Brea fright-fest issues challenge to guests: Find your way out

Imagine entering a makeshift hospital room, unaware of what you’re about to experience. A crazed doctor greets you, tells you your tasks and points to some obscure tools on a table.

You lift the sheets off the hospital bed and see something disgusting. But before you have time to think, you notice the clock on the wall counting down from 20 minutes. You panic. Your heart races.

And amid the chaos and the shrieks from others in the room, you know you’ve got to get out as quickly as possible.

That’s the premise behind The Event, the latest production by Sinister Pointe Productions, a Brea-based company that puts on year-round haunted mazes and similarly scary events. The Event can best be described as a dark, grown-up version of the childhood board game Operation, played with teams of up to six.

Company founder Jeff Schiefelbein won’t give too many details about this latest production, so that’s about all that can be said. He won’t even disclose the location where the scary stuff happens until the last minute. (People who sign up just have to wait for details.)

This much is known about that: After various temporary quarters, the company does have a primary location to put on its events — like The Event.

For horror fans, The Event will probably prove to be a bloody good fright, following

the unique designs found in Sinister Pointe’s other standout haunts since the company began in 2008.

There’s a reason these haunts are so good — Schiefelbein has had plenty of experience in the horror realm.

The 40-year-old Brea resident concocted his first neighborhood haunt at his parents’ house when he was 14. The Halloween event grew each year until he was 17 and his parents told him it had become too large.

Those first scary mazes were just the skeletons for what Sinister Pointe would become.

At 18, Schiefelbein moved out of his family home and leased his first haunt production building.

“I think everybody that’s still around still thinks that first haunt was the best one we ever did,” he said about his neighborhood scarefest. “I think it’s more of a nostalgia thing. Back then, there wasn’t a haunt industry. It wasn’t so mainstream and wasn’t about making money. It was just pure passion.”

Sinister Pointe has been a growing staple in the Southern California haunt community since 2008 when its first maze, based on the “Saw” film franchise, introduced a new idea: interactivity. Attendees had to stick their hands in mysterious dark holes to open passageways.

In a way, that maze possessed Schiefelbein, who had worked with partners at two other production companies before founding Sinister Pointe on his own.

“That was the first time I took a chance on something different,” he said of including the interactions. “The response from it was just so overwhelming. It was such an awakening thing.”

Instead of simply leading attendees through a maze, Sinister Pointe gives them tasks to do, like putting their hands down garbage disposals or crawling through dark tunnels.

Other area haunts have caught on to the scare potential of interactive mazes. Knott’s Scary Farm introduced the interactive Trapped attraction in 2012. The Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor last year included an Encounters maze, which required someone from the group to supposedly sacrifice himself or herself.

Sinister Pointe puts on Halloween productions with such themes as Bloody Mary and also has a Christmas-themed haunt. The production company hopes to have attractions every few months in Brea.

While Schiefelbein’s productions will always rely on dark imagery, they won’t all necessarily be scary. An idea lurking in his mind right now: A twisted magic show.

One of Sinister Pointe’s advantages is that all of its scare actors work for free, Schiefelbein said.

“Working with volunteers, I feel the production is so much better because you know those people are there because they want to be there and they have a passion for it,” he said. “We try to keep it as much of a family as we can, and I think that’s what keeps people coming back.”

For Chris Maggio, who has played a monster with Sinister Pointe since 2009, scaring is a great stress reliever from his two retail jobs.

His favorite memory is when he caught a group of attendees completely off-guard outside a maze.

“I followed these guests into the ticket booth,” the 25-year-old Corona resident recalled.”I posted up at the door like I was a statue, and after they bought their tickets to leave, the mom took a picture with me, still not knowing I was real.

“As she was leaving, she looked at me one last time and I just reached my arms out at her,” he said. “She threw her purse into the air with everything flying out, screaming at the top of her lungs and running out of the ticket booth.”

The scare actors are rewarded with prizes and incentives. Maggio won a 50-inch TV last year after being named Best Monster for his portrayal of a demented samurai soldier.

Schiefelbein said ideas are always swirling, and he’s interested in taking a stab at anything horror-related.

Besides the haunt attractions, Sinister Pointe also assists with films and music video shoots — most recently, it featured in pop rockers All Time Low’s “Something’s Gotta Give” video. The company is also doing set design for an upcoming movie about the spooky Queen Mary and working to create a horror-themed bar in Brea.

Schiefelbein is looking forward to the grand opening of Sinister Pointe’s horror-themed merchandise store, Curiosities, at 797 W. Imperial Highway in Brea, in the coming weeks.

But he said he doesn’t want Sinister Pointe to be the next Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights or Knott’s Scary Farm.

“I kind of like being that kind of semi-known name and independent guy who puts on cool, unique shows,” he said.

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If You Go:

What: Sinister Pointe Productions’ The Event

Where: An undisclosed location in Brea that will be revealed by Sinister Pointe on the day of your visit

When: Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights through May 31.

Cost: $18

Info: SinisterPointe.com