Spanning around 12,000 square feet, Stourbridge Scare Maze is a live-action gauntlet of a labyrinth located in the town of Stourbridge in the West Midlands. This continuous, warren-like voyage plunges you into a series of interconnect zones where the experiments of the deranged Dr. Bloodborne are well underway. Having attended in previous years, it was good to be back and experience one of the most hands-on mazes in the country – yes, you will be grabbed here! Your challenge is to skulk, scramble, and overcome obstacles and demons as you encounter each disturbing section of this twisted walkthrough. Will you dare enter and see if you can survive the machinations of Dr. Bloodborne?
The cast of Stourbridge Scare Maze are some of the most physical and intense we’ve ever come across at a UK scare attraction. Trust us when we say that every single cast member is going to touch you, pull or push you, and maybe pin you up. These are extended interactions, with one of us even trapped by an actress in the jail hanging from above for quite a few minutes, her arms wrapped around our head not letting us go. There are quite a few characters throughout the maze, from a mad scientist to escaped inmates, all the way to scarecrow-like swamp creatures, clowns, a pig-faced slaughterer and zombies. One clown established herself at the end of the tunnel so you could only see a silhouette of her moving her head back and forth, beckoning us forward. The pig slaughterer appeared and reappeared through secret passages. There were quite a lot of cast who would run up behind us, pushing us forward or suddenly pulling us back. There was even a woman in the hillbilly scarecrow area that grabbed us by the throat with quite a bit of force, and a zombie character later pinned us against the wall, feeding on one of our necks!
What really stuck with us regarding the cast of Stourbridge Scare Maze was the fact that we felt seen. These were not just actors jumping out at us, and we didn’t feel like cattle receiving the same treatment as the victims ahead or behind us. The actors really made this feel like a special and intimate experience for each and every one of us, and all of the interactions felt intentional, which added to the intensity of all of our encounters with them.
The costumes ranged from simple to comprehensive. While some characters, such as the zombies, wore more direct designs, others stood out for their creativeness. The swamp creatures were realised with camouflaged, torn outfits that made them appear part of the murky habitat, with one even evoking a bat-like presence with its eerie mask. The nuns’ makeup was especially imposing, altering a familiar horror trope into something unsettling with their pallid, dead finish. The clowns were among the most frightening, featuring grotesque grins enhanced by teeth prosthetics and gouged, shredded eyes made to look like torn skin, made from strips. The pig masks, too, were surreal, adding to the disturbing aesthetic of the maze’s population.
We had absolutely no issues on the customer service side of things at Stourbridge Scare Maze. All the information we needed for our journey was located on their website, which was easy to navigate, and our digital interactions with the team were efficient and lovely. We had no issues in finding the maze, but we did struggle to find parking. This was no fault of the haunt itself, as they have their own parking lot and they give additional suggestions on their website of where else to park, but it was so busy the night we attended that we ended up circling the surrounding streets for a good twenty minutes to find a space, so we do suggest that you leave more than enough time to find parking on busier nights.
For this being quite an intense and physical maze, we still had absolutely no issues safety wise. In fact we were really impressed with the management of all of the stairs during the run-through, with each and every stairway well lit and marked out so that you couldn’t ever fall down them, and the actors refrained from scaring us during our descents. We also want to note that security and other staff on site were lovely and helpful, and it was clear they were proud of the event they were working on!
The pre-haunt area for Stourbridge Scare Maze is simple, but effective, with the last bit of the queue in a cage-like tunnel with haunting music, red light and some atmos. The post-haunt area, however, is nonexistent, with the end of the maze spitting you right into the parking lot, where the very beginning of your journey begins. This year there was a concession stand with hot food, which we don’t remember last time we visited, but seemed to be quite popular with audiences.
The maze begins with a video explaining the storyline of the haunt, but unfortunately this year the group we were with skipped watching the video entirely, and we were forced to make sure we stayed with the group, so it was only after our journey that we were able to find out the full story. The depraved world we ventured into was that of a mad scientist who accidentally opened a portal to Hell, and a group of demonic entities have taken over a town and turned it into a terrifying land of frightening nightmares. We were taken on a journey from the scientist’s secret lab to an asylum, and then from a swamp and cannibal-infested hilltop, all the way to a slaughter house. Finally we also experienced the town’s zombie-ridden military complex, the city sewers populated by evil clowns, and finally into the subterranean depths of satanic rituals.
The immersion levels are quite high at this attraction, with the sets, effects and actors creating a complex world of terrors from wall to wall. Unfortunately, there was a bit of an issue with batching at times, with slight queueing in some of the spaces, and the groups you enter with are slightly large, but this only affected our experience a few times and ultimately we did truly feel engulfed in the petrifying chaos around us.
While special effects were somewhat simple in this maze, it’s important to note that the lighting and sound design at this attraction is impeccable. There is general eerie music throughout, creating a perilous vibe but also not being so loud or out of place to take you out of the moment, and this generalised eerie music turns into a more religious soundscape as you head into the final convent and satanic ritual realm. Other special features of note were lasers in the scientist’s secret lab and grotesque mannequins in the butcher’s. Our favourite areas in terms of scene designs were definitely the city sewers, which were concrete-like tunnels we had to crawl through, as well as a fully themed area with wooden ramps, foliage and blinking lanterns that navigated us from swamp to creek and finally to the cannibal hillbilly hilltop. These were not areas of flats you walked through, these were fully realised scenic sets that took us in a 4D space, and very much felt like a hair-raising playground.
21. How scary was it? (35% of score): 9.5
22. How well did they provide scares to everyone in the group? (15% of score): 10
23. How predictable were the scares? (25% of score): 9
24. How well did they provide a wide variety (types) of scares? (10% of score): 8
25. How strong was the ending / finale? (15% of score): 6.5
Our experience at Stourbridge Scare Maze felt like we were literally dropped inside a horror movie. What makes this experience so unique, in our opinion, is that the vibe is very different from other top-scare events we’ve been to – there aren’t absurdities or laughs here, it’s only pure terror. The atmosphere is threatening, and the dingy lighting effects against the bloodied walls conveys a sense of despair and foreboding.
As mentioned before regarding the cast, the physical scares here are intense. The cast attack you from all angles, reaching and trapping you from ceilings, running full pelt at you down corridors, or pinning you to walls to feed on you. There are some simpler jump scares, but mostly it’s a constant barrage of full-on assaults, with sinister actors suddenly getting close to us with sustained interactions. The actors often used scares to monitor batching issues as well, sometimes pulling us back and isolating us in non-obvious ways which made it feel like part of the performance. In one of these moments the door in the asylum was shut and locked in front of us, meaning we had nowhere to escape as an inmate attacked us from above. We were only able to escape minutes later when the door was finally unlocked and the attacker let us go free.
The scares at Stourbridge Scare Maze seem intentional and personal, and as previously mentioned we felt seen by the actors attacking us. This made the scares far more intense than other haunts, as we felt personally victimised and never felt like we were safe from their clutches. There are some great choreography and improvisation skills in these attacks, and we’re overall just so impressed with what this cast were able to pull off.
With a ticket price of approximately £22, and with a walkthrough time of twenty minutes, the ratio of scares per minute is satisfactory, especially when you take into account just how interactive and physical this experience is. The maze is really full on and intense, and the twenty minutes really felt like longer! Of course, the lack of entertainment or roaming actors pre- or post-haunt does ultimately bring down the score, but it’s important to note that we don’t think entertainment outside of scare mazes is always necessary. We got a complete and fulfilling experience during our journey through this maze, and we never felt like we were missing out on additional entertainment, but we were regretful when the maze came to an end and we had to get back in our car! We were really impressed with this maze this year, especially as we missed out last year, and we can’t wait to see what next year has in store!
8, 10 Crown Ln, Stourbridge, West Midlands DY8 1YA
