Up next in the Full-Moon-A-Thon is The Vault. Now.. in watching the ‘Behind The Scenes’ before actually watching the movie, I have to say that I was skeptical given Full Moon’s penchant for super-hyping things in the ‘Making Of’ then the actual movie turns out to be a total stinker.
Man alive were the people involved in this hyped. So, I started to buy into it, although I still maintained a fair amount of skepticism.
So…here we go.
The movie starts out with some thug type kid breaking into an abandoned building (school) and writing some horrible graffiti. When I say horrible I mean it would cause every graf writer in America to call one other to simultaneously beat the living bejeezus out of this guy while shoving empty Montana cans up his ass.
Suddenly.
A security guard.
This guy looks like he is best friends with one of those little glass roses they have on the counter at the gas station, however, he displays decent skills and actually would end up being one of the stand-out characters in this movie.
He crosses paths with the thug and tells him he needs to gtfo asap and to NOT go in the basement. Under any circumstances. So, of course, the guy goes into the basement and happens upon this massive vault-like door. The security guard re-appears and warns him repeatedly not to open the door. Of course, again, homie-g-thug tries to open the door and for his efforts, he gets beaten to death with a steel pole.
Next, we meet our main cast. You have Mr. B, a teacher, who is in the process of taking the kids he’s with to an abandoned school that used to be the pinnacle of black education. The purpose of this whole trip it to “see if they can find anything to salvage” which makes no sense and right away takes huge points from the movie.
We have the cast of kids.. Kyle, a hardened thug type that “doesn’t take no shit” – Desaray, the..well..the girl. – Willy, the jock and smart ass who’s constantly chasing after Desaray and Zipper (aka Zachary) who reminds me of a low budget Farnsworth Bentley. We also meet the bus/van driver, a cynical Jamacian guy who puffs fat joints. Of course, given this, he instantly becomes my favorite character and will obviously be the first to die.
The crew gets into the school and are also confronted by the aforementioned security guard. They get the same warning – it’s not safe for them there and stay out of the basement. Of course Mr. B explains this is “for the kids” so clearly, he doesn’t mind putting their lives in danger. Way to go, toolshed.
They shuffle around for awhile and eventually split up (great idea, Mr. B!) and that’s when “weird shit” starts happening. The phrase “release me!” appears on a blackboard behind Desaray, Kyle’s face morphs in the mirror, Farnsworth Jr flips out like a woman, etc. Eventually, Willy coerces Desaray into going into the basement, they find the door and he quickly gets to work on trying to open it. He fails.
Then, in a weird moment, Desaray becomes temporarily “posessed” and bashes her hand through the wall where they find…the key to the lock. Dipshit opens the door unleashing this “force” which tears through the school causing things like giant circular fans to make papers fly, etc, etc.
FINALLY, people start getting waxed as the kids begin to attempt their escape. Of course, they can’t. Willy gets impaled on some oddly placed, giant rebar sticking out of the wall and Farnsworth gets his head halved by a giant shard of glass, which was actually pretty cool.
Things start building up to the climax and we’ll cut the recap off there. I will say that the ending, as it seems to be in a lot of Full Moon movies from this era especially the ones co-produced by Tempe is a pretty big letdown. JR Bookwalter (producer) is good at making low-budget horror flicks but they always seem to lack a decent, satisfying conclusion.
To wrap things up, this was pretty bad but had a couple of redeeming qualities. You can tell it is directed by a first-timer (Full Moon jobber James Black) and some of the elements are stupidly annoying – particularly the lighting. At one point, the room will be lit by what appears to be somewhat natural looking light. Then the camera angle changes in the same room and everything is drowning in a blue filter. Aggravating. The camera work is acceptable and the music/sound is actually pretty decent. There’s some nice hip-hoppy instrumentals in there for a b-movie.
I wouldn’t watch this again and I certainly wouldn’t purchase it – even for a buck seventy five on Amazon. I’d recommend it only for the die-hard Full Moon’ers, which if you are one, then you’ve probably already seen this.
** out of 5.
