Guillermo del Toro Talks Developing Halloween Horror Nights Crimson Peak Attraction
John Squires
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This Friday marks the start of Universal Studios’ annual Halloween Horror Nights, and Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak will have a presence at both the Hollywood and Orlando locations. But it’s the Hollywood attraction del Toro was directly involved in, and he calls it a “living trailer.”
Speaking with IGN, the visionary director revealed that he took a very hands-on approach to his very first Halloween Horror Nights maze, and he says that his goal was to ensure that fans who attend will literally feel like they’re living inside of the film itself.
“You almost experience the trailer in 3D. You’re right there,” del Toro said of the attraction. “We started from the beginning, planning it of course, but we gave them access to all the files for the digital effects, all the files for the color schemes, the designs, the blueprints. We’ve been harboring a great communication between DVD effects, the makeup effects in Spain, and the digital company that did the digital effects has been providing them with files. Everything has been truly collaboration. I think it’ll be reflected in the final maze.”
“I was smiling the whole time I went through it because I realized that they really have invested themselves in this,” he said of the finished product. “They didn’t take short cuts. It was so precise. They were reproducing the wallpaper. They acquired real Victorian wallpaper, as we did in the movie. I was smiling the whole time.”
“The movie is Gothic romance. It’s a mixture of a love story, melodrama, with atmosphere. But it’s not a horror movie,” del Toro continued. “It’s more of an atmospheric movie, punctuated by some scares and some physical violence and stuff like that. But the maze has to be more intense so there’s a lot of gags that they do that are in the spirit of the movie, but they are maze gags.”
As for future Halloween Horror Nights events, del Toro indicated that he’d love to someday develop an original maze – not based on one of his films.
“This has not been our first and will not be our last attempt on that,” he promised. “I would love to because I love the ephemeral but incredibly fun nature of the mazes. They exist only here, only at this time, and they’re taken away, and if you do them right, people will talk about them as a fun experience that nobody can go through again. There’s a cool factor to that.”
“Guillermo del Toro Presents Crimson Peak: Maze of Madness” will be unearthed as a three-dimensional living representation of the film, designed to send guests spiraling through the chilling world and in the footsteps of Crimson Peak’s lead character, Edith Cushing, first as they venture from her home in America, then to the decaying and haunted Allerdale Hall mansion in a remote English countryside. With a foreboding “Beware of Crimson Peak” message that echos from Edith’s past, guests will navigate a labyrinth of paranormal tortured souls who have born witness to the estate’s dark history of unspeakable acts… and who continue to reside in vengeful, ghostly forms.
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