Name: Delusion Review 2016 | His Crimson Queen falls short of our expectations.
Item: Delusion: His Crimson Queen
Rating: 7.0
Author: Lauren Fair

Delusion is an immersive horror theater experience located in Los Angeles. Each year Delusion changes the theme, creating a unique horror event. This year the Delusion experience revolved around vampires. We discuss the good and the bad in our 2016 Delusion Review of His Crimson Queen.

Our Delusion Review of His Crimson Queen

Delusion: His Crimson Queen Rating

7/10

Delusion Review 2016 : His Crimson Queen

We have include a synopsis below. If you want to know what happens in in His Crimson Queen make sure to read it. Otherwise, just skip over it and read our Delusion review.

Delusion Synopsis. Warning : Spoilers inside

His Crimson Queen takes place in 1933. The story revolves around Burke Sullivan and his supposedly dead wife, Selene. The audience is told that we are Selene’s children. Burke has sent us a letter alluding that maybe Selene isn’t actually dead.

He asks us to meet at the house where she is being held, but when the audience arrives he is nowhere to be found. Instead, the audience is shown portraits and his voice narrates her past.

We Review His Crimson Queen, a Delusion immersive theater experience.

Selene was actually born hundreds of years ago. She fell in love with a man named Ambrose, but fell ill. To keep her alive, Ambrose let the darkness into them both. Thus creating the first vampires. Ambrose lost himself to the darkness, but Selene was somehow able to resist through the years. She met Burke and through a miracle gave birth to us, the audience/ her mostly-human children.

This is where the audience enters the house and begins to interact with the storyline. We find out that two vampire families are living in the house with Ambrose. We meet Amelia who is being tortured by her brother. Our group clumsily rescues her by blocking the brother with sunlight.

She leads us into another room where we learn that we have powers. It turns out some of Selene’s powers entered us when we were born. We peek into a groundkeeper’s mind and learn what happened to Burke.

Our father has been captured by the vampire brides and is most likely dead. We lose Amelia shortly afterwards after she gets pushed through a brick wall. We continue through the story, moving from room to room. We watch as the two vampire families fight. Occasionally we have to use our powers to keep the vampires at bay.

We find our mother Selene towards the end of the night. She informs us that since she was the first vampire she has the power to kill them all if she dies. (The audience shouldn’t worry, we have Burke’s blood which should keep us alive.)

Selene takes us to the basement where we fight the Vampire Brides with mirrors and sunlight. We also discover that our father Burke is dead, and has been for a while. We end up in a room with a single casket holding Ambrose. Selene climbs into the casket with Ambrose and exposes them both to the sunlight. We watch as our mother dies in an awkward cloud of smoke and screaming.

The Good

Set Design

Delusion does a phenominal job with set design. Year after year, they have created the most authentic environments of any hauntings in Los Angeles. This year, there was a room with plants that feels like something straight out of Poison Ivy’s lair. The rooms kept us in the story, creating an authentic feel.

Make sure to take a moment to appreciate some of the rooms. There are a lot of small features that can be overlooked in the panic. The only place that we believe has done a better job with the sets is Sleep no more in New York.

The Special Effects

There are some fantastic effects in this production. Animatronic skeletons coming to life like the the old stop motion films by Ray Harryhausen. Hand cranks that only power the light as long as someone is working them. These are all great aides to scaring the audience.

The actors

Any theater production is going to rely heavily on the actors themselves. We loved the man with the eye patch, even though we don’t remember his name. We won’t soon forget the high pitched laughter of the adult children in the attic either.

Scary moments

This is what people pay the money for in Halloween. Delusion has a few moments of pure terror. Audience member elbowing each other as they rush to escape a room. They may have been few and far between, but they were there.

We review the 2016 Delusion immersive theater: His Crimson Queen

The bad

The story

We felt that Delusion tried to over complicate things. Story is important, but this seemed overly complicated. The audience was introduced to one new character after another. We eventually stopped caring who the new characters were and why they were important.

We became so turned around that when the climax came it didn’t mean much to us. Our group stared on placidly as the two actors moaned and screamed to death for an agonizingly long time.

Audience interaction.

This was the worst part of Delusion for us. The audience “was born from Selene” so we were told we had powers and had to use them. This meant we had to wave our hands at actors and them getting yanked away. The ropes used to pull them away were painfully obvious. It was rather cringe-worthy at times.

These awkward audience “power” interactions also pulled us out of the story. We would run screaming from a vampire only to be stopped in the next room. A new actor then would force us to wave our hands around to capture a vampire under our spell. It made us feel a bit silly.

The Effects

We are all for special effects. One of the best parts of the 2012 Delusion was when zombies crawled along the wall towards us, seeming to defy gravity. The problem with His Crimson Bride is how many special effects they tried to cram into it.

Granted, there were some really good ones (read the spoiler above if you want to know specifics). Yet, by trying to do so many the audience began to grow bored of them. Worse, it began to pull us out of the story. Parts of our group began to laugh at some of the effects, which is not exactly what you want in a horror immersive theater.

The Acting

The acting was decent. There were a handful of actors who were great, and the rest were alright. We did feel a bit bad for the actors. They not only had to act a complicated story, but also herd 10 or so confused audience goers. Plus they had to continually instruct us to use our awkward powers.

The Price

Immersive theater does come with a high price tag. There is a lot more involved and it targets a smaller audience. That being said, the $70 price tag might not have been worth it this year. Past years I would have said it was easily worth it.

Delusion 2016: His Crimson Queen

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Delusion Review 2016 : Summary

There were some very enjoyable parts of His Crimson Queen, but in general we were pretty let down. They tried to involve the audience too much. It only pulled us from the story and make for some awkward moments. They also included far too many special effects. We can only see so many vampires floating around on badly hidden ropes before it gets silly.

We still believe Delusion is one of the best immersive theaters in Los Angeles. Delusion: The Blood Rite was the reason we became interested in immersive theater. We’ve attended many events, good and bad. So that being said, make sure to take our rating with a grain of salt. We do recommend trying it out for newcomers, as it is definitely a unique experience.
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