Why aren’t more ghost stories set in banks? People, especially nominally bad people, die in banks all the time, at least in the movies. Banks are also where you go to lock up stuff you don’t want other people to find, which would presumably include cursed items. As far as we can remember, though, The Vault is the first movie to actually exploit this idea, and it’ll be either brilliant, ridiculous, or both. The presence of James Franco and his ‘stache as a bank manager raises the odds of both.
The plot kicks off with a bunch of bank robbers tackling a seemingly typical branch of a normal bank. Dissatisfied with the take, Franco’s bank manager points them to an old vault underneath the new one, which turns out to be haunted. Meanwhile, like every bank robbery committed to film, the robbery has gone wrong, meaning the police are outside. So the bank’s employees find themselves stuck between the robbers, the police, and some unusually dapper ghosts in creepy masks.
Franco turning up makes this a bit more interesting. For all his flashiness, Franco is often at his best in character turns, especially in genre movies. He was, for example, the best thing about Homeland, that movie where Jason Statham punches rednecks for a change of pace from punching the French. We’ll see what dark secret he and that mustache hides (because come on, he totally has a dark secret) September 1st.
