Jakop Ahlbom's Horror is a love letter to the genre I expected to love, but only liked.
It fuses live special effects, illusion, mime, dance and a suitably spooky soundtrack to pay homage to various types of scary movies, with ghosts and zombies and stabbings and all sorts.
There are recreations of iconic scenes from The Exorcist, Evil Dead 2 and The Ring, with less explicit references to The Shining and Poltergeist, among others. Horror nuts will dig those, of course, but even non-fans should get a kick out of recognising the highly familiar tropes.
Some of the special effects are brilliant and inventive, but the hodgepodge approach means much of it has been done better elsewhere.
The thrills of seeing gore effects, levitation, disappearing corpses and so on are the clear highlights of Horror - but as tricks they're simply not as impressive as what you'd see at something like The Illusionists, with choreography that also leaves a bit to be desired.
With no dialogue there's a stronger emphasis on atmosphere rather than story, which is fine, but knowing so little about each character means there are no emotional stakes as they meet a grisly demise.
There are certainly many dazzling moments sure to delight. There are something very exciting about seeing gushing fountains of fake blood in the flesh rather than on the screen, and if you're averse to singing, this is a far more palatable option than something like Sweeney Todd.
Horror is definitely not a bad show. It's entertaining and original, but it's also underwhelming - especially when featured alongside other Auckland Arts Festival shows that are astounding.
Newshub.
