While it has its moments with it’s interesting and undeniably fun concept, “The Vault”, directed by Dan Bush, is an underdeveloped, tediously long watch that isn’t silly enough to be horrendously memorable or tense enough to be effective as the genre exercise it could have been.
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The film sees two estranged sisters who hatch a scheme to rob a bank to save their brother. The heist begins a little flimsy due to the underwhelming amount of cash they found, but when the assistant manager informs them about a basement level vault, they accidentally unleash something truly evil that’s been dwelling in the bank.
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First and foremost, nearly every character who are the main focus of the film’s plot here are indistinguishably bland. The three leads are siblings and that’s all we truly know about them, as their characterizations are all so convolutedly boring and underdeveloped that it’s pain-inducing. None of these bonds are ever really explained or explored, so we’re just left with these loosely connected criminals who have orchestrated this “Polterheist” for vague reasons and based on even more obscure relationships. To make matters worse, actor James Franco is actually pretty decent here, but has little screentime compared to the forgettable array of characters! For a horror film, you don’t really care about the victims here! While it’s understandable that the director probably wanted to maintain an air of mystery, certain ideas and the film’s major plot twist were sloppily executed. There’s novelty in the premise with it’s original setup and different environment, however, it’s the poorly written script and lackluster characters that instantly conjures an elaborate horror film.
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Speaking of the horror, it’s not satisfying enough to warrant an watch. It uses every modern horror trope in the book and does it so obviously bad that it comes off comedic. It’s so borderline blatant that you’d feel sympathy for the actors who can hardly muster a performance or even seem scared. Moving into the “monsters”, the frustration of the horror is that we see several possibly phantom figures appearing out of the vault but it never gives us any clear explanation of what they are, other than a brief flashback. Furthermore, the gore is insufficient and tamed, with underwhelming death sequences and a small body count. So, where’s the horror enjoyment out of this?!
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“The Vault” could have been an intriguing piece of horror cinema with its horror premise disguised as a heist film, the unique concept of a haunted vault from ghosts with a mysterious and foreboding past had so much promise. Instead, it deserves to be buried in the vault down below. This hidden film has every right to be hidden due to its sloppy story execution populated by boring characters. It’s only really successful at being a horrifying waste of time, potential, and a decent cast.
