Editorials
5 Creepy Real Places Horror Games Should Visit
Takakanonuma Greenland Park — Miyagi, Japan
If there’s one thing this world has an abundance of, it’s abandoned amusement parks. Seriously, there are dozens of them scattered all around the world, likely in varying states of decay that range from ‘Oh, that’s creepy’ to ‘Enter my gates, Mortal, so I can swallow your soul‘.
You would think that knowing they border on common would make their otherworldly imagery substantially less effective, but instead all I can think about now is the distinct possibility that there’s an abandoned amusement park hiding under my bed.
One of the creepier parks we abandoned long ago, leaving it to Mother Nature to consume, is the Takakanonuma Greenland park in the Watari District of Miyagi, Japan — just a two and a half hour road trip if you leave from Tokyo. The park opened its doors in 1973, ready to spread cheer and smiles faster than the black plague, only to be closed two years later.
Want to know the weird part? I mean, the weird-er part, since I’m sure we can all agree that the concept of prematurely shutting down a source of happiness for all in a world that’s filled to the brim with horror, pain, and Justin Bieber is already pretty goddamn weird. It’s that there are essentially no records to explain why the park was closed.
This means we’ll have to rely on local legend mixed with my wild imagination to explain its closure. Rumor has it the park was shut down after some folks died there. I imagine an evening in 1975 played out something like the opening to Final Destination 3, which forced them to close it down. After that bloodbath the park, which had just gotten its first taste for human blood, was closed. It then had to wait for those who survived to either forget about that night or die off so it could reopen — which it did, in 1986 — and make up for lost time by claiming even more lives before being shut down for good. Shut down, but not vanquished.
There are no official reports, so that’s the story I’m going with.
That’s it, folks! I’ve shown you mine, now it’s your turn to show me yours. If you have a place you’d like me to list next time — assuming I do this again — then I recommend you share it in the comments below. But before you do, remember that this is actually the fourth article in a series, so that place you fancy may have already been covered. You can find the previous three lists below.
If you do decide to look back at a previous list and you notice some wonky images or formatting, that’s because this series started back in 2010, and the handful of site redesigns Bloody Disgusting has seen since then has very likely beaten all of the article’s initial beauty right out of it.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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