Ya know, sometimes you read the synopsis for a movie and you think “hm, that actually sounds pretty interesting”, and with that in mind, you decide to look further into it and find yourself all the more intrigued. Having gone that far down the rabbit hole, you decide “fuck it, let’s do this!” and before you know it, you’re balls deep into this bad boy and there’s no turning back; disgraced Catholic priest style!
The Vault is a horror movie (as I’m sure my regular readers would have guessed by now) starring James Franco and Orange is the New Black’s Taryn Manning, along with Francesca Eastwood (quite the cast, eh?) in a bank-heist-gone-wrong movie, when our star-studded robbers decide to rob the one bank that is haunted by evil spirits.
Now, as silly as this movie sounds (and I agree, it does sound rather silly), this isn’t exactly a premise I find myself stumbling upon every day within the genre, unlike your group of teens in their late twenties who decide to go away for a weekend with sex and beer on their mind (apart from that one prudish girl who you just know is going to survive) only to get snuffed by an off-screen baddy, only to leave one remaining survivor girl.
So, with that being said - how could I pass up the chance to give this mother-lover a go, especially seeing as the main cast aren’t exactly out of work and this movie having been pretty recent, I felt a glimpse of promise in my midst?
Yup. Once again, Aaron was wrong. Dead wrong.
This movie is a piece of shit and here’s why: though its premise is mildly promising, and the acting (for the most part) is pretty decent, save a certain bank clerk who acts (and pretty well, ironically) as though overacting is going out of fashion, we have some pretty okay performances that are belittled by downright terrible writing, unfortunately.
It's a shame, because the direction was pretty good, but because the film was co-written by the director and (I assume) his friend, he tends to not steer away from the bad writing, which really does the film a disservice.
Also, we are served a myriad of plot-holes that just leave you looking around in confusion as we tend to jump from one huge incident, going either completely unnoticed or being ignored by everyone on screen, to another. This means that questions like “have you seen what’s-his-face and/or why is his head blown off and/or why aren’t we worried about this?” either go completely unanswered or, even more irritatingly, get answered with “because reasons”. Ridiculous.
We are also exposed to the unforgivable crime of background ghosts doing pointless things to the unwittingly passers-by, such as walking up behind them and pulling evil faces/poses, even though they know they can’t see them, but then move away when the actor turns towards them, as though the ghosts know they’re in a horror film. This is a crime, I believe, that should be punishable by crushing.
We are forced to sit through a litany of these cinematic abominations and more, yet still expected to take it seriously and write positive reviews about the damn thing. I mean, it’s absolutely preposterous! That’s right, I used the P-word. That’s how bad this movie was, and I haven’t even described it up to the halfway point. Trust me when I say that it only gets worse!
Aaron's Spoiler-Free Rating: An interesting idea with a good cast and crew, but as far as storytelling goes, this is a fart in an elevator. – 3/10
Aaron James Waters is a best-selling Pulp Fiction writer who has written more books than he's actually read.
He's also the rotten apple of the group who thinks this whole Star Wars thing needs to hurry up and die already.
You can find Aaron's debut novel on Amazon!
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