in which i throw a tantrum about drunk people
So we went to see the purge yesterday with Ethan and a friend. I was pretty excited about the whole thing because I love interactive storytelling and if there is one thing that they take seriously in LA, it's halloween. The whole experience should've been awesome...essentially we were part of a group of 1%ers who were, for whatever reason, taking a great amount of entertainment in the annual "purge", which is a 12 hour period where all crime is legal, presumably as a form of population control. we then get taken hostage and get dragged through an entire 6 story building completing tasks, being threatened by revolutionaries, and working to complete tasks to try to get the revolutionaries to not execute us. The whole experience should've been awesome as the actors were great, obviously a ton of time and effort had been put into decorating both the inside and outside of the building, so many of the pieces were there for it to be pretty incredible, or at the very least, more engaging than Universal where they scare you more through shocking you vs telling any sort of story. However, sadly, our experience was pretty much trainwrecked by a drunk chick who would not fucking shut up throughout the entire goddamn experience. She was CLEARLY annoying everyone in our group, to the point toward the end, we were told that we have to sacrifice one of our own and the whole group instantly turned her over to be killed. I've never seen a group of strangers come to a unanimous decision that quickly in my life ever.
I'm just going to copy my yelp review here because it's easier...it sucks because most of the time I have little to no patience for people who let one element of a situation (or life) ruin their outlook on things. life is too short to spend an inordinate amount of time pissed off about shit that you can't change, which is something i've really focused on this year...which has been great in a lot of ways. but for whatever reason this whole experience just drove me completely bonkers.
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Honestly I'd want to give this 3.5 stars because this night was a bizarre combination of awesome and complete suck which I'll elaborate on in a second... I'm also going to try to be really vague since i don't want to give away any spoilers for people who haven't gone.
The location is great and the performance starts off REALLY REALLY REALLY strongly. They do a great job of decorating the interior and exterior of the building, the actors are all fantastic, the experience starts off super frenetic and amazingly intense, but halfway through it gets a little muddled and repetitive. It's pretty interactive (moreso than sleep no more or delusion), the characters talk to you and actually seem to sort of acknowledge you as individuals vs "nameless, irrelevant customers", you have to perform tasks, it's quite immersive overall. They do a GREAT job of timing the groups that go into the experience, we never heard the people who went in before us, for all intents and purposes our group was in there alone... I probably would have enjoyed this experience immensely but we had one glaring problem which set the tone and COMPLETELY ruined the night
You go through the experience in smallish groups and are forced to work together and perform certain tasks with each other. You're acutely aware of the people you are experiencing this with, and ostensibly it's supposed to build some camaraderie since it's you vs. the purge. However we had an INCREDIBLY drunk person in our group. Like, practically falling down, slurring her speech, constantly heckling the actors, just being completely obnoxious. To be quite frank, she fucking ruined the experience for me and my friends because she was the epitome of a stupid, trashy bitch. I was praying that somehow she'd get separated from us so I could stop listening to her wailing about how she had to pee, how she was annoyed the actors weren't paying enough attention to her, just a constant insipid barrage of drunken foolery. I wanted to tell her off _so_ badly. However being as I, unlike her, have some fucking manners, I kept it to myself as I didn't think getting into a fight would've really enhanced the situation for anyone.
She should NOT have been allowed in the show as she was pretty clearly intoxicated even when we were in line. Apparently the producers noticed her and figured she might be a problem and sent some sort of defacto chaperone in with our group to keep tabs on her...which is cool and all of them to do, but said chaperone should've removed her about 5 minutes into the experience as once the play/frights started, she did not fucking let up for a second. I was astounded at the wealth of useless, self serving, loud, nonsense this woman was coming out with. It's perplexing when people talk constantly and say so little in the process
I live in Hollywood, I'm used to seeing intoxicated people making fools of themselves, but when you're in a supposedly intense situation in close quarters and you're paying to have an immersive situation and some asshole is CONSTANTLY trying to make the focus of the event be on them, it's not fun. I didn't pay to see "drunk bitch make a fool of herself" i paid to see "the purge" and sadly I saw a lot more of the former vs the latter.
I wish I could find this fool and get her to reimburse the entire group since she essentially wasted our time and money by constantly trying to make the experience about her. I also think that the producers of the show need to be more proactive about making sure that attendees are at least relatively sober, or if not sober at least not exceedingly distracting and disruptive.
So it's hard for me to review The Purge truthfully since my experience was more "learning how to put up with an insanely drunk, trashy, crude, idiot who was easily my mom's age" vs "learning how to survive the purge"
So yeah, producers, security, whoever, please do the rest of us who want to experience your night a favor and bounce people who are obviously walking disasters. If it was Universal it wouldn't matter since those mazes are solely about shock tactics. But when you're trying to tell a story and you've got people who are practically screaming, "PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" at every possible opportunity, it kind of detracts from all the hard work your actors and set designers have put into the production.
It sucks because I'm generally easy to please, but when it comes to horror, the overall tone is REALLY important...it's why we watch horror movies or tell spooky stories in the dark. we WANT to be scared, we want to be on the edge of our seats practically drowning in the experience...and it's just really really not possible when you're trying to actively ignore an incredibly loud heckler. It completely destroys the illusion
I'm just going to copy my yelp review here because it's easier...it sucks because most of the time I have little to no patience for people who let one element of a situation (or life) ruin their outlook on things. life is too short to spend an inordinate amount of time pissed off about shit that you can't change, which is something i've really focused on this year...which has been great in a lot of ways. but for whatever reason this whole experience just drove me completely bonkers.
------------
Honestly I'd want to give this 3.5 stars because this night was a bizarre combination of awesome and complete suck which I'll elaborate on in a second... I'm also going to try to be really vague since i don't want to give away any spoilers for people who haven't gone.
The location is great and the performance starts off REALLY REALLY REALLY strongly. They do a great job of decorating the interior and exterior of the building, the actors are all fantastic, the experience starts off super frenetic and amazingly intense, but halfway through it gets a little muddled and repetitive. It's pretty interactive (moreso than sleep no more or delusion), the characters talk to you and actually seem to sort of acknowledge you as individuals vs "nameless, irrelevant customers", you have to perform tasks, it's quite immersive overall. They do a GREAT job of timing the groups that go into the experience, we never heard the people who went in before us, for all intents and purposes our group was in there alone... I probably would have enjoyed this experience immensely but we had one glaring problem which set the tone and COMPLETELY ruined the night
You go through the experience in smallish groups and are forced to work together and perform certain tasks with each other. You're acutely aware of the people you are experiencing this with, and ostensibly it's supposed to build some camaraderie since it's you vs. the purge. However we had an INCREDIBLY drunk person in our group. Like, practically falling down, slurring her speech, constantly heckling the actors, just being completely obnoxious. To be quite frank, she fucking ruined the experience for me and my friends because she was the epitome of a stupid, trashy bitch. I was praying that somehow she'd get separated from us so I could stop listening to her wailing about how she had to pee, how she was annoyed the actors weren't paying enough attention to her, just a constant insipid barrage of drunken foolery. I wanted to tell her off _so_ badly. However being as I, unlike her, have some fucking manners, I kept it to myself as I didn't think getting into a fight would've really enhanced the situation for anyone.
She should NOT have been allowed in the show as she was pretty clearly intoxicated even when we were in line. Apparently the producers noticed her and figured she might be a problem and sent some sort of defacto chaperone in with our group to keep tabs on her...which is cool and all of them to do, but said chaperone should've removed her about 5 minutes into the experience as once the play/frights started, she did not fucking let up for a second. I was astounded at the wealth of useless, self serving, loud, nonsense this woman was coming out with. It's perplexing when people talk constantly and say so little in the process
I live in Hollywood, I'm used to seeing intoxicated people making fools of themselves, but when you're in a supposedly intense situation in close quarters and you're paying to have an immersive situation and some asshole is CONSTANTLY trying to make the focus of the event be on them, it's not fun. I didn't pay to see "drunk bitch make a fool of herself" i paid to see "the purge" and sadly I saw a lot more of the former vs the latter.
I wish I could find this fool and get her to reimburse the entire group since she essentially wasted our time and money by constantly trying to make the experience about her. I also think that the producers of the show need to be more proactive about making sure that attendees are at least relatively sober, or if not sober at least not exceedingly distracting and disruptive.
So it's hard for me to review The Purge truthfully since my experience was more "learning how to put up with an insanely drunk, trashy, crude, idiot who was easily my mom's age" vs "learning how to survive the purge"
So yeah, producers, security, whoever, please do the rest of us who want to experience your night a favor and bounce people who are obviously walking disasters. If it was Universal it wouldn't matter since those mazes are solely about shock tactics. But when you're trying to tell a story and you've got people who are practically screaming, "PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" at every possible opportunity, it kind of detracts from all the hard work your actors and set designers have put into the production.
It sucks because I'm generally easy to please, but when it comes to horror, the overall tone is REALLY important...it's why we watch horror movies or tell spooky stories in the dark. we WANT to be scared, we want to be on the edge of our seats practically drowning in the experience...and it's just really really not possible when you're trying to actively ignore an incredibly loud heckler. It completely destroys the illusion