San Francisco’s Terror Vault Underwhelms

In a city starved for haunts and frightening immersive events, residents of San Francisco are clamoring for admittance into the 21-and-over-only Terror Vault. Billing itself as “a brand new, fully immersive, and completely terrifying haunted attraction,” and charging a steep $60, the 40-minute inaugural show from Into the Dark production company is unfortunately a dud.

I bought an 8:30 p.m. ticket and, as required, arrived early at the atmospheric old San Francisco Mint building. Inside I got a premixed cocktail at the Bullion Bar, where they were projecting Häxan, a delightfully weird and unnerving 1922 Scandinavian film about witchcraft and the supernatural. I could have watched most of it while I waited because I wasn’t allowed to line up for entry until 9:10.

Eventually my group of a dozen met Tina, our initial tour guide. In a curatorial tone, she explained the Terror Vault rules and offered guests optional red glowstick necklaces that indicated our consent to be touched, made a part of the show, and “shocked, thrilled, and amazed.” Everyone opted in. At one point a woman in our group made a sarcastic remark to her friend, and Tina interrupted her own introduction to sharply reprimand the guest.

All right. They were taking their show seriously.

The show started innocuously with a faux-historical account of the Mint and how it became a site of incarceration and torture of the city’s most hardened criminals. At the end of her spiel, however, Tina dropped her professional demeanor, pulled out a gun, and demanded we bring her gold. The haunt proper had begun.

We walked through a prison corridor with icy blue walls. Several zombie guards and inmates shambled our way, but they largely avoided getting close to us even though our consent necklaces radiated in the gloom.

Past that was a meat locker. From the ceiling hung lightweight bundles of clear plastic that were meant to imply hunks of flesh within. Performers cackled and growled but again avoided touching us.

After the prison and meat locker, the themes ricocheted from Halloween neighborhood to Satanic church to insane carnival. Performers occasionally popped out from hidden panels for jump scares, but their infrequency suggested the haunt wasn’t really trying to frighten us.

Every few minutes our group would be stopped for a scene to play out. In one, drag queen Peaches Christ (alter ego of Into the Dark co-creator Joshua Grannell) appeared as a red-caped minion of Satan. With campy grandiosity, she scanned our faces and divined our sins: theft, murder, sodomy! Peaches singled me out, and an evil nun with ghastly white skin that bubbled with blisters stamped a pentagram on my forehead. I was marked. We moved on.

Three of the younger adults in our group started to have side conversations which persisted for the remainder of the experience. A Nazi zombie warden shushed them in character, but it did no good. I couldn’t blame their disengagement. Terror Vault was inconsistent in whether it took itself seriously or ironically, so the confusion spread throughout our group. Moreover, the show did not deliver the promised frights: “21 and older please. It’s THAT scary.”

There were occasional one-on-one segments. My friend was pulled into a booth for a demonic confession with an evil nun. Another nun pulled me aside and whispered that there was a certain hidden item I should look for near the feet of a clown. I never found it, and it wasn’t mentioned again.

Finally, there was a quasi-escape room jumbling all of the themes, carnival and carceral and Catholic. Each guest had to collect a rubber rat, but there were none anywhere that I could see. I searched for a minute. Then a performer handed me a rat, and the haunt was done. As I exited, a person-sized rodent gave me a sheet of paper.

I reemerged into the lobby near the Bullion Bar, and a performer asked what I thought. I said I wished it had been scarier. He said, “Yeah, me, too! When I went through, there were some times I just laughed.”

Additionally, I thought to myself, $60 for a 40-minute group show in its inaugural year felt overpriced.

I looked down at what the rodent had handed me. It was a certificate, hastily and jaggedly scissor-cut, that declared I was granted release from prison.

At last I was free.

Terror Vault runs select nights through November 3^rd. At the same location, Into the Dark offers a separately ticketed zombie-tag event, Dead Zone. You can read more about them here or on their Facebook.