Welcome to a brand new feature! It’s time for Horror School Reviews! What do you get when you mash the trappings of a heist film with horror? Try The Vault!

The Vault (2017)

• Directed by: Dan Bush
• Written by: Dan Bush / Conal Byrne
• Starring:
  • James Franco
  • Scott Haze
  • Taryn Manning
  • Francesca Eastwood
• Streaming Spots:
  • Netflix
• Run time: 91 minutes
• IMDB Synopsis: Two estranged sisters are forced to rob a bank in order to save their brother. But this is no ordinary bank.

Scary Thoughts

To kick off what is going to be, undoubtedly an amazing series of articles, I wanted to start with a movie with James Franco in a supporting role. The movie, of course, is 2017’s The Vault. I didn’t know much coming into it. Leaving it, though, I felt… scared? Happy? 

Don’t let IMDB’s synopsis fool you, The Vault is more than just a simple bank robbery story. Boiled down to it, the film is a ghost story wrapped in a blanket of a bank heist gone wrong. The film starts off with a normal, everyday bank. Folks come in, folks head out. Soon, though, we’re introduced to two women with seemingly different agendas, yet shared knowing looks. While one woman, Vee (Taryn Manning), starts to raise her voice with a bank teller, Leah (Francesca Eastwood) talks to the bank manager about an interview. Soon though, their agendas align and a bank heist ensues. It turns out that the two women are sisters and their brother, Michael (Scott Haze), and two other men dressed as firemen have set a plan in motion.

Unfortunately, just as soon as the robbery begins, the robbers find out that there’s not enough money for whatever undefined problem faces them on the outside. The answer to their problem comes in the form of Ed, an assistant manager (James Franco) who tells them that there’s an old vault with a million dollars. This is where the horror portion of the film comes into play.

The scenes filmed in the bank upstairs are well-lit and free of any ominousness. Once the team of robbers heads into the tunnels downstairs, the scene tones switch to the standard dark, low contrast light. This is where the ghosts start showing up.

G-g-g-ghosts!

Now, on the subject of the ghosts, I’m of two minds about it. One, seeing ghosts and finding out who and what they are throughout the film. Two, being told straight away through the opening credits about who the ghosts are. In The Vault’s case, they roll with number two. The opening credits show us what happened in the bank, over 20 years earlier, where a bank robbery went wrong and a man killed all of his hostages, dragged them into the vault, and burned everyone. When we see the first few ghosts, as one of the robbers is breaking into the safe, we immediately know who the ghosts are. Part of the mystery is finding out why the ghosts are vengeful… and why they kill. They end up being super creepy, with sacks covering their faces, and an occasional peek under the bags.

Who needs a point of view?

The movie kind of flip-flops between whether it wants to follow Leah or her brother Michael. Where Leah is proclaimed to be the “one in charge” and works to placate the police and show strength to the hostages, Michael turns out to be the one with a conscience. The viewer never finds out exactly why they’re robbing the bank, but the underscoring theme is that Michael did something very wrong and a robbery was their only way out. This motivation is put against the backdrop of his “one rule” for the bank robbery (that his crew kept forgetting): don’t hurt the hostages. There’s more than a few portions of dialogue where a hostage tells Michael, knowingly, “this isn’t you, you’re a good person”.

Then, of course, there’s Ed. He spends the entire movie tied up in an office talking to Leah. Throughout the latter half of the film, he tries to get Leah to let the hostages go, or sits in silence. There’s a point in the film where there’s an outgoing phone call, and it’s Ed calling the police to report a robbery. It’s the same voice that alerts a detective (a great Clifton Collins Jr.) to the robbery in the first place. Leah doesn’t do much with this information though; she continues to generally smolder and strong arm hostages.

But Deaths… are there deaths?

Just so we’re clear: there are deaths in this movie. The deaths themselves are fairly straightforward and not entirely memorable. All the deaths are carried out by sack-head hostage ghosts and led by the ghost of the masked robber who killed them. One guy is dragged into the vault by a ghost and drills himself to death. Another guy, a Nazi, is forced to shoot himself in the head. There’s only one other death, and it, unfortunately, isn’t directly ghost-caused. The camera shots for the drill and shotgun scene are standard, full of choppily edited mish-mashes of cuts, designed to cause a sense of disorientation. The shots are not quite Saw level, and definitely, not Resident Evil level, but they’re noticeable.

Conclusion

The ending of the film is nothing spectacular, though the epilogue to the time spent in the bank/vault is done really well. 

Overall, I enjoyed the movie, and I loved the genre-mashing of heist/horror. I would’ve liked the genre-mashing to be more pronounced. The heist portion of the film lasts for that first 20-30 minutes and switches into horror gear fairly exclusively. Both parts of the genre are done competently, although it makes me yearn for a true genre-blend of the two. 

Results

• Body Count: 2/5
• Blood & Gore: 3/5
• Creep Factor: 4/5
• Favorite Death: Nazi’s are pieces of shit, I hate them
• Overall: Liked It!

Do I recommend it? If you have Netflix, an hour and a half to kill, and a yearning for horror, you should definitely check it out!

I do have a few extra thoughts… but that can only mean one thing…

OooOooOoOoh, it’s SPOILERS time!

Here be spoilers!

Maybe it’s all the Twilight Zone’s I’ve watched (see: Submitted for Your Approval: A Twilight Zone Podcast for more!), but I felt the reveal that James Franco’s character was a ghost the entire time was implied immediately. It wasn’t a matter so much of if he was a ghost, but when the other characters would find out he was a ghost. The question I had while I watched was, “why is he a good ghost and the others are bad?”

They thankfully answered that through the history of the ghosts and the revelation of how his character died. The original hostages were forced to murder each other at the behest of the original robber. Therefore, the implication is that the ghosts kill people in the vault, forced by the ghost robber. It’s a cool way of making Franco’s character call the police, spiritually repeating a call from 1982, and have him murdered straight away by the robber. In this way, my question is answered: Franco wasn’t forced to shoot another hostage, so he is free from the ghost robbers influence. His only goal is to save other hostages.

Last thing: Michael’s death was kind of a waste… he didn’t need to die, it was weird… he was a good person so he sacrificed himself for his sisters… you can be a good person and not sacrifice yourself (looking at you Finn!)

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Have you seen the movie? Do you agree or disagree with our thoughts? We’d love to hear from you!