Eli Roth Brings His Brand of Horror to Meta Horizon Worlds + Meta Quest TV

Eli Roth has some new Halloween haunts up his sleeve, and they’re coming to home to roost on the Meta Quest Platform. Presented by Crypt TV together with Meta, Eli Roth’s Haunted House: Trick-VR-Treat is a 30-minute 180-degree VR experience starring Vanessa Hudgens and Will Sasso. Mark your calendars: The premiere event hits Meta Horizon Worlds* on October 21 at 6:00 pm PT.

Written and directed by Roth, Trick-VR-Treat is a love letter to classic Halloween fare: haunted houses, trick-or-treating, and creeptastic good times that are best shared with friends. Step inside the decrepit Dollhouse at the end of the street and untangle the twisting line between rumor and a nightmarish reality—if you dare.

We got the chance to interview Roth himself, so read on for the gorey goods!

What was the inspiration behind Trick-VR-Treat?

Eli Roth: I’ve always wanted to do a VR horror short. I’ve had a few ideas over the years that I’ve tried to get off the ground, but they were always too expensive to pull off with too few people using VR to justify the cost. I’ve been shooting amateur VR with a GoPro and first-generation Oculus Go regularly since 2018, so I have a good idea of where to put the camera and what works and what doesn’t in VR. You’re making a short with a different medium, the rules are different than film. But now with the explosion of headsets and the advancement in technology with the metaverse, it felt like you could finally have a venue to watch it both as an individual and collective experience. When Crypt TV spoke with Meta and then asked if I wanted to do a Halloween project, I had so many years of ideas built up, I jumped at the chance.

How long was Trick-VR-Treat in development? Any favorite anecdotes you’d like to share?

ER: The writing came together very, very fast. The ideas just kind of poured out of me, because I knew I wanted to do certain types of scenes. Drowning the hypnotized children in an entire room with candy, for example, that was something I thought of first. I remember now that it was something from a movie with gum balls filling a room, maybe The Brinks Job. The image of that room filled with money from the paperback I remember, it’s strange how these things stick with you from childhood. The doll people attacking on the porch, the “surgery” scene at the end, suddenly the scenes were just in my head. Plus after shooting amateur VR for fun, I knew what I could attempt with the short. The whole process was very experimental. I wrote the first draft very, very fast and then spent the next few weeks revising it with Meta, mainly sharpening the mythology and backstory. It all had to feel like its own self-contained dark fairytale.

How did you settle on the art style for Trick-VR-Treat?

ER: I tend to wear my influences on my sleeve, and I wanted the short to be visually spectacular, with every inch of the frame filled. I looked to my favorite directors like Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, David Lynch and the way they art direct, but also the animators the Brothers Quay. It’s like you put all of it into a blender with George Romero and Tarantino and this is what happens.

How does writing and directing film for 180° differ from more traditional, flat-screen filmmaking?

ER: When you’re shooting in VR with a 180-degree frame, you have to use so much more of the frame. Literally all sides of your field of vision, including above and below. I think the key is you have to write the story to the medium, not try to tame the medium to your story. Once I stopped thinking of this as a “short film” and started thinking of this as an immersive haunted house, it really freed me up to go wild and use every corner of the frame. The staircase shot towards the end is a good example of that. I’m subtly directing which way you should look, but truly all four quadrants of the frame are being used and each one has a different scare. It was exhilarating to design a shot like that and see how effective it was in the headset.

You said you got your mind blown by Wevr in 2015. Was that your first experience with VR?

ER: Ha! I forgot that was at WeVR, but yes, that’s absolutely correct. I used an old Vive rig with the paint program. They told me that this was year one, the Lumiere camera era of VR, and it still feels in many ways like just the start. The Vive rig was incredible, but you had so much spaghetti on your head and it was very, very heavy. I fell in love with the paint program. It was like being in a dream. Spraying neon, walking around it, above it, below it—it was transcendent. Now people will grow up with it, and one day will look at me the way we looked at people passing out from black-and-white silent footage of a train pulling into a station.

Horror’s a really popular genre in VR. Why do you think that is? What does VR add to the experience that other media can’t really replicate?

ER: Horror’s always fun. It’s unpretentious. You know what you’re there for and as long as the filmmakers deliver the goods you can be very forgiving of any kind of things the production couldn’t quite pull off. But because VR is a new medium we’re still figuring out what works. I’ve watched dramas in VR with great actors and they’re so boring. The experience just feels weird, like, why am I watching this? I can’t enjoy the experience with anyone else, I feel too close to the actors, it looks like video, this just seems forced… etc. I don’t begrudge anyone’s attempts to try something cool, I just prefer to watch fun stuff in a headset, and well-done horror is always fun. I love a great kill.

Why was virtual reality the right medium to tell this particular story?

ER: I wanted viewers to go inside the movie. The closest experience I had was when I rebuilt the sets from Hostel for Universal’s “Halloween Horror nights.” I gave them the exact designs and all the original props and costumes to replicate them, and it was fantastic just being inside the movie. This gives you that experience except now people globally can go inside the nightmare. It’s just so fun to be in a haunted house, I wanted to create a global event anyone with a headset anywhere could experience.

Who did you work with on the soundtrack and sound design? What was that experience like?

ER: Brandon Roberts is an amazing composer. I’ve never worked with someone who composed at this speed, I’m sorry his secret is out, but he was lightning fast. We spent a lot of time in prep talking about the sound we wanted, listening to a lot of my favorite scores I thought would suit the project well. He pulled many favors and got the Budapest orchestra to record the score for us, something I couldn’t even afford on some of my low-budget films! He’s remarkable.

The sound team and I went through the film very carefully. I love sound design, and I like to have the design done as much as possible when I’m editing. It’s so important in horror, I like to have sequences in total blackness where you’re just using the sound to scare people. Sometimes the right sound is the difference between a scare and a laugh.

What advice would you give to a filmmaker looking to start working in VR?

ER: There are a lot of great cameras out there now that aren’t that expensive. Get one and start shooting and see what works and what doesn’t.

What’s next for you? Any exciting updates in the works?

ER: A lot, but nothing I can talk about! I have three shows on Discovery+ / Travel Channel this month: “My Possessed Pet,” “Urban Legend,” and a special “The Haunted Museum” movie on Halloween. I’m also in post-production on Borderlands, which is my next film.

Anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

ER: Yes, let me know how you liked Trick-VR-Treat! And try to convert someone to being a VR user. The only way this will grow as a medium is if we share it with our friends. I’m also curious to hear your experience watching it in Meta Horizon Worlds versus by yourself in Meta Quest TV. And I made a 360 behind the scenes, I’d love to know everyone’s thoughts, so hit me up on Instagram at @realeliroth.

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Don’t miss the premiere event of Eli Roth’s Haunted House: Trick-VR-Treat in Meta Horizon Worlds on October 21 at 6:00 pm PT. Trick-VR-Treat will be available for on-demand viewing in VR on Meta Quest TV. No headset? No problem—you’ll also be able to watch the short film on Facebook and Instagram.

*Meta Horizon Worlds is currently available to people 18+ in the US, Canada, the UK, Iceland, Ireland, France, and Spain on Meta Quest 2.