London has fallen to the zombie plague. You are among a group of survivors found by a group of soldiers in an abandoned research facility underground, and over the 75 minutes experience one of several branching, real-time, interactive storylines. 

It's the first time I've been to a show like Generation of Z: Apocalypse, which is arriving in London after terrifying audiences in New Zealand and at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe, and I wasn't sure what to expect. 

The facility is laid out in the basement of Dept W on Mile End Road in Whitechapel, and the design is pretty great - missing persons posters with blood stains, flickering dangling fluorescent lights, a deserted canteen, ripped out cables hanging off the ceilings, and so on. And of course all the walls are painted black. The storyline (at least the one I experienced) is straight out of the zombie playbook, although there were some shocking surprises - it's just like being in a film or game but more intense. 

You know intellectually that it's not real, that you're not actually going to die (imagine the lawsuits), but you know horror movies and survival games aren't real either and they're still effective. After just a few minutes in the dark, the noises, the shouting, and the scares got to me, and I actually found myself edging further into the group for safety. The actors really sold the situation, to the point where I was thinking, "If a zombie's going to burst through that door, better them than me!" (One audience member did get a faceful of blood.) 

And afterwards we got to take selfies with the zombies. 

Generation of Z: Apocalypse is playing until the 5th of July and you can buy tickets at its official site here. If you're a zombie or horror fan, I'd recommend it.