THE FRIGHT OF YOUR LIFE!

We caught up with filmmaker DAN BROWNLIE to chat about his documentary UK HAUNTERS, which looks at the people behind the immersive scare trade…

- Martin Unsworth

STARBURST: Can you explain what a haunter is?

Dan Brownlie: What makes a haunter is very subjective, I guess. For me, and in terms of this documentary, it’s anyone who is part of the scene that creates immersive experiences that cater to lovers of horror, the bizarre, and boundary-pushing entertainment. They are composers, FX artists, actors, haunt creators, and artists who choose horror themes to express themselves in a real-life immersive canvas that revels in others taking part. Largely, these haunts and scare attractions take the form of the sort of thing that we traditionally associate with American Halloween theme parks’ ‘haunted houses’, much like Universal Studio’s Halloween Horror Nights. But they’re also so much more varied than I was expecting.

What drew you to make the documentary?

While shooting my previous film The Tombs at the London Dungeon Tombs, I got chatting to Andy ‘Cookie’ Rawlings. In between the hectic shooting schedule, he showed me a lot of the tricks haunts use to terrify people and it fascinated me. I learnt about all the secret passages, fake walls, ‘boo holes’ - the hole in a wall where an actor will wait till you walk past and scare you - and all the other tricks they use. It was amazing learning the secrets and psychology of how they work, and it gave me a deeper understanding and respect for how they work and the craftsmanship that goes into them.