Back in the wilderness of 2020 when the world was going through the Covid pandemic my father gifted me and my best friend tickets for Zombie Infection. This is a live action zombie theatre experience that places you front and centre in an ongoing zombie outbreak storyline that takes place over thirty years. The interactive performances are around the UK at a variety of locations, and in a cool twist, each location features its own chapter in the ongoing overarching storyline. Mainly due to being a huge introvert who hates leaving his hometown for any reason whatsoever, I put off going to this for several years, but this year I finally took the plunge. Me and my bestie headed off to the National Justice Museum in the heart of Nottingham city centre to experience Chapter 6 'The Jail'. If you're astute, you may notice the subtle tweaks to the photos included below, needless to say I am not a master of digital photographic manipulation.
At the time of booking the tickets, Zombie Infection as a whole seemed to be coming to an end, but has since been extended with more dates and venues coming to a bunch of locations later this year. We had the final slot of the day on 4th May, with our two hour event starting at 22:30. It may have been a late start, but I figured taking place during the darkness of the night would be more atmospheric than if it was still light outside. Some years ago I went to a similar thing in London, The Generation of Z: Apocalypse, that in itself was great, but was more hands off, with events happening around you, but zombies not actively chasing you. I soon found out that chasing would be a key part of this experience!
After signing a disclaimer, the roughly twenty strong group that we were part of entered the museum, which was actually the former site of the city's old courthouse and jail, and is said to be haunted. From the moment you enter the building you become part of the story. Being chapter six, plenty has already gone on, but this is a self contained story within the larger overarching one. It seems that zombie apocalypse has occurred some time in the past, a militarised group known as Harvertech are in command, but their brutal methods for containing the infection has led to rebel groups emerging to challenge them. Chapter 6 sees one such rebel, a woman named Wren, being captured and put on a show trial where she is swiftly sentenced to death by the zealous judge. Before the punishment can be carried out, one of the Harvertech soldiers, Angel, turns on the prisoner's captors, revealing herself to be sympathetic to the rebels cause. While her attempt to free Wren hasn't gone exactly to plan, she has managed to release the captured undead, who are now roaming the courthouse and prison, and has met up with a rebel soldier named Bishop. These give the civilians (me and the group) a choice, either to take our chances with the zombies, or to team up with them in order to locate and free Wren, before making an escape on an evac helicopter which is on its way to the courthouse.
This was a load of fun to go through, and blends in the onboarding as part of its experience. It isn't long after entering the building that we are shouted at to form lines either side of the entrance room and place all our belongings in a big crate, including wallets and phones. We then are told to put on hoods so we can be led through to the courtroom, but not before a captive zombie is led around us all to see if any of us are infected. The experience is roughly split into two halves, the first has us defenceless, being led around the building by the actors. During this time we have to sneak past undead, even needing to act like them at one point to fake our way past an outside area full of them. Eventually we find ourselves in a room where we get provided with weapons with which to fight back. Obviously we wouldn't really be shooting the actors dressed up like zombies, but there is a neat lore reason why the guns we are given don't shoot actual bullets. We are told that each rifle has modified to fire gas rounds that have the ability to knock the undead unconscious for around thirty seconds, and once we are shown how to use them (with mine being one of the ones that also came with a torch at an extra cost of £10), we are led back out.
Despite there only being around seven or eight zombies, it felt like there were far more. Undead were constantly bursting out of doorways, or coming out from side rooms and corridors, with people shooting them mostly out of panicked instinct. This leads up to the second half which is far less scripted. Having been led around the building with story playing out around us (including taking hostage the evil judge character and locating the prisoner), we are tasked with going more free form. Hidden around the building are key cards, secret files, and lock boxes, so we are told to go find these and bring them back to a saferoom where the combined items will be used to open the lockboxes in which a cure to a new more deadly strain of the virus are kept. The lore reason being that Harvertech were concerned about the rebels getting their hands on the vaccine, and so had hidden the limited number of it spread out around the building. This last part was roughly thirty to forty minutes, with us all free to explore the maze like building. It was here were I realised how unfit I really am, with zombies constantly appearing where you least expect it. Coolest part of this was a 'super zombie', a mutated ghoul in a gasmask and boiler suit who was immune to the gas pellets you could fire, and so needed to be ran away from. There were lots of exciting moments where this zombie would appear and give chase, it never ceased to be freaky, especially in the times were I inadvertently found myself alone. I recall one particularly tense time where I was down in the cells on my own, playing 'cat and mouse' with the super zombie.
The interactive nature of being able to shoot the undead was a load of fun and added a lot of immersion. Characters and ghouls alike never broke character, even when things didn't go exactly to plan. My bestie at one point tripped over a recently downed zombie and went literally flying over him in a legitimately impressive looking fall that would not have looked out of place in a zombie movie. Having lost her glasses, the ghoul helpfully had found them and handed them to her. When I later mentioned to Bishop that a friendly zombie had handed her glasses back to her once she had fallen over (the actor still in character, later having asked my friend if she was ok from her fall), he sternly stated to me that there was no such thing as a friendly zombie! Apparently she accidentally cut the actors head when she tripped over him (something she felt very bad about when she learned this later), but there wasn't a word of complaint from him, impressive this commitment to staying in character. The trip in part happened because the whole location was very dark, this of course was a very cool thing, as zombies hidden in the darkness was much more fun than if the building was well lit, it added a lot to the atmosphere.
While my bestie said she would have given this a ten out of ten, it wasn't completely perfect, but was still darn close. Being a rented location, the building itself couldn't be altered too much, it helped that it was already a great looking place, but the only real adjustments were spinning lights and caution tape across certain out of area doors. This wasn't really an issue however, as the building was really cool, with it having a maze-like feel that made the later exploration a load of fun. The group we were with at times felt slightly large, with bottle-necks happening at some points, while at others some of the group didn't seem as much into the story as others. That is always going to be the case, and I'm part of the problem here as I can't do anything other than grin inanely constantly at the joy of being in a zombie experience, rather than act like I'm really in the story. My bestie really got into it, enough that the judge character had some one on one interactions with her, telling her she was marked out in particular. The only disappointing aspect was the end, where it was implied we could buy some merchandise, but it wasn't that clear, and despite us both having wanted to buy a survivors t-shirt, we inadvertently left the experience without having done that. A later look at the Zombie Infection website's merch store left us saddened that the t-shirts can't be brought from there, so it seems we lost the opportunity.
Overall though, Zombie Infection: Chapter 6 'The Jail' was such a good time. I loved the interactive nature of having guns, and how in character everyone was. It was a real blast, and really made me and my bestie hyped up. With tickets at around £100 per person it isn't the cheapest event going around, but I would be more than happy to check out a different chapter if one popped up in an area within a few hours drive to home (Nottingham was around a ninety minute drive from my home town). If you get a chance to check out one of these experiences then I really recommend you do, I really enjoyed my time here and had an amazing evening.
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2 comments:
Had such a great time! Thank you!
Thank you for coming!
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