Creep LA: Awake Is Keeping Us Up

Eyes open! Let's dwell in, if not the scariest, the most creepy haunt we've been to for this season. Creep LA's latest experience, Awake has us visiting walking nightmares. Truly, setting itself from any of the other haunts, you become part of the nightmare, experiencing it for yourself. And these people continue to totally creep us out!

Creep LA: Awake

October 5 -November 4 Select Nights

Row DTLA 777 S. Alameda St. Los Angeles, California

$89, adults only

Creep LA is back again with a new concept that’s gonna keep those peepers open in it’s newest experience “Awake.” They always impress us on some level with being one of the best interactive haunts you can choose for Halloween.

“With only 6 shows a night, each performance allows 25 brave souls inside an imagined universe. AWAKE is a fully engaging, multi-sensory, 75-minute walk-through experience within a dynamic and diverse environment of moody rooms, intimate encounters, and terrifying scenarios.”

*Just a heads up, we found it hard to find it at Row DTLA, which is an outdoor mall deal. Read the instructions you get on directions. Sit underneath the tree covered in lights is not a metaphor or a riddle, it's really the center of the place and not far from where you get out of the big parking lot.

This has been probably our most interactive haunt for the season and the one we like the most while still making us feel nasty. The job of Creep LA isn't about scares, it is about being uncomfortable and we mean human interaction. The latest entry in the series continues having people touch you, caress you and getting way, way too close to your face. If these are things you can't deal with, then don't go.

For those willing to get that much face time, welcome to a living nightmare. Creep LA has done an amazing job this year. The Amazon Lore team up from last year was not it at it's best. This time around you're thrusted into three nightmares (maybe more) all cultivating into one big shared nightmare. The logic of the land is perfect for the experience as being in a dream like state. Fun, and please-stop-touching me moments are spread out over a night that will keep you up well after experiencing it.

Spoilers

You're gonna be led away from the tree that isn't a riddle (it's a real tree you have to meet up at) to some strange area of Row DTLA. Stay quiet as you"ll enter an elevator and then enter a nightmare.

Music plays as creeps carry you off to bed. Yes, you"ll be going to a bed. That's how you enter dreams, right? The creeps don't merely send you off like an attendant. No, they"ll hover around you like some sort of nanny that you wish would maybe die.

We forget, and then we're made very aware how close some of the creeps can be to you. As soon as you enter dreamland, you"ll wish you had personal space again.

Now there is a story, we learn about three people having nightmares. It's killing them. You"ll be entering their dreams. Very much like Nightmare on Elm Street or other classic horror films. What follows were different strange experience based on whomever you went with.  You enter their nightmare.

Groups are formed.  So, it's not always that many people with you. When we did it, it became a group of six person's per dream. Close "comfort" with those special nightmares.

We had a wonderful time...no, we didn't, in someone's nightmare about their dead brother and their Mom, not accepting it. "Junior," she cried!  Every few seconds we heard talk about her dead son. We were all Junior. It didn't help when we sat down for dinner and put on the masks.

Next, we were whisked away into another nightmare. This time about a women experiencing a trauma from her childhood. With the "Salesman." Sadly, I got to close and personal with him later in the nightmare. This dream really takes you to the fears of a child predator being in the neighborhood.  Later, getting that close to his face made my skin crawl. Ehhh, his make up made him look so much like something that hsoudn't be. Something's just not right about him.

At one point we ended with the big group again. This time to a choir of people happy to be awake. It was like a talk show or Sunday morning Evangelist program. It was about how sleep isn't needed and being awake was the answer. To what question? Who knows.

These "awakers" were having psychotic breakdowns as they hadn't slept in days. They came close and personal to share it with us. Soon, some sort of dream king appeared and it all started breaking apart.

We ended up in a true nightmare scenario, a classroom. We had a mean teacher and things not making sense thanks to dream logic. Sadly, the experience had a visit from the "Salesman" getting into my personal space.

There's an intercom telling you not to leave the classroom because of a giant bat that would eat you... and then suddenly you're racing, racing with everyone to the dream's end. You"ll be back with the group for the finale. Sweet dreams after this.

*Of note, it looks like your groups don't experience the same nightmares. Another member of the team went into totaly different nightmares we didn't experience. We were separated a few times so things will go differently on where you go and who with and you don't get to choose. It's a story with different branches.

It's fun to discuss how each other's night differed and what experiences were the same.

End of spoilers

We must give credit to Creep LA: Awake for giving us one of the most disgusting and well made haunts for Halloween. The creeps themselves, we never want to see you again...at least until next year. You're too clingy and talk like were in a library. ASMR joke could have been here, but ehh.

Sets and spaces are pulled right out of nightmares. It's like the people behind this saw Freddy Krueger's film and thought, let's do that. Let's be creeps like that to people and make them be stuck in nightmares. Like any sane person would.

You're on your feet, you're in bed, you're running away from something. Creep LA: Awake kept changing and still felt connected.

I'm sure, if we went again ( We're not though, don't touch us) earlier scenes would connect to different threads later. It was great to pick up on that and realize the shared dream was built on the earlier dreams.

Dream logic swells up at empty building in downtown LA leaving room for nothing but nightmares and people you don't want to talk or interact with. Next is like falling through an ongoing nightmare you just can't get wake up from.

A must for the Halloween season, if you're okay with the touching and lack of personal space. You creepy weirdos, you've done it again.