Haunters: The Art of the Scare

A fun niche documentary giving you an interesting look at those who create these haunted houses, those who haunts, and these depraved and sadistic individuals who basically love to abuse people. Since that Russ guy is the main focus of this documentary, it genuinely makes me so upset watching it but I can't deny that the content here are extremely compelling. I think the film's bouncing around between covering the safe haunted houses, their growing popularity, and the people who love them to these extreme ones and their piece of shit owners make it so much more interesting.

Very interesting overall.

The title and description are misleading. I don’t know if the filmmakers chose to misrepresent this because they thought it would result in more viewers, or if they actually set out to do a documentary about how haunted houses are designed and developed to scare and entertain people and then got hopelessly sidetracked. Ultimately the focus of this documentary revolves around a single highly controversial (and disturbing) live scare/torture experience (McKamey Manor) and a few other slightly less controversial events that are mostly there to compare and contrast with McKamey. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very interesting topic and worthy of a documentary (and some psychological analysis of participants), but it should be labelled and marketed appropriately. There is very little about the “art of the scare“ in this film. Also, it kind of ticks me off that they are conflating haunted houses with these torture challenge event spaces. They are completely different things.

Thought I’d get more info on what scares people, not “What it’s like to run a controversial haunt”. You’ll have to excuse me if I couldn’t care less that you and your spouse are disagreeing on a hobby, but that’s your problem. As for McKamey Manor, I get it, they signed up for it know what it was. That said, this Russ guy is literally a couple steps away from serial killer territory, clearing getting off on torturing others and somehow unable to cope with a tiny spook himself. Folks are just fine with that. WHAT?! I haven’t got a problem with his business necessarily, as long as people really agree to it, it’s him personally.

I agree with some of the other reviews in that Mckamy Manor got a bit too much screen time compared to some of the other haunts. I felt that it could have also been more researched and comprehensive when they talked about the history of haunts and their evolution in North America. Still, it's a decent documentary punctuated with humour and a sincere look into the lives of haunters that any Halloweenie can appreciate.