The Vault (2017)

July 24, 2018

Directed by: Dan Bush

Written by: Dan Bush, Conal Byrne

Starring: James Franco, Taryn Manning, Francesca Eastwood

Budget: $5,000,000

Tagline: No one is safe.

Trivia: Keith Loneker's last movie before he lost his battle with cancer on June 22nd, 2017.







After reading the description on Netflix about a bank heist that goes south when they realize the bank vault is haunted, I decided to give the movie a shot. I realized that of the now fifty one movies I have watched, I have barely watched any haunted/ghost movies. I'm sure if I looked there'd be more but right now I can only remember House (which was not so good). This movie had some great actors and some definitely great scenes but overall it fell kind of flat. The film focuses too much on the family dynamics of the characters and the bank heist itself and the haunted vault is treated as an afterthought. If I had to guess, most of the $5 million budget was spent on the actors instead of the creepy stuff.

The Vault is about five people (three are siblings) who try to rob a bank. Hoping to get half a million they find only seventy thousand and are split on whether they should stay to try and find more or split while they can. Two robbers (Taryn Manning from Orange is the New Black and Francesca Eastwood, Clint Eastwood's daughter) mention they need the money for their brother (Why? They never say. Perhaps we have a Dog Day Afternoon type of scenario here?). In the midst of arguing a bank employee named Ed (James Franco) says that the rest of the money is down in the old vault. One robber goes down to break in. Upon his success he is killed by ghosts with bags on their head and a terrifying masked man. Afterwards everything falls apart. Cops arrive, another robber is killed, more creepy ghost stuff starts happening until eventually two robbers escape. There is a twist, but I will wait until the end of this discussion as to not ruin the money since it is so new.

Francesca Eastwood does a really great job in the film! She is very believable as a badass (despite weighing probably only 100 pounds) and as a desperate woman. There is one scene in particular when she realizes that they are surrounded by cops and she is speaking to them on the phone and cannot help but tear up at the futility of the botched bank heist. Counter to her is Taryn Manning's character who is the angry wildcard capable of snapping at any moment. Basically she is playing a slightly less methed out version of her character from Orange is the New Black. Also, we get the last performance of Keith Loneker who has been in a dozen movies, playing a hired goon, football player and now white supremacist robber. He died of cancer shortly after filming his parts in this film.

There are some truly great moments when they finally open the vault. The ghosts that appear one at a time out of nowhere have their head covered in dirty sacks making them all the more creepy. And the masked killer seems to be in control never saying a word or showing his identity. Just slow methodical murder. This could have been a truly memorable horror villain had this film been done better. What is great though is that while one character is freaking out, the rest of the characters are watching them through the camera where they can only seem him and not the ghosts. The ghosts eventually force him to put a drill through his head and force another one to shoot himself in the head with a shotgun. The drill in the head scene is pretty brutal and the headshot is done off-camera but we see what is left of his skull (mainly just a bottom row of teeth and bits of skull... it's pretty gnarly).

The problem with the film is that while the film is ninety minutes, only maybe ten minutes of it are the cool ghost stuff. Most of the film is spent on the failed bank heist making this movie just that: a bank heist movie and not so much a horror movie. James Franco gives us the background information which explains the ghosts and why they are there which is fairly obvious since they pretty much mirror what just happened in the bank (the bank employees got bags on their head while the robbers wore masks, just like the ghosts... it was another failed bank attempt). At the end there is a lame twist. I thought the twist was going to be better, but it turned out to be lamer than I guessed. I said I was going to talk about the twist, but I think I'll skip it. It is not worth mentioning. If you want to know, just watch it or google it or something.