I've increasingly soured on Slaughter 2. While it hit a lot of the traditional classic B-movie beats that the first one didn't get around to, it whiffed on recreating the mad-cap unpredictable energy of the first. It also didn't have the same intensity dynamics of SS1, where goofy scenes you could never possibly predict are immediately flanked by legitimately great close-quarters scares from huge Butchers and Yeti's. SS2 was simply too safe and never really delivered in scares.
SS1 felt like it had used ideas that couldn't be houses, and built incredibly solid rooms out of each; where SS2 was basically just soft-launching 8 basic original house/zone concepts. I never attached to Hatchet and Chains the way some fans did, so I wasn't too pumped for this.
Finally speaking on
this house, H&C from the beginning of the run brings solid novelty, as we've not seen a true western house in almost a decade. It utilizes that palette in fun visual ways, like the walls peppered with bullet holes still freshly smoking from an Old West shootout, a speeding train, and cracks in the wooden floor-boards showing fiery depths below. It didn't quite click the first few weeks for me. The cast just wasn't quite there yet energy-wise, and I was willing to chock it up as a mid-tier and move on.
Recently though, I've had a couple runs thru this one that are enough to bump a house up multiple number spots on my personal year rankings. The casts finally found it. This house can go crazy hard, far moreso than I ever expected. Really in-your-face scares with very unique, fun, detailed visual design across each room, and with monsters that really solidly fit. This could honestly end up as one of my favorites this year.
I do appreciate that they leaned away from the crazier "Lava Demons" idea and just made the monster's basic demons. The house already has enough ideas going on, keeping it simple here really works wonders.
Some highlight moments for me.
- I love one of the first demon scares that pops out at you through a fireplace, which you then walk around to see Chain(?) casually pulling the demon back from guests with their whip. What a wildly successful room concept; setting an expectation then deflating the tension with a solid situational joke, while also introducing our main character perfectly. Legitimately, the room might be one of the best things I've ever seen the HHN team do.
- It feels like this house is trying to capture a little bit of that open-air Blood Moon energy, and I really like those elements. I will always appreciate that level of scope within an Old Tent house.
- As much as I didn't care for the room in Slaughter 2, it was weirdly really cool to see effectively the exact same Purple Hallway location pop up in here. It felt really natural and well-integrated.
I do think it's strange how few Hatchet and Chain performers there are. I think across the whole house they only pop up once or twice each.
Despite that, I'm increasingly looking forward to future runs here. Definitely a sleeper hit for me this year.