[Rating: Swiss Fist]
There’s something strange going on inside a local bank, and it’s not a government bailout! In The Vault, directed by Dan Bush, two sisters, Vee Dillon (Orange is the New Black’s Taryn Manning) and Leah Dillon (Francesca Eastwood) hold a bank hostage to get enough money to help out their brother Michael (Scott Dillon).
Aiding them in their quest is Ed Maas (James Franco), an employee who knows the tricks to making sure this is a no-mess robbery. Of course, the bank the family has chosen is no ordinary bank, as it harbors a deadly secret that’s coming back to haunt everybody.
There are hints in the beginning that this won’t be a typical robbery situation for the girls. The opening credits show what happened in this bank decades ago when a robbery ended in the death of hostages and the bank manager even says many employees feel uneasy most days working at the bank. Maas sends the girls and their accomplices to the vault which has been almost forgotten about in the older basement of the bank and there the evils of the past begin to take form.
For the most part, I enjoyed The Vault. It is of course, not going to be the biggest movie out there, but for a quick hour and a half in the dark it will give viewers enough to be satisfied with. The movie takes a little too much time to get to the actual point of being a horror film. Most of the movie’s tension comes from when the story takes us into the titular vault and prepares us for the worst, though the because of the run time we don’t get to be as shocked as the film intended us to be. Though when it did there was a decent amount of shock value to be had.
If you like Manning as Pennsatucky in Orange in the New Black, she is sure to delight here as the more ruthless, violent sister. Her performance is at least worth the trip compared to that of Eastwood’s, who is taking a page from her dad of being one dimensional and is worried in about half of the movie. Franco, sad to say, is underused here. He isn’t given a lot to deal with and seems more of a secondary character that. This film needed a big name like Franco’s to elevate it from a B-picture status.
The Vault has an interesting story to tell with. It may take a little while to get to the sickening stuff (believe me some of the more gruesome scenes may not be for the weak of heart), but when it does it fulfills its promise in shocking us even more so than the 2008 bank bailout!
The Vault opens at Screenland at Tapcade, Friday September 1.
Christian Ramos is a classic film fan, having had the dream to host Turner Classic Movies for years now. He also has a large amount of Oscar trivia in his head, remembers dressing as Groucho Marx one Halloween, and cherishes the moment Julianne Moore liked his tweet.
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