Terror Vault’s Hexed offers a bewitching brew

It’s Wiccan Witches vs Wicked Witches within the bowels of the San Francisco Mint, where drag queens and pole dancers cast their own magical spells!

Every October, the San Francisco Mint is haunted by vampires, cults, or aliens, and it’s up to the audience to flush them out as part of Terror Vault’s immersive theatrical experience. This year’s nemesis is witches in Hexed; and, truth be told, supernatural antagonists bring out the best in this annual Halloween production. In fact, this year’s story follows the template of 2022’s vampire-themed The Summoning, in which participants were aligned with good vampires in a war against their evil counterparts. This time the alignment is essentially Wiccan Witches versus Wicked Witches, as the audience is drafted to gather shards of a powerful amulet that will grant untold destructive power to the villains.

The adventure that follows combines chills, thrills, and campy comedy relief. There are more than a few haunted attraction-type jump-scares (drop panels, characters lunging from dark corners), but mostly this is an hour-long walking play (sometimes running!) in which immersion and interactivity are the main attractions. Value-added items include a vampire-themed bar and a creepy giftshop, where you can relax while awaiting your entry time to the main event. VIP ticket holders get bonus access to an adults-only Tripple HeXXXed drag and strip show. Both newcomers and fans should be thoroughly bewitched by the results.

Hexed Review: Assemble the Shards

Hexed begins with an orientation in which audience members are informed of the stakes and the role they will play: The Believers is an organization of benevolent witches who have become aware of evil activity perpetrated by the Coven of Three, led by Magda Crane, who seeks a magical amulet that will allow her to raise an army of the dead.

The story is laid out in a clear, linear fashion, with various guides along the way to point you in the right direction, so don’t worry if you can’t memorize all the names and details of characters, good and bad, whom you will meet along the way. Each of the amulet’s three shards is in the hand of a different member of the Coven of Three, which provides an opportunity to visit different environments, ranging from frozen tundra to irradiated Chernobyl. In a variation on last Halloween’s Fatal Abduction (which used Tardis-like teleportation), magical spells open portals to these distant destinations, where one by one you encounter the coven members and acquire the shards.

Along the way, you learn that the Coven of Three is cooking up children and turning victims into human sized rats, which offers ample opportunity for grim and grizzly horror. More often, however, the emphasis is on supernatural suspense. At one point, for example, magical shrouds render you invisible to the evil witches, but they can still smell and hear you, creating a nerve-wracking experience while you infiltrate a sinister mansion as quietly as possible, desperately hoping to avoid detection.

As always, Terror Vault summons a spectacular climax which makes Hexed feel like a legitimate play in addition to being an enjoyable immersive experience. It may not be Shakespeare, but the plot does bubble and boil to a memorable conclusion.

Hexed Review: Get Involved!

Active participation is not necessary to enjoy Hexed, but it does enhance the experience.

During the opening orientation, recruits are divided into color-coded groups according to their latent witch powers; these colors may qualify you to participate at certain points (assuming you are wearing the glowing necklace used to indicate you want to be singled out). We had to pull back a shroud from a corpse (a rigged game – no matter how careful and quiet you are, you trigger a response); later, we retrieved a severed finger with a ring bearing a shard of the amulet. Other members of our group had to sample disgusting delicacies to fool a wicked chef into believing we were members of the Coven of Three.

Even if you do not volunteer for individual action, you will be up close and personal with some threatening characters. You will traverse numerous staircases, squeeze into small rooms, crawl through tiny corridors, and even go down a slide. For the finale, everyone joins in, hand in hand, to confront and (hopefully) banish the evil Magda Crane before her newly awakened army of the dead can unleash Hell upon humanity. One way or another, you will be part of the action – the more, the better.

Hexed Review: VIP Bar and Triple HeXXXed Show

After escaping from the Coven of Three, general admission ticket holders can purchase gifts in the Creepshop or relax in Terror Vault’s vampire-themed Fang Bang Bar, which serves cocktails and as pizza (no pizza on opening night when we attended; hopefully, it’s available when you attend). Costumed characters may float in and out, sometimes posing for photos on the stage of the adjoining dance room, whose pulsing music reverberates throughout the brick corridors.

VIP ticket holders can head to the end of the long corridor, past a photo op room, toward the VIP-only area. Here, a sign for Psychic Readings leads into what looks like a psychic bookshop. You can have a reading or proceed into a short walkthrough. This leads past a vat of bubbling brew and other decorations; depending on your luck, you might encounter a jump-scare before emerging into a hidden bar next to a stage area, where the Triple HeXXed Drag & Strip Show takes place.

Whether or not the show is in progress, you will likely encounter Morvena Moans (Cream), a strapping drag queen who welcomes you to her domain and plies you with questions while you acclimate to the sinister surroundings (including a giant head above the bar). In between her stage performances, she also sneaks into the walkthrough to scare unwary visitors.

The show itself features pole dancers Sam Witch or Gabby Rose (we saw Sam, who was equally athletic, beautiful, and talented). Morvena does a song and dance routine designed to invade your comfort zone, stepping off the stage for suggestive interaction with the audience. It’s delightfully outrageous fun; only repressed prudes (unlikely to be in attendance) will be offended.

It’s not exactly what most people imagine when thinking of Halloween entertainment (unless you are familiar with the annual West Hollywood Halloween Parade on Santa Monica Boulevard); nevertheless, it’s a great way either to get in the mood for the Hexed immersive experience or to unwind afterward. Halloween, with its costumes and masks, rather ironically allows people to reveal parts of themselves they keep hidden year-round. That kind of exploration – the freedom to test one’s own boundaries – is well rewarded by an excursion into the realm of Triple HeXXXed.

Both bars serve cocktails themed to the show, with names like Basic Witch, Hex on the Beach, and The Devil’s Breath. We suspect the last of these appeals only to lovers of Hornitos Plata Tequila, but we can recommend the first two, particularly Hex on the Beach. Despite a name spoofing the famous Sex on the Beach cocktail, the flavor profile more resembles an Old Fashioned, thanks to the combination of Bourbon, orange, and bitters. Definitely worth imbibing in preparation for battling the Coven of Three!

Hexed Review: Conclusion

Although there are similarities in presentation and approach from year to year, Terror Vault continually manages to surprise us: some of the layout and rooms may look vaguely familiar, but elements have been rearranged so that we never know exactly what to expect around each corner. Moreover, this year’s efforts to create outdoor environments within the San Francisco Mint’s vaults – which struck us as a bit iffy in the past – worked much better here. Maybe that’s because the production design was better, or maybe we were more engrossed in Hex‘s story and thus more willing to suspend disbelief. Either way, the globe-trotting element of the story worked.

In general, the production values are convincingly creepy. Whether or not they would stand up in the bright light of day, the costumes, makeup, and effects work in the shadowy lighting of the Mint’s dark corridors, and the show is so much fun we are inclined to forgive any faults. The lead characters look real; the humans-turned-rats not so much – but that won’t stop you from you from squealing when they creep out of the shadows in your direction. There are also a few splashes of violence such as a horribly mutilated victim; the effect is disarming – figuratively and literally – even if the trick is fairly transparent. So rest assured, there is ample Halloween horror on display.

The actors take advantage of proximity to invade your comfort zone: witches lean in to sniff for your scent; allies desperately implore for your help. Despite an awkward line reading or two (not a surprise on opening night), the cast smoothly navigate the treacherous path of interactive performance, keeping themselves in character while keeping the audience on track.

Hexed feels less transgressive than The Summoning or Fatal Abduction – no nudity and less of the queer vibe seen in past Terror Vault productions. This may broaden the show’s appeal while diminishing its distinctiveness among competitors in the immersive arena. Still, audiences looking for that sort of entertainment can find it in the Triple HeXXXed show.

At the end of the day, Hexed is a Halloween horror show calculated to be enjoyable scary. It’s not so much a riveting drama as an action-packed thrill-ride, like a summer popcorn movie. Often it feels like a wild adventure in a dark fantasy world – for want of a better comparison, like a soft R-rated version of The Witches. And that’s just fine.

As fans of all things undead, Terror Vault’s vampire-themed 2022 production, The Summoning remains the Gold Medalist in our estimation. However, handing the Silver Medalion to Hexed, elevating it above last year’s Fatal Abduction into second place.

Hexed Photo Gallery

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