Written by Jonathan Wojcik
"Scene Setters" are a class of decoration widely available in Halloween flavors and sold just about everywhere the holiday is acknowledged. Consisting of an image printed on a giant, flimsy plastic film, the idea is to stick them to your walls and floors for "realistic" haunted atmosphere, though they obviously don't look quite as stunning as their packaging implies.
Because I can't think of anything else for today and I'm saving all the good ideas for the end of the month, here's some scene setter reviews!
Skeleton on the Toilet
What are you doing on the toilet, skeleton!? You are a skeleton!
I'm really curious about that newspaper. The only word I can discern is "reads," and its front page photo is just a solid mass of skulls. I'm going to guess it details some kind of skeleton uprising.
Spooky Mansion
This is a cool and straightforward image, but does it really make sense as a "realistic" wall decoration? You're essentially creating the illusion that you're missing a wall and a way cooler house is across the street. What kind of message is that for a Halloween party? On the other hand, you could probably protect your house from ghosts with this thing. They would fly into it like Wile E. Coyote only to find themselves outside. Then you can lock all your doors and windows like the smart guy you are!
Skeleton Infestation
I love this one. It implies that inside your walls and floors are just hundreds of tiny, ravenous little green skeletons, gnawing the drywall and probably leaving little skeleton droppings all along the ventilation ducts. You better lay out some sticky traps! I don't know what you would bait them with to catch skeletons, though. Chalk? I want to say that skeletons love eating chalk.
Vampire Attack
This one just confuses me. You've got plenty of scene setters the same size depicting what can be reasonably described as "scenes," and then you've got this one with the same three vampires biting the same three victims in three neatly aligned rows. I can't help but interpret all of this as actually, literally happening in this particular "scene," and the result is just far too ridiculous, even for me. I applaud anyone who actually decorates with something this baffling.
Dreadful Dungeon
This is officially called "dreadful dungeon," but is actually a three-pack of fake basement windows. I really love this one, and almost entirely because of the gigantic mouth. Are we implying some huge monster is howling against the window, or that our dungeon IS a monster, ready to masticate and digest a would-be burglar? As a bonus, you get a giant rat and a nondescript monster-man; I'm surprised there's not yet another skeleton here.
Skeleton Surgery
Holy crap, this one is positively insane. We're talking balls-to-the-wall, take-no-prisoners Halloween horror here. You've got a skeleton patient screaming in terror as the doctor swings an axe, an oddly sexy (right? I'm not just a lone freak here?) skeleton nurse dragging around some degenerate, mutant skeleton patient, rats running around loose in a medical facility, toxic chemicals instead of anaesthetic, jars of eyeballs, and good god, the BLOOD. Skeletons don't have blood. Where did it all come from!?
You can find scene setters year round on ebay, Amazon and various other websites. They're typically dirt cheap, so what are you waiting for? Don't you want your guests to think a skeleton is reading the news at them?
Browse Halloween 2011:
