It's the '80s, and Michael Jackson's “Thriller” is a worldwide hit. A precocious high school couple is at their local movie theater, taking in the Saturday double feature matinee. Chairs sticky with candy, the smell of popcorn and teen spirit mixed in with hope and anxiety. The zombie horde bursts through the barn door screaming “brains,” and the daters embrace each other in terror, while their hearts and stomachs flutter in delight to be closer to each other than before.
We've seen the same thing at Tidal Force, minus the sticky seats. A couple walks in a little unsure of each other, and halfway through ViRal one of them is hugging the other's arm as they cautiously make their way down a bloodied prison corridor.
What surprised us is that the closeness doesn't stop at the jump scares. During the mission, couples start depending on each other. One person keeps an eye on the door while the other deals with whatever is coming down the corridor. When they come out, they're still talking about who covered who.
Friend groups love a scary movie night too, and they go through the same thing here. Groups come in as coworkers or friends of friends and leave acting like they've known each other much longer.
In a 1986 study, college students watched a scene from Friday the 13th Part III next to a companion of the opposite sex who was secretly working for the researchers. Some enjoyed the movie more when their companion got scared. Others enjoyed it more when their companion stayed calm. It's the classic horror-movie date: one of you gets to be the steady one, and the other gets someone to feel protected by.
For the men in the study, keeping calm paid off in another way. Men who were rated less attractive before the movie were rated more attractive after it if they kept their cool through the scary parts. So the guy who holds it together on a horror date doesn't need to be the best-looking one in the room.
Fear may feed attraction in other settings as well. In a famous 1974 study in Vancouver, a woman stopped people on two bridges, one high and swaying, the other low and solid, and offered her phone number in case they had questions about the study. The people she met on the scarier bridge were much more likely to call. Later studies haven't always found the same result.
Researchers have also followed friends through a real haunted house. In a 2026 study at a haunted attraction in Florida, visitors who got more scared felt more bonded to the people they came with. About two out of three said the night brought their whole group closer, though their before-and-after closeness ratings changed little. In interviews, visitors often described talking about the scares afterward as a big part of the night.
How scared people get matters for how much they enjoy it. When researchers in Denmark put heart-rate monitors on visitors to a haunted house, the people who had the most fun were moderately scared. The ones who were terrified enjoyed it less.
In VR, the scary part isn't on a screen in front of you. Researchers call the feeling of being inside a virtual place presence, and one well-known experiment shows how strong it can be. People wearing headsets stood next to a virtual hole in the floor. They knew they were standing on a normal floor, and their heart rates still went up.
Presence is strong enough that therapists use VR to treat fears like heights, and studies have found that VR exposure therapy works about as well as traditional, in-person exposure therapy for specific phobias. Our missions aren't therapy, but presence is what makes them scary.
The couple at the matinee could only hold on and watch. In our VR experiences, nobody is stuck in a seat. Your crew moves through the space together. Someone covers the corridor behind the group while the others push forward, and whoever spots the infected first has to shout it. You still get the jump scares and the grabbed arms, but you get through them as a team, and that's what people are still talking about on the way out.
So grab your popcorn. Tonight's double feature is about to start.
Feature one, feature two.
TWO features! ONE night! Bring someone you'd grab in the dark!
FEATURE ONE: ROOM K! A hired crew! A lonely biolab! A routine contract, and a client who isn't telling you everything! CRACK the transmission! SOLVE the puzzles! Then SURVIVE whatever is waiting inside!
Room K: official trailer.
FEATURE TWO: ViRal! The prison has fallen. The plague is spreading. Somewhere in those cell blocks is patient zero, and YOUR crew is going in after him!
ViRal: official trailer.
Forty minutes per feature! Not for the faint of heart! Bring a friend who won't run!
NOW SHOWING at 166 5th Ave. Ask for the double feature when you arrive.
