TL:DR All the irreverent silliness and sliming (in the best way possible) you could wish for. A fun night’s entertainment even if it doesn’t quite live up to an in-person Secret Cinema experience

It’s 1985, a year after the Ghostbusters’ glorious victory at the Ivo Shandor building and we have been recruited to the Paranormal Institute to learn how to trap ghosts and send them back to their place of origin or the nearest convenient parallel dimension.

Only I appear to be trapped in April 2020, frowning at a screen and talking over my friends: “Can you see me? I can’t see you… oh now I can’t hear you… can you hear anyone else?”

Full disclosure, Secret Cinema warned me they would be refunding my ticket for their newest online immersive experience Ghostbusters: The Gates of Gozer due to “technical issues” before we even registered at the Paranormal Institute pre-show online portal. It poses something of a challenge to putting together a full review as we either missed, misheard or failed most of our initial ‘paranomal training’.

As then I will do so now and carry on regardless, putting the technical issues to one side for a moment.

Let’s talk highs - this is an irreverent 75 minutes with a ton of interaction. There is a group element when all of the teams are together, but most of the action revolves around your individual team meeting different characters to get information or do a simple task, first at the institute and then out ‘in the field’.

The actors are charismatic, warm and inclusive. The stand outs for us were Janine Melnitz, Lewis Tully, and the ghosts towards the end (I am so sorry actors, I can’t find the credits on the website!). Between them the cast was able to smooth over many of the technical glitches and bring even the shyest Zoom wallflower out of their shell to gleefully yell “don’t cross the streams!”

This is just as well as there is quite a bit of improvisation and you will have to partake. You might even be called upon by name - eek!

While initially slightly alarming, the structure and phrasing of the experience warmed us up quickly and the final run of interactions which involved the most ‘out there’ challenges (think grabbing what you have at hand and elevator pitching) were easily the best part of the evening.

There’s a mix of live and recorded action to move the straightforward but enjoyable story along and some genius design work has completely smoothed the transitions by making the video quality 1980s-grainy all the way through. The transitions were so successful that there was a moment when we thought that we were watching and chatting through a recorded section only for Janine threw her head around and take part in our conversation - to much hilarity.

However this also posed a challenge and possibly my biggest user experience gripe of the evening: There was a lot of talk about working as a team but I felt like there was limited time or ability for the team to actually confer amongst itself. As it was, the experience felt like a series of 1:1 actor to team member interactions which I either took part in or witnessed. While I wouldn’t want to be taken out of the moment with the actors, I think my evening would have been massively improved with a private team chat function to facilitate some comradery throughout the night.

If you’re looking for a evening that will allow you to catch up with your friends, this is probably not going to give you the sense of quality time you are craving. I recommend you arrange your own debriefing session afterwards.

Some other issues - there were a few on-screen gags that were difficult to make out because the screen size is slightly too small. There was a mini-game element that was tricky to play because of data latency issues (I did say I wouldn’t talk about tech issues but difficult to let that one slide). Even for a cheaper online experience, the pre-show online portal was a bit basic after witnessing the majestical equivalent for Bridgerton and very content heavy, which didn’t inspire me to wade through it.

I couldn’t say that this was the full-on Secret Cinema experience that was kind of promised, but I don’t think our group was expecting it to be. Hopefully the technical issues are better since my experience - if you’ve been and know, please do let me know in the comments below.

Even so, we found it a satisfying online debut from Secret Cinema, giving fans an entertaining and silly-in-the-best-way-possible evening. Just triple check the technical requirements and feel good busting ghosts.

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