What was that stalking within the corn in Knoxville, Tennessee? It was the terrorizing actors at Screamville Haunted Attraction!
Screamville in 2019 brings their guests face-to-face with the Cursed Acres, a realized horrifying story of curses, bespelled farm animals, and locals gone mad. This attraction is a haunted cornfield trail with several erected temporary structures.
Guests will meet tons of actors and a few animatronics to creep, jump, and scare them throughout their walk in the corn. People can go, if they dare, into the dark stalks, swaying with the autumn breeze and face the unrest that lies there, waiting for their next victim. People need to be very brave as they face the Cursed Acres of Screamville Haunted Attraction!
Screamville Haunted Attraction had a cast of character actors who were clearly devoted to their craft and to scaring their customers. The entire cast was a tight knit unit, and they worked off of each other seamlessly to get the best of scares.
Not only did the cast work off of each other, but they worked off the guests too. Several characters engaged our team into the haunt and their dialogue. We interacted with several of the cast and they were great at ad-libbing. Our favorite cast was the impressive younger actors who were super creepy, both because kids in horror are just creepy, and because they were so into their characters.
The entire schoolhouse was on point, but the little girls at the end who tag-teamed us a-la The Shining were so chilling that we were talking about it for days!
The variety of characters was excellent. There were animal people, voodoo creatures, and grizzly monstrous creatures. All of the main characters, no matter what they were playing, were well cast and were clearly fully fleshed-out characters.
Screamville Haunted Attraction has really embraced their location and the characters within the haunt also have looks that embrace it. The costumes and makeup merge the characters into the environment around them, whether their set is a building within the corn, or the corn itself.
The characters that were front and center were well done from top to bottom. Their makeup, effects makeup, and costumes are nearly flawless and super eerie. While the support characters are less done, sometimes being a cool or scary mask and what theater people call “basic block” (black shirt and pants), the main characters’ looks sell the sets and the story as a whole.
Screamville Haunted Attraction is very active in trying to provide great services to its customers and its community. Finding information on the haunt is fairly simple as they have multiple social media accounts and are very active on them.
GPS takes people straight to the haunt’s physical location. They have wonderfully-lit signs both for the parking area and for the walking path up to their midway area. Navigating the main area was a breeze as everything was well labeled and well laid out.
The staff, from the very moment our team entered the area, were friendly and knowledgeable. The manager met us as we entered and showed us around and we noticed he was that warm and welcoming to everyone else he interacted with. If you have the chance, ask him for the story of the haunt. The tale is chilling, and he tells it very well. We enjoyed the wonderful service provided by Screamville.
Screamville Haunted Attraction is a family fun area, especially in the midway area. While the haunt is pretty scary, the midway is more kid-approved. There is a fire pit, concessions, and a few actors, but they were tame and more fun than scary.
The midway also had an area for videos, concessions, souvenirs, and the buried alive side experience. One of our team did the buried alive experience and we could watch him as he went through it, so the experience is fun for the whole group.
While there is no way for the midway to prepare a person for the haunt, the story told by the manager definitely can help. Additionally, the hearse out front of the ticketing booth is allegedly haunted to the extent that paranormal investigators have researched it. Overall, the aura around Screamville is that of a fun and spooky area leading up to their haunted attraction.
Screamville Haunted Attraction has an amazing acting crew, but the special effects are what sets the scenes for those characters, lights them in thematic hues, and sprinkle in some excellent scares.
The buildings within the cornfield were well designed with plenty of details to make the setting clear. The sounds were also well managed, with silent fields and silent scares at some places and loud, industrial variations in other places. The way the areas are done and lit, it added emotion to the scenes, which we felt amplified the effectiveness of the acting and the story.
The animatronics also added to the story, but more so the scares… especially in the junkyard. The special effects were naturally limited by the fact of being in a cornfield, but instead of allowing that to stop them, Screamville embraced the cornfield and created excellent opportunities for the special effects that they were able to do. This seizing of the opportunities allowed Screamville’s special effects to be more effective.
SFX Effective at Scaring, Entertaining (35% of score): 8
Could Tell What Theme Was Without Asking (15% of score): 8
Theme Well Executed, Believable (25% of score): 7.5
Location Authenticates Theme (10% of score): 9
How Scary (15% of score): 7.5
Screamville Haunted Attraction has such a thorough theme that we had to ask the owner if it was based on real legends of the area. The eerie story of the bewitched cornfield affecting the residents and the animals feeding on the corn was spookily close to what could really be a legend.
Entering the haunt, the story is told in vivid detail with every aspect seamlessly portrayed. The fact that the haunt is a cornfield only validates the whole theme and aids in the believability… because cornfields are eerie enough without the fear of evil magics.
After we left the haunt, the owner told us the story he’d written for this year’s haunt and we understood implicently (since we had just witnessed it). Screamville did a great job telling us a very spooky story.
Screamville Haunted Attraction definitely lived up to their name, as group after group literally ran from the haunt screaming. From beginning to end, the haunt was riddled with creeps and scares.
There were several locations where our group was extremely spooked and a few wonderful jump scares. The voodoo shack and the junkyard had great moments of misdirection that completely scared our group.
The schoolhouse and the church both creeped our group out. Between the great actors and the well-placed effects, this haunt was really scary.
The ending was especially great. They used misdirections, animatronics, and chainsaws to scare the curse words from our group. We were very impressed by the scares at Screamville.
6825 Tindell Lane, Knoxville, Tennessee 37918