The Vault

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.

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

'The Vault' is better than several of the films created by the Full Moon Pictures and Tempe Entertainment partnership. Unfortunately being better than the norm does not make it particularly good. James Black is a good actor, here playing a teacher taking a group of kids to collect useful stuff at an old school about to be demolished. Also being director, Black sometimes puts cheap scares above developing the story and this is the films main failure. The cast (some also from 'Killjoy') are again pretty good but are given a dud script, some truly ridiculous character development (or not), and a horrid set. The latter does look like a school but the whole story presented around this building that looks quite modern and isn't terribly interesting either fails to enthral, scare or entertain. The building has a bellowing guard who regularly warns the kids about the danger and in the best bit of the film (which may say something) catches a dude doing graffiti saying "Do you believe in the devil?", dude replies: "I believe in a good arse whipping". Shame this whipping didn't spur the filmmakers to try a little harder!

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.

I'm embarrassed to even admit that I saw this movie. It was poorly made in every way. the picture, sound, acting, directing,etc. should have all been kept in the vault. What a piece of S%*T this is. How does something like this even make its way onto the shelf at Blockbuster? I have nothing at all good to say about this "movie." I want to go kill myself just knowing that I wasted a few dollars and hours on it. If you're walking through the video store and you see The Vault ... and you think ... well, that looks all right... maybe it's creepy ... what else is there to rent ... DON'T DO IT! There are a million other movies to rent. I've said my piece. This "movie" gets 0 out of 10 and that is generous!