NightMARE Island Review (2018)

Nightmare Island had enough actors to keep our interest throughout the haunt. There were a few areas without actors, but there were special effects to fill in the void. The actors were all believable and convincing, and they brought enough intensity as the scene needed. Nobody broke character.

We give a special acknowledgement to the girl in the meat grinder. One of the hardest jobs in a haunt is playing the victim because you need to muster enough emotion to draw empathy from guests. That girl screamed her heart out in bloodcurdling terror, and we hope she didn’t lose her voice at the end of the night.

There were various moments of interactivity with the actors, from the waitress in the restaurant engaging us, to Jason Voorhees stopping us momentarily, to the evil teddy bear lunging at us. The majority of the haunt actors were either silent, screaming for their lives or trying to engage us. Nightmare Island did have a good variety of characters dispersed throughout the haunt.

This year, Nightmare Island has added a couple of video monitors, posed as windows, to show zombies growling and intimidating guests. Even though there’s a touch of high tech, Nightmare Island is mostly an old-school haunt with homemade decor. There were a few animatronics, such as the shaking chandelier at the beginning and the zombie boy rotating his head 360 degrees. Sadly, there was a room dedicated to the Alien Franchise, but the Face hugger and Xenomorph were not moving. Overall, the scenery was well detailed, especially the children’s playroom and the restaurant. The various bugs in the pizzas made a strong visual impact. Nightmare Island maintains its suspension of disbelief and the special effects generated some good scares and entertainment.

Nightmare Island had various scary moments, but the most notable was the evil teddy bear in the children’s playroom. It did look like a stationary prop and took us by surprise when it moved. There was a zombie room where we could feel the actors grab at our ankles, and that also caught us off guard. The actors engaged everyone in our group and most of the scares came from startling us unexpectedly. The haunted house didn’t have a big finale, but when leaving the compound to head back to our car, an actor in a vegetation suit startled us from behind a row of tall plants, which was the last scare of the night.