This year might be the biggest Halloween celebration of all time as tech companies and film productions are steaming up a night of horror for some of the craziest scares. From the popular release of Dahmer to Netflix’s The Watcher and now Meta’s immersive VR Horror Experiences available to Meta Quest users.
The most anticipated VR Horror Experience is a new “Haunted House” film, created by director Eli Roth, to create a 180-degree VR experience that takes you through a horror house party, where people are seemingly turned into dolls.
Eli Roth is notorious for directing “Cabin Fever” and the “Hostel” movie series, which all focus on thrilling horrors. His new project presented by Crypt TV together with Meta stars Hollywood actors, Vanessa Hudgens and Will Sasso that will pretend to be your tour guides while you shiver from fear.
The film is set to be a Trick-VR-Treat of 30 mins to immerse the viewer into the virtual scenes. The film is set to premiere on October 21st at 6 pm PT in Worlds or on-demand on Meta Quest TV.
As we wait to see how users would receive the new form of watching films, we foreshadow that Meta might have opened Pandora’s Box for film lovers as this could be a new form of engagement on one of their platforms while at the same time allowing for value-added experiences to fully transport users into universes they desire to escape to via films.
Meta is also planning different activations in order to provide more options for VR Horror Experiences.
In addition to the film, Meta wanted to also have a new four-episode “Scream Park” mini-series in VR, starring Grace Van Dien from Stranger Things.
Meta’s also hosting an array of other Halloween VR activations, including:
- Tokyo Case: This two-part, 360-degree short Japanese horror film is taking Meta Quest TV by storm. Episode 1 is available now, and Episode 2 launches on October 21.
- Meta Horizon Worlds Drive-In: Experience a Halloween-themed drive-in movie streaming a collection of monster horror flicks from Crypt TV.
- Alien Apocalypse: A 360-degree VR video based on H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds.
- Pennywise the Dancing Clown: Everyone’s favorite clown is just dying to meet you in VR. Filmed on location at the Derry Festival and Funhouse in Derry, Maine.
Immersive VR Horror experiences are only the beginning to lure users to Meta’s platform for interactive adventures curated by their own choice of genres. The full scope of what VR has to offer is frightening, immersive, polished VR experiences, and more interactive than any 2 films available from any streaming platform.
Whether this would be a newly discovered direction for Meta to focus on and build an authentic way to engage with their users it does the company good as they have been heavily criticized for being copy-cats to TikTok in order to prevent users from switching social channels. Not even to mention opening the doors to streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney Plus to introduce new technologies to watch immersive films.
And you can expect Meta to continue to put more emphasis on VR activations like this VR Horror Experiences moving forward as it’s still a relatively untapped alley that works to promote the Metaverse and build hype for its VR tools and immersive technologies.
Ultimately, Meta could be onto something and it would be worth keeping an eye on, especially for those trying to have a better understanding of where things are headed, and what’s possible in Meta’s VR environments.
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