The Vault

If this movie were listed under comedy I'd have given it a 6. But since it is a horror I give it a 1. The acting is terrible and the effects weak as hell. If you want a good laugh I suggest this film

Well, this one isn't as horrible as Horrorvision, but it sure is close! Nothing works in this film. The look is very low budget, which is the case, but there are many ways to make it look better; the acting isn't very good, the story is much too simple, and much too boring, some scenes defy reason, I could go on for days. I want to like Full Moon films, but I just can't. The film, it looks as tho they spent exactly one day on the script, one day on filming, and one day on editing..maybe even less. Black is a first time director, I think, and you can tell...he worries less about storytelling, and more about style, and using cool tricks that do nothing but take away from the plot. The scenes are too drawn out, and there is very little suspense. Some of the acting is just plain bad, some is decent at best.

Another problem with this movie is the back story with the slave trade. I don't know a lot about the slave trade, but I'm gonna take a wild guess and say, despite what the movie claims, they never delivered slaves from Africa to California. That fact took away from the seriousness, then you have this horrible guard character who goes on and on about the history of the place, despite the fact that there's an evil spirit loose in the building. I could go on for a while, but I won't. This movie is just bad...Full Moon productions is just bad, and it's a shame, because I think they could go a lot better.

This is the danger of picking up something you've never heard of before at the video store , simply because the cover looks cool . ..

It's hard to know what demographic this movie was made for. It's like some ghetto-style Blair Witch Project Lite, with an African-American cast set in an abandoned school. It is supposedly about a history teacher and a group of students who go into the school to retrieve any historical memorabilia before it gets torn down, but end up finding something horrifying in the basement. Sounded like a good premise on the cover description, except that the story is woefully bad and completely unfrightening. It is far too poorly written and executed to satisfy any serious horror fan. It certainly has the production values of an After-school special, and could have been a good scary movie for kids, except that it has far too much profanity and gore.

I blame the writer/filmmaker James Black. His cast could be accused of bad acting, but the truth is these kids probably could have turned in some decent performances if they'd had a workable script and some good direction. Instead, they run around spouting cliche'd lines, trying to act too hip, and arguing with each other about everything. Likewise, the school where they shot this film could have been a great location for a scary film - except that they filmed everything there in the DAYTIME!! Hey, first rule of horror films, James - all the best ones take place at night. It looks like they probably shot the whole thing in one day, as a matter of fact. And the back-story of why the basement is haunted is completely ludicrous, historically inaccurate, and even a bit propagandist.

So, in short. Stay away from James Black films. Stay away from Full-Moon films. And especially, stay away from The Vault.

This is not a film you should watch alone. Not because it's hideously scary, but because it's so laughably bad. I watched this with a group of friends, and we weren't expecting anything great but it was SO bad it became entertaining.

The plot is questionable at best, the acting shoddy and the production terrible. Take the comedy security guard for example... there's a part where he starts talking in time to the music, as if rapping. Its absolutely appalling! The whole plot is just plain rubbish, plenty of loopholes in the plot, plenty of shoddy special effects. I especially recommend you check out the lighting... some scenes which are set in the basement are brilliantly lit while others in first floor corridors are dark with a blue hue about the place. I could honestly believe it was shot on a £100 video camera from argos using Ikea lighting.

So all in all, absolutely awful. I've given it a 6 however because I recommend watching it with friends if you all want a laugh! Oh if you do watch it make sure you look out for "Zachary" near the beginning - priceless!

Complete rubbish. The kind of film where the director went like "I've got an idea for a movie...", and regardless it being an interesting idea or not, they just go ahead and make it with little to no money while giving the whole thing not much thought, ending up with a useless (very) low budget affair. It's lousy filmmaking at best. The plot throws a bunch of people (all blacks) in an abandoned building that's haunted by terrible acts from the past. Nothing worthwhile happens during the movie's 70 minutes running time. One kill was amusing (a guy gets half his head sliced off by a piece of window glass, bad SFX included). Everything else: plain boredom with painful acting. It's along the lines of 'Death Factory' (2002), if you've ever tried watching that one. I'd label 'The Vault' a supernatural slasher. To be filed under: not worth watching.