The Vault

So apparently today everything has to be big, with lots of special effects, jump scares and an astronomical budget. Right? -Wrong!

This is how movies used to be done, sure it is a tad bit more ambiguous, resembles The Void a little, but I still say it succeeded! I had fun watching it, I liked the characters, the plot, the execution, I did not expect something out of the ordinary, thus I feel I received exactly what I wanted. A good little film, a nice add-on to my horror collection, I'll even recommend it for a late night run.

The Vault is a nicely crafted piece, there was room for improvement, for something bigger, surely enough, but it did not failed. Overall, a small success indeed!

Cheers!

I think anything under a 5 is unfair as it's watchable. The acting is pretty decent the story is fine, but ultimately it's drags on too long for it's gimmick. It's not particularly interesting and you can guess the "twist" about 5 minutes into the movie. In fact if were being honest they literally tell you whats going to happen. It's weird that they do that. I'm not kidding. You'll see it and groan. The idea is intriguing enough that you A. hope that they would be stupid enough to give the plot and thats its a red herring or B. Just go with it and enjoy it for what it is. The movie doesn't look cheap so that's a plus. I tried to watch some other low rent horror just before this called berkshire county. The cinematography in the first 5 minutes was so bad and lazy I couldn't be bothered to battle through it. This looks solid and they have 3 or 4 journeyman actors holding this up around the edges. Im like 90 percent I've seen an extremely similar concept on twilight zone or tales from the crypt. However in those cases it was a tight 40-45 minute story. This film is..tiresome. So thats my advise. If you can handle a low-medium rent episode of TFTC stretched out maybe 30 minutes too long this is fine. I didn't hate it, but I got bored more than a few times and checked apps on my phone during it.

When starting The Vault up I had an overwhelming feeling of deja-vu, I felt like I'd seen it before but not because of a lack of originality more that I watched the trailer months ago and it left a lasting impression on me.

Telling the story of a bank robbery that gets complicated when the robbers discover that the vault is haunted it's a neat little tale (In theory) with a fascinating highly original concept. I was so excited to see where this would go, what a brilliant idea I thought.

Sadly despite having a great concept they really didn't think it through and certainly had no endgame. The potential is squandered to a painful extent, what an absolute heartbreaking shame.

Starring James Franco and a host of oddly competent folk including the excellent Francesca Eastwood (Who looks alarmingly like Amanda Seyfried) the film manages to look good but offers little else.

The concept is wasted, the antagonists are lackluster and the protagonists are quite frankly non-existent!

I wanted to like The Vault, I simply couldn't. It's a demonstration on how to drop the ball.

The Good:

Cast deliver

Very interesting premise

The Bad:

Concept feels wasted

Stock screams

No protagonists

This is better than the rating, at the time of writing, of 4.7. This has hair-on-end horror not the standard jump-scares, with a touch of gore and suspense to boot. Something about it reminded me of "The Usual Suspects" and "Assault on Precinct 13" and now I have said that you will see it too! Really only commenting as 4.7 seems waay too low. Hardly a deep movie but a good movie. As I have hinted it is derivative but nevertheless entertaining with a charismatic cast and camera-work, lighting and action worthy of classic Hollywood fare. I know people will knock this review simply for me saying this is what Hollywood does best but I think Cannes would like this, even.

Pretty much everything about this movie was average or below average. At no point was i surprised or feeling the supposed suspense, which was a joke for anyone who has watched more than a handful of horror flicks in their life.

The premise was somewhat promising, but the potential got completely wrecked when the main antagonists were revealed, the movie turned from a promising and suspensful bank heist/hostage thriller flick into a laughable and childish monster story with no relevance in just a matter of seconds, well they tried to justify it, but nothing great came out of it as you are simply unable to take the actions seriously after that.

Overall nothing new or exciting, not worth watching, not the worst movie ever, by no means, but nothing you would like to invest your precious time in!