Expected more

Beautiful, moving film.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

If you were a child of the 70s you were probably a teen in the 80s, and had a veritable unlimited selection of midrange B-movie horror and thrillers at your disposal. If you were lucky your family had a VCR and you could rent awesome classics like "Phantasm" or "Reanimator" to watch late at night with your friends. This is like those movies except that the editing was easier to do with the better equipment we have today.Judging solely against the B-movie spectrum: great cast, story, and effects. Totally worth the watch if this your thing; however, if you are expecting Oscar quality just because you see James Franco's name on it just stop right there and go watch that movie where he's bad at rock climbing. Not *all* movies want or strive to be big frickin' Festival winners, darling.... !

I didn't see the low rating until I came on the page. I was slightly hesitant to check this out since I didn't hear much about it. The only things I knew was it has James Franco and has a twist on a bank heist. I'm glad I took the chance. It starts off differently than I expected. Thanks to Leverage on TNT, I got into bank heist cinema. Yet this film tricked me into trying to figure out, due to the slow open, who may have been the robbers. "Maybe him? No, not him. She seems likely. She doesn't seem so likely- wait, maybe not. He really seems like he could br." And on and on for the first act. A nice set up to characterize the important people. An effective slow build. It's also in the first act that I have my only gripe. I noticed some editing could have been improved. A tad sloppy, but I forgot about it by the second half. For the haunt vault part, that takes time before getting to it. In the meantime, subplots and deeper characterizations and character mysteries are introduced, getting me more invested. When it is finally introduced, I admit, I wished there were less scares with jump noises. However, most of the scares are atmospheric, my preferred style. All throughout the film, Franco's character was an interesting anomaly. I won't say the end result, but I loved it. Then there's Q'orianka Kilchin, who plays Susan. A lovely yet underrated actress. She sells her character incredibly well, especially when she gives a chilling backstory on why the vault is haunted. By the ending, not everything is wrapped up, not everything is explained, but what is necessary is done. The visual filter is surprisingly just as good (if not better for the most part) as a triple-A major feature film, the suspense was done effectively with perfect pacing on the story beats. While everyone was hyping on Get Out (which I didn't care for), this went under the radar but deserves a lot of love.

Just.. just don't even bother with this one. Both horror fans and heist fans will be disappointed.

"The Vault" does not lack for originality, but as a lot of the action takes place in the dark, don't be surprised if that adds to the confusion. A gang of miscreants rob a bank first diverting the police and emergency services in a big way. Leaving aside their novel plan which includes taking hostages, you should never expect too much from people with tattoos on their faces, including intelligence. Added to this is the fact that nobody appears to be in charge, and they spend much of the time fighting each other.Hoping for a big payday, they are extremely disappointed to find only seventy grand in the vault, then one of the hostages pipes up that the old vault contains a lot more, like orders of magnitude more. He knows this because he is the assistant manager. In for a penny, in for six million dollars, they take the bait, but there is a lot more than money in the vault. Now we go from thriller to thriller mixed with horror. You can work out the rest yourself. Or maybe you can't.