The Vault

'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!

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

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.

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.

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!