having a great time, leading to a fun house experience that does shortcomings that dampen the experience.
The monsters in this house take glee in scaring. Actors are energetic, interacting with props, leaping out of every corner, getting right into your face, and bouncing of the walls with excitement. These people love working at this place! The biggest credit must go to the clowns, who are an absolute joy. They may be singing songs, jumping over walls, and even shooting you with balls out of guns. They help to make the circus area that highlight of the entire house. Other highlights include a girl who is captured begging for help, who mightily takes offense when you don’t give it to her. The monster guarding the preshow room is also a joy, speeding around the room and shouting instructions, getting you right in the mood at the start. This house has managed to find a cast that you can tell enjoys doing what they do, and that goes a long way towards making the house work.
Azra does have some issues with their overall design though. For one, they decided their lighting should be either dark or darker. Other than the blacklight circus section, most of the house feels consistently dim. There is not much variety at all, making scenes seem to run together. This also hurts the set design as it makes things feel uninspired. Many of the scenes come off as just generic scenes you find from most houses, with no details to make the sets feel alive. This could be an issue with the lighting again, which could be hiding a lot of the details in scenes that just add that something extra that makes things special.
For a house that loves to blast music in the line so loud that it can block out the opening spiel from a bust straight out of the Haunted Mansion at Disney, they forgot to add much of any other sounds in the house. If there were any music or sound effects, they made no impression. There is an extremely loud scene involving a siren that isn’t scary or foreboding in any way, just annoying. Azra just feels like it is lacking any type of atmosphere at all on the inside. They have decided to live or die on their cast, which luckily for them, kills it. I’m not saying a house needs a custom score with appropriate sound effects to be good, but putting some thought into music and sound, as well as lighting can go a long way towards making a house feel special.
Azra is a good house, but it is just lacking an it-factor to make it a great house so far. The good thing is this house is still young, only in its second year. What they do have is a cast most attractions would kill for. If they can keep that core around, while making some modifications to the house to add more atmosphere, it has the potential to really blow people away.
3.5 / 5
