The few Christian hell houses I’ve been to have had a coherent, if disturbed, narrative. (Here’s some people! They died! Hell! HELL IS SCARY! BWAH-HA-HA Jebus loves you.) Kill Joy’s Kastle, on the other hand, was certainly designed not to convert but neither did it really attempt to pervert.
We might just have had a really bad guide, a professor of feminist studies (or some such) who I imagine has trouble keeping her students awake during class. Or it might just have been because we didn’t come on opening night: apparently on the opening night each of their exhibits had people providing performance art, but since then it’s just a tour of the sets they used. Of what was left, there was no coherent theme or tone to it – it felt more like a collection of art projects done by students forced to take an Introduction to Feminism course but who hadn’t bothered to read the materials.
When the tour began, the professor told us that feminists were often seen as kill joys – people with no senses of humour that stopped everyone else from having fun. I had expected the haunted house to attempt to prove that wrong.
But it wasn’t funny. It wasn’t scary. It wasn’t even educational.
At the same time, I’m glad it was made, glad it exists. I’d just like to see it better done, next time.
A for idea, F for execution.
