The medical staff are the insane ones in Doritos interactive horror experience, Asylum 626.

The classic conundrum facing all producers of horror movie sequels is how to top the original. In Hollywood, the solution is usually more spectacular death scenes and crazier villains. But what if your horror franchise is ultimately designed to sell corn chips?

To follow-up its award-winning haunted website Hotel 626 for snack brand Doritos, San Francisco-based agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners opted to make the horror feel more personal by combining higher-quality production values with social media tools, such as Facebook Connect.

Asylum 626 went live on Sept. 18 and, like its predecessor, is only viewable at night between the hours of 6 pm and 6 am. This time, viewers awaken to find themselves strapped to a bed in an insane asylum, held hostage at the mercy of a mad doctor. The plot unfolds through a series of flashbacks until players are able to break free of their shackles and begin exploring.

Though it sounds horrific, the creative directors behind the site say the violence is largely psychological.

"We are selling chips at the end of the day," says Hunter Hindman, a group creative director at Goodby. "We don't want to do anything that's wholly unappetizing. We find ways to scare you that leaves it up to your imagination."

To personalize the experience, which is like a hybrid online game and a web film, viewers must activate their webcams and microphones and log-in to the site via Facebook and Twitter. During the gameplay, the site will incorporate video footage, pull in photos off Facebook and send messages to contacts via Facebook and Twitter.

"The big idea this year was how do we make this scare a lot more personal and really bring people into this interactive experience in a more tangible way?" says Hindman. "We really blurred that line between the virtual experience and the real-world experience."

A chainsaw-wielding manic plays a key role in drawing Facebook friends into the game.

For example, in one scene the player is attacked by a chainsaw-wielding maniac while trapped in a closet. There is an option to alert friends by sending out a message asking for help. Friends who take the bait will be asked to scream into their microphones or hit as many keys on their keyboards as possible to distract the assailant.

In another scenario, players are presented with two photos of Facebook friends and forced to choose who will live and who... probably won't live. "We leave it to the imagination what happens," explains Hindman. "There's some fairly gruesome sound design and some leading things to indicate that the friend you do not save is not doing so well."

To access the climactic scene viewers must purchase bags of Doritos Black Pepper Jack or Smoking Cheddar BBQ - two flavors the brand has "brought back from the dead" - bearing an augmented reality marker, which acts as a key.

The lack of product integration or strong branding presence in Hotel 626 was a criticism the agency heard from many industry pundits and award show juries throughout the year.

"It seemed like an opportunity we missed last year," says Goodby GCD Rick Condos. "Beyond that, something we're trying to do with Doritos more in general is tying the package itself into the things we do - the new flavors and products we put out."

An abandoned hospital in Vilnius provided the perfect setting for terror in Asylum 626.

To produce the website and the film, Goodby reunited with New York-and-Stockholm-based digital production company B-Reel Films and director Tom Malmros. The success of Hotel 626 afforded a bigger budget for its sequel, allowing for a live-action shoot in three locations in Lithuania with a cast of 30 local actors.

Though the week-long production took place in July, B-Reel's team of producers and creative directors were brought in to brainstorm ways to incorporate new technological tricks into the narrative.

"It's really important to find the balance between interactivity and the narrative," says B-Reel EP Niklas Lindstrom. "You don't want to interrupt or disturb people."

Both Hotel 626 and Asylum 626 use head-tracking, which allows viewers to control the action using their webcams. During the chainsaw-closet scene players can wave their hands or heads to dodge the blade. In other parts of the story, live video of players will appear on reflected surfaces.

Filming took place in a Soviet-era film studio in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, in an abandoned hospital and an old brewery. The interactive elements posed a challenge to the production team in that storyboards are a lot more complex and there are more steps to cover.

The chainsaw scene is 90% computer-generated imagery. To get the scene to work, B-Reel shot on a green screen with a silhouetted actor and recreated the torso, arms and chainsaw in 3D. They also shot woodchips and dust and added it in for greater effect.

"In our case the web experience is linear but the filming is very much non-linear and a lot of times, you have to keep refering back to the storyboards or the script for the website," says B-Reel creative director Seth Weisfeld. "There's more to consider than just filming a straight chainsaw attack."

www.asylum626.com
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www.b-reel.com