The Conjuring Occult museum London officially opened today as this three day pop-up event is set to take over the capital with some spooky scenes and immersive entertainment.
With a beautiful wall art display in its Shoreditch location that will come alive at night under UV light we entered the rather well branded Occult museum and stepped into a living room like setting complete with movie props used in The Conjuring: The Last Rite.
Having just come from a screening of the movie before our experience we did feel as though we had stepped into the movie and that’s a testament to those who created this rather welcoming entry space.
We enter into a living room setting complete with props from the film dotted around the room, it was an inviting space complete with a few drinks for everyone and some pictures on the wall of stills from the flick.
This weird false sense of security came across me as this room was rather inviting with lots of places to stay and chill out, a nice little backdrop photo opportunity for the film and it was just a nicely designed space.
It had a nice vintage feel to it but modern at the exact same time but this certainly was the calm before the storm as we were there for a scare experience so I had my wits about me for jump scares at any given moment.
This walkthrough experience is actor-led and your experience begins in the artefact room as you gather clues that trigger effects within the room and whilst it was unnerving it certainly never felt scary at any given moment.
Warner Bros have created a Warrens museum but it felt very different from the one we see on screen, the artefacts on display (bar the odd few) were very different from the ones you see on screen, the room felt a lot more cramped and as a result our group were very much huddled together which meant this little fact-finding task was more of a trying to not knock anything off the shelves exercise.
When clues were found effects were triggered and some lighting and sound effects were creepy and the experience was enhanced with special VoiceOver recorded by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson just for this experience but there were some issues.
An illusion with Annabelle where she was supposed to disappear failed and failed miserably as a member of staff was very clearly seen to have missed his cue and he was in broad daylight ruining the very illusion that would have caused Annabelle to ‘disappear’. It was such a shame but throughout the experience it felt as though the actors and those triggering the effects hadn’t had much practise or run-through of the experience and we were seeing a lot of mistakes throughout sadly.
With that aside the Warrens Museum was a nice little space if albeit not close to being movie accurate and the attic scene thereafter was a cool touch if albeit a little cheesy in parts but for a free pop-up it was fun.
The experience was certainly more unnerving than jumpy with only audio effects delivering the ‘jumps’ whilst the actors didn’t really have enough room to deliver those classic jump-scares but they certainly delivered in the creep factor.
For a free 20-30 minute experience it was good fun and at the end of the experience we were given some film-related merchandise along with a free cocktail or mocktail of choice.
As a whole the event they had put on was well put together and it certainly helped seeing the film first before stepping into it with this particular experience and whilst it didn’t hit home in the scare department for me it was a well put together and well organised experience (in terms of set-up as opposed to our run-through) and getting up close and personal to props from the film is always a joy for me.
To be mere feet away (there were barriers and security of course) from the animatronic Annabelle doll and the mirror used in the recent film, that was amazing for me, I love seeing the props directly from the films and this alone was worth walking into the museum for.
I was hoping for the actual artefact room to be full of props used in the movie (behind glass etc of course) but sadly there were just a handful of props to look at rather than an entire museum.
The Occult Museum is a nice little pop-up in London and will certainly appeal to horror fans who have been lucky enough to snag their free tickets.
Step inside the Smurl family attic if you dare and enjoy this final chapter in the Warrens story.
