Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

The Vault Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 25, 2019

The Vault is another FilmRise offering that, kind of like the recently reviewed Dark River, seems to be about one thing, but then kind of darts off unexpectedly into something else entirely. In the case of The Vault it’s decidedly more overt than in the case of Dark River , with what appears to be a pretty trite heist film with a hostage aspect tipping over into a frankly equally trite horror aspect when all sorts of things start going bump in the night at a basement vault in a bank that’s being robbed. The Vault also relies on a rather large heaping of intentional misdirection, to the point that even the film’s attempt at “Moishe the Explainer” moments may not actually end up explaining much, if anything. The film begins with what seems like a phone call from someone to the police informing them of a bank robbery that's in process. Before any more plot developments are doled out, I'm giving any spoiler-phobes a warning that the rest of this review will deal in some aspects that detail some of the misdirection that's at hand, so those who want to avoid such revelations are encouraged to skip down to the technical portions of the review, below.

Some of the initial misdirections The Vault offers include supposed bank customers Leah (Francesca Eastwood) and Vee (Taryn Manning), as well as cutaways to what seems to be a fire department responding to some emergency. When the bank is almost at closing time, and in fact the front doors have been locked (albeit with customers inside, which seems a bit odd), firemen show up and are let inside. Except — well, they’re not firemen, and Vee and Leah aren’t really customers. It’s all a setup for a robbery, though in one of many perplexing elements The Vault posits, there’s already a suspicious policeman on the outside wondering what’s going on.

Hostages are taken and the nerdy bank employee played by Franco ultimately discloses that there’s a lot of money in a “secret” vault downstairs in an older, now abandoned, part of the bank. What is ultimately revealed in just one of at least a couple of “Moishe the Explainer” moments is that there was another long ago robbery of the bank, one which resulted in several unfortunate deaths of hostages, and there may be vengeful spirits still residing in the bowels of the building.

That leads to the main "horror" part of the film, where various bad guys are taken out by demons, some of whom wear weird white masks, in what amounts to a pretty tepid attempt at "villain branding". Leah and Vee turn out to be sisters, who are attempting to help their brother Mike (Scott Haze), another one of the robbers, escape from financial ruin by robbing the bank. The film ping pongs back and forth between the "main floor" relationships, and the more troubling situation "down below".

When you have an actor with as recognizable a voice and stature as James Franco, it’s kind of pointless to play fast and loose with “twists”, and The Vault relies on two supposedly “secret” elements, both of which are at least tangentially related to the supposed bank employee Franco plays. First of all, it sure sounds like Franco’s voice making that 911 call early in the film, and there’s a later “reveal” showing him making it. The film's aforementioned “masked killer” aspect in the long secluded vault in the basement of the bank building has at least one scene where the masked figure is (or at least sure seems to be) Franco again. Except — well, I won’t deliberately out and out spoil anything, other than to say the film’s own explanation for who or what is “down there” makes absolutely no sense when supposedly linked to the character Franco is playing.

The main misdirection turns out to be when certain events are happening, especially with regard to the Franco character. But even this element doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. With some passing if admittedly fitful regard to "spoiler discretion", I'll only say this: if Franco's character is a ghost, he sure seems to be a peculiarly physical one. And why, if the character was a victim long ago, would he don the mask of what seems to be either one of his assailants or one of the original hostages? The fact that I'm even asking this question is perhaps an indication that The Vault might have benefited from some clearer exposition. It's a film that really wants to get to its mind blowing "twist" (replete with a little "sting" as a coda), but doesn't set things up properly enough so that the twist resonates.

The Vault Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Vault is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD Visual and FilmRise with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb doesn't provide much technical data, but enterprising Googlers can find a number of interesting interviews with cinematographer Andrew Shulkind, though kind of hilariously the information is at least a little variant in some of them. It sounds like Canon cameras were used for at least part of the shoot, though it also sounds like Shulkind and his team may have tweaked the sensors in order to achieve some of the low light effects that are especially prevalent in the basement sequences. With an understanding that the film is intentionally shrouded in darkness at least part of the time, detail levels are surprisingly high in the basement scenes. The "upstairs" element is understandably more consistent in terms of being able to provide fine detail simply because the lighting conditions are more "normal" seeming. Some scenes have a slightly sickly yellow color, and there are just slight dustings of noise in some of the dark material.

The Vault Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Vault continues FilmRise's "learning curve" as it moves into pressed Blu-rays, with another of their releases featuring only lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 mixes. The claustrophobic confines of much of this film perhaps make the lossy mix a bit more palatable, since aside from a few passing effects like a huge conflagration that takes out some hostages late in the film (and then another conflagration that erupts after that), the sound design here doesn't really even attempt to do anything overly showy. Despite the glut of indoor material, there's decent attention paid to discrete channelization of ambient environmental effects, and dialogue is always rendered cleanly and clearly, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record, FilmRise should consider upping the ante and providing lossless audio on its Blu-ray releases.

The Vault Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 1:56)

The Vault Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's a sweet little suburb of Portland called Multnomah Village that has a performance venue called The Vault where my wife in fact has run a comedy show for years, and because I'm often slow on the uptake it wasn't until relatively recently I noticed that there is a huge metal vault door (always open, and usually in the dark, which is my excuse, and I'm sticking to it) leading into the bar area, vestiges of the building's former "life" as a bank. I mention my "slow on the uptake" proclivities since maybe I've missed some extremely salient information that was imparted sometime during The Vault that helps to elide what I find to be just patently illogical elements to the plot. Unfortunately even for those who aren't slow on the uptake, my hunch is The Vault will not succeed as either a heist film or a horror film. Video quality is fine, but this is another FilmRise release with only lossy audio.