"Killers - A Nightmare Haunted House" at Clemente Soto Vélez - NYTimes.com Christopher Brielmaier "Killers: A Nightmare Haunted House," at Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center, is peopled with real-life serial killers like H. H. Holmes. The haunted house is theater's answer to the video game: interactive, addictive and often underestimated as an art form. Audience members move room to room, with surprises around every corner. While the experience is highly structured, there are enough choices for viewers to make that no two visits are exactly alike. The central difference, of course, is that no matter how enveloping a video-game world may be, it can't simulate the reality of being chased by a man with a power drill. "Killers: A Nightmare Haunted House," at Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center, the latest theatrical scare show by Timothy Haskell, exploits this advantage splendidly. Instead of startling audiences with ghosts or vampires or movie villains, the production is peopled with real-life serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy. You enter the dark, smoky house in groups of six and over the course of 40 minutes, you get a view of the dining room of Ed Gein, the graveyard-robbing lunatic who inspired the makers of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "The Silence of the Lambs," and the streets where Jack the Ripper prowled. These celebrity killers appear in economically plotted, vividly designed vignettes that end with a strategically timed shock. It may be the sudden sound of a chain saw or something slithering around your feet. And what's that smell? Mr. Haskell stages these mini-dramas and sleights of hand with the panache of a seasoned magician. His production includes limited dialogue, sticking primarily to an evocative and detailed visual vocabulary, steering clear of indulgent theatrical flourishes and thematic self-importance. Paul Smithyman's production design is, like so many of the greatest horror movies rooted, in a grim realism. The sets are full of empty spaces interrupted by chaotic messes; the lighting is stark and the sound cacophonous. This is a no-nonsense haunted house, a taut, assured production that knows exactly what it wants to do (scare the hell out of you) and performs its task with ruthless, coldblooded precision. "Killers: A Nightmare Haunted House" continues through Nov. 3 at Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center, 107 Suffolk Street, at Rivington Street, Lower East Side; hauntedhousenyc.com.