Waking Up In A Zombie Nightmare - Derren Brown

I've always found it odd that the first thing we do when we see babies is to scare them. We play peek-a-boo. And babies somehow know that it's only playful and they don't really have to be scared. But then the same thing sort of happens when we're older. We go and see horror films. And we experience all of the fear of the film, but at the same time we know that we're safe. Because we're not going through the trauma someone else is. Now there's a very thin line between that and real fear. So thinking about that, I thought I'd design an arcade game. Now zombie shoot-ups are very popular because you get to experience all the thrill of the adrenaline of fighting for your life whilst in the beery, fairly mindless comfort of your local pub. This is the game. This is the game I've come up with. It's called Waking Dead. And this game is designed to put whoever plays it into a catatonic trance. Basically means their brain goes unravelled. They go into a vegetable-like state when they play the game. Now it doesn't work on everybody. It'll work on about a third of the people that will play it. And it will only last a few minutes. But that'll be long enough for me to do what I want to do. If we follow the cables that are coming out the back of the machine, they take us into this room. This is our control room. And in here is a very important guy called Mick. Now Mick worked on the software with me to my specifications. And Mick will be in here making the game work, controlling the zombies and basically playing the other half of the game with the person that's going to be at the machine. You excited? Yeah. Excellent. Mick hasn't sold his soul to Satan like the rest of us, so he's feeling a bit guilty about what's going to happen today. So we're just going to wait for someone to come in and start playing the game and take it from there. All footage inside the pub was filmed with hidden cameras. We waited and waited some more. Half an hour later, still no one has even played the game yet. We got one, we got one. Just keep the pace slow. Put a couple of flashes in now. Again. Another flash. Oh, he's going. One more. I'm going to go in, I'm going to go in. Hi, I'm Dan Brown. We've been filming you playing the game. What's his name? David. That's fine, just do exactly what I ask you to do. Come with me. Right back, right back. Watch yourself, go. You follow me out. All right, I need you to give me a hand getting him up on the trolley. Grab his feet. I need you to come around this side and help me. Just going to keep going straight down, yeah? We're going to turn onto this ramp. All right, now you see there's two doors ahead of us? I need you to pull the doors open towards me. Thank you. What's your name? Benedetta. Benedetta, and? Harry. Straight through? OK, go over here. All right, you take these two seats here for me, you're going to watch him. OK, you can see him on the screen? Yeah. He's going to wake up in the game that he was just playing in the pub. OK? Yeah. For real? Yeah. OK. Just take that. One for you. Don't worry about anything, just keep watching the monitors. Silence, please, while I sound the horn. Hello? Why is there a gun here? What is going on? Hello? What the fuck? Who are you? What the fuck do you want? I'm going to shoot you, fucker! Get out of the way! I'm not afraid, I will shoot you! I will shoot you! What the fuck is going on? I'm going to shoot you! You're dead! You're fucking dead! You're dead! Help me! Get out of the way! What the fuck is that? I'm going to shoot you! So you can sit up. That's right. I'm going to stand you up. You're going to stand up for me. And keep remaining in the sleep. Take hold of the gun. You stand exactly as you were before. Are you on that side? OK. Let's wake him up. Oh, come on, he's wicked! Fuckers, isn't it? Huh? It was good! Thank you. It was good! OK, OK, let's go. I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. We designed this game. And just interested to hear how it was for you. It was good, it was like... I don't know if it's because it's an arcade, but it was well... I felt really into it. Was it going to be put in pubs? Yeah, it's a sort of... It's a prototype we're trying to develop. It was good, it was good. I liked it a lot. It was really... I don't know, exciting. It's realistic. You're shooting them and they don't die. So you've got to keep shooting them. And then they keep coming up again. I loved it. It felt like... I don't know, each of them... Usually in a game, it's just a game. It's a cartoon. I just felt I had to kill each and every one of them. I had to. I don't know, you're sitting here. You've got the sound coming in. You've got the graphics. I just... Yeah, the sound. It all adds up to it. I don't know what you've done. If it's the colours or something. But the whole set-up just really gets into your head. Do you want some oxygen? This is not funny. Oxygen on. Don't be too long. Excuse me. Hello. No.