Do you love horror movies?
Do you love game shows?
If so, grab a favorite snack and get ready to spend some couch time on Wednesdays watching three besties fighting their fears to win up to $50,000 in Game Show Network’s latest competition, “Hellevator.”
“It’s scary and gross and all those kinds of things, but it’s also fun,” said “Hellevator” executive producer Jason Blum.
And Blum would know as he is considered something of a horror expert.
As founder and CEO of Blumhouse Productions, Blum is known for film franchises such as “Paranormal Activity,” “Purge” and “Insidious,” as well as its current BH Tilt label releases like M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Visit” and “The Green Inferno” directed by Eli Roth.
Now he’s stepping in to the realm of game shows.
The premise of “Hellevator” is fairly simple. In each episode, a team of three people visits the “Hellevator” location (a former slaughterhouse in Los Angeles) and rides its elevator to four different floors. At each stop, one of the contestants must exit the elevator to complete a challenge and return within the allotted time or they are eliminated from play.
The game continues with each team member taking a turn and, after all three challenges are completed, the “surviving” players may compete in a round for bonus cash dubbed The Labyrinth.
Sounds easy, right?
Well, think again. Each team member is pre-screened to determine their fears and on show day they are locked into separate rooms where they watch a selection of horror films alone prior to the game. Then they go on to the challenges, which are downright eerie.
One contestant had to dig through two corpses, garnering the right amount of organs needed to balance a scale. Later, she had to avoid a threatening mad surgeon, while plunging her hands in a pool of disgusting goo in an effort to find hidden cash.
And then there’s the Soska sisters.
Jen and Sylvia Soska, also known as the Twisted Twins, host “Hellevator.” Their horror pedigree includes writing and directing “American Mary” and directing “See No Evil 2” and the upcoming film “Plastic.” They also recently authored their first Marvel Comic, “Night Nurse,” in “Secret Wars Journal #5.”
“I would call this a survival horror game show,” said Jen Soska. “It’s definitely the first of its kind, and nothing quite compares to ‘Hellevator.’ I think ‘Fear Factor’ was the closest thing ever, but they never quite got the mark of keeping people actually terrified.”
“There is no safe place on ‘Hellevator’ for any of our contestants,” Sylvia Soska added. “We have a video feed for anywhere they could be, and if they ever look like they are any bit comfortable, we take care of that right away.”
The Soskas are in charge of the contestants’ “scare tests” and also design many of the traps within the game. As “Hellevator” hostesses, they can up the terror any time and, to do so, may call on their stable of creepy creatures, including rats, cockroaches, scorpions, leeches, maggots, ill-tempered snakes and a Goliath birdeater tarantula and its friend.
“Never tell horror directors what you’re afraid of — that’s just bad,” Jen Soska quipped.
The making of ‘Hellevator’
Because the contestants’ reactions cannot be guaranteed, “Hellevator” is also a challenge for its crew. Each show features a different theme with a unique backstory, along with complementing practical and special effects.
Unlike a movie, the actors and crew have only one day to rehearse and perfect the scares and effects for each episode, which is shot in full the following day.
“(‘Hellevator’) gets complicated because you cannot do the stunt more than once. If you mess it up, you reveal it to the contestants. So we have to rehearse it a lot more than we do in our movies,” Blum said.
Of course, everyone is happy when things come together.
“I cannot tell you the childlike gleeful joy I get when one of my monsters just hits something right on the head — and that’s usually a victim,” said Sylvia Soska.
Every week they start over again with new contestants and new puzzles.
“To defeat ‘Hellevator’ — or at least to get through it properly — you have to face your fears,” Jen Soska explained. “A lot of people think it’s just a cash grab, you can just do the challenges and succeed, but that’s not the way it works.”
