The Vault (2017)

The film opens with a series of shots of newspaper clippings about a bank robbery involving hostages, that resulted in a standoff with police lasting several days. This series of clippings ends in a shot of a masked man holding up a lighter. This cuts away to a billowing cloud of smoke rising from a building and firetrucks racing by to extinguish the fire.

Elsewhere, assistant bank manager Ed is seen standing alone in a break-room, quick cuts of disturbing content, including the same masked man from the beginning of the film, as well as several other people with bloody bags over their heads are shown, interspersed with close shots of Ed's face. Out in the main lobby, a man is let into the bank by a policeman stationed at the door. He walks over to a self-serve coffee station and pours himself a cup of coffee, spiking it with a small bottle of liquor. He proceeds to go up to the teller, and completes his transaction, asking the teller out for a drink during "happy hour". The teller remarks that it seems the man had already been drinking, and hands him his receipt, prompting him to leave. On his way out, the policeman at the door addresses him as a detective, and the man responds by telling the police officer to keep the people in the bank away from the fire down the block. While this is all happening, a young woman named Leah is sitting in a waiting area, and is called over by the bank's manager. She enters his office and hands over her resume, indicating that she is here to apply for a position as a teller. The bank manager tells her that they have three teller spots to fill, as the tellers that he has hired in the past keep quitting. When Leah asks the manager why they keep quitting, he hesitates, but after reassuring the bank manager that she still wants the position, the bank manager reluctantly tells her that the tellers all quit after seeing and hearing "spooky" things in the basement of the bank. Outside of the office, back in the lobby, another woman, Vee, walks up to a teller and begins to complain that several cheques she has written have bounced, leading to charges from both the bank and the people the cheques were written out to. Vee becomes increasingly irate, using profanities, and asks for a manager. In the background, the police officer, as well as a security guard for the bank begin to approach her, but the police officer returns to the door to let in a group of firefighters, presumably responders from the fire nearby. Finally, becoming fed up with Vee's use of profanity, and refusal to quiet down and act civil, the security guard attempts to arrest her. Vee struggles against him, hitting him with brass knuckles pulled from her pocket. Seeing this, the police officer calls in a disturbance at the bank over his police radio, and goes to subdue Vee. Suddenly, Leah, back in the manager's office, pulls out a shotgun and holds the manager at gunpoint, while one of the 'firefighters' hits the police officer with the flat edge of his axe, knocking him unconscious. It is revealed that Leah, Vee, and the three men disguised as firefighters, Kramer, Michael, and Cyrus, are all part of the same crew working to rob the bank. After taking hostages of all the staff and clients in the bank, and forcing the head teller, Susan, to open the vault, the Michael begins to move hostages into the vault, while Kramer forces Susan to open the vault's cash deposit box, which is disappointingly nearly empty. Kramer takes the bag of money back out to the lobby where he tells the rest of the group that there is only about $70, 000 dollar, which is nowhere near their goal of $500, 000. An argument ensues between the members of the crew about what they should do next, some saying that they should cut their losses, and make a run for it; the others saying that they should stay and keep looking for more money, because they need to pay back a debt, and they cannot leave without the money. Ed, now a hostage, yells over to the crew that he knows where there is more money in the bank, and that he will help them. The crew holds him at gunpoint demanding more information. Ed agrees to tell them if they promise not to hurt anybody else. The crew agrees, and Ed tells them that there is an old vault in the basement of the bank that holds over $6 million in cash. Imbued with a new sense of urgency at this news, Kramer takes a drill and goes down to the basement to drill out the vault and open it, stating that it will take about 20 minutes. Leah and Cyrus take Ed to the security office to observe to proceedings over the live camera feeds, and Michael goes to the vault with the hostages to watch them. Vee stays in the lobby of the bank. In the vault the hostages plead to Michael's good nature, telling him that they don't think he is a bad man, and asking him to let them go. He tells them all to shut up, at which point Susan tells Michael that she needs to go to the washroom. Michael reluctantly takes her to the washroom, at which point she again pleads with Michael to rethink taking them as hostages. In the washroom Michael reveals that Vee and Leah are his sisters, and they are helping him rob this bank because he owes money to bad people, and can't afford to pay them back. Susan, yet again asks Michael to let her go, but Michael ignores these requests again, and brings her back to the vault when she tells him she can't go when he is pacing outside the stall door. Upon seeing Michael, Vee tells him to go start cutting through a pipe in the basement that wills serve as the group's means of escape once they have raided the vault. Michael agrees and goes down to the basement, to a different section than Kramer. During these events, ever since Kramer began drilling in the basement, the lights had been flickering in the bank. The group finds it odd, but dismisses it as a power surge. Kramer, finishing up the drilling job in the basement begins to try to open the vault, at which time Vee, Leah, and Cyrus watch him through the cameras. When he looks up from his tools, Kramer sees a silhouette at the end of the dimly lit hallway, and, assuming its a member of the crew, tells them to go back upstairs and watch the hostages. The figure remains, not moving, and Kramer looks through his tools for a flashlight, which doesn't work. Looking back up, he sees a second silhouette has appeared, and begins just staring at them. Confused at his behaviour, as the figures cannot be seen on the camera feeds, Vee radios Kramer, asking him what he is doing. Kramer tries to respond, but only static comes through to Vee, Leah, and Cyrus. Hearing a noise behind him, Kramer turns to see the masked man from the beginning of the film, and looking back at where the two silhouettes were, sees they have multiplied into four. Looking back and forth as the silhouettes slowly grow in number and move towards him, Kramer screams, which is heard by Michael, and falls backwards into the vault, and out of sight of the camera feed. Ed is the only one in the room who doesn't look shocked by these events, and has been staring at the screen with a straight face the whole time. Concerned, Vee goes runs to the basement door, which closes on its own just as she reaches it, locking itself. At the same time, Cyrus goes into the vault to check on the hostages, and Leah stands guard in the lobby. Cyrus is asked to count the hostages and make sure they are all there, and begins counting, only to see that some of the hostages have dirty and bloody bags over their heads, pressed into their eye sockets and mouths, making them look like skulls. These are the same in appearance as the hostages seen in Ed's visions from the beginning of the film, and standing behind them is the masked man. The vault door slowly closes, locking Cyrus in, and he begins to fight with the nightmarish hostages, managing to pull one of their hoods off, revealing a heavily charred corpse underneath. Cyrus is then forced to the ground, and the masked man puts the barrel of a shotgun into Cyrus' mouth, forcing Cyrus to pull the trigger. This sound is masked by the sound of Vee shooting out the lock on the Basement door. While this is happening, Michael, who had heard Kramer screaming earlier, has gone to investigate, and upon reaching the vault, finds Kramer sitting inside with a bloody rag over his face. Pulling it off, Michael sees that Kramer's eyes had been gouged out, but that he was still breathing. At this time, Kramer starts to gasp, and puts his vault drill through his own head, killing himself. Michael back out of the vault, terrified. Back in the security office, Leah is questioning Ed about whether he knew what was going on, accusing him of setting them up. Ed swears he has no clue what is going on, at which point the phone rings. Leah picks it up and puts it up to Ed's ear, telling him to make them go away. However, it is the detective who was in the bank earlier, identifying himself as Tom, and he demands to speak with Leah. Realizing that the police know they are robbing the bank, as up until this point the crew thought that nobody was aware of their actions, Leah hangs up the phone. Demanding answers, Leah gets Susan from the Vault and asks her if she was the one who contacted the police. She denies it and says that it was the bank itself. Susan explains that in 1982 a man tried robbing the bank, taking many hostages, and demanded transportation. This is the robbery from the clippings in the beginning shots of the film, and the robber is the man in the mask. Susan explains that the man held out for several days without food or water, and that in the end he snapped, executing the hostages in various ways, including burning several of them alive in the vault. According to Susan, the police kept finding more and more bodies, but never found the masked man, or any trace of him. Susan is sure that the masked man is still in the basement, and that he is the source of the crew's trouble. Leah does not believe Susan, and threatens to electrocute her with a broken lamp that is still plugged in. Michael catches her before she can hurt Susan though, and walks away disappointed. Vee returns from checking the basement with a duffel bag full of cash. Leah remarks that something is wrong, however, and upon closer inspection, she sees that every bill was printed in 1982, the same year of the robbery that Susan was speaking of. Vee is unconcerned by this, and tells Leah that she is going insane, which causes a fight between the two. Suddenly, a window near them shatters, which Leah and Vee assume is the police shooting at them. Michael returns to the basement to continue cutting the pipe for their escape. He hears a woman calling for help, and after following the voice down a corridor, finds a young lady laying on the ground, asking for help. She says that she thinks that her ankle is broken, and asks Michael is he is "one of them" Michael is confused by this. He hears Vee call for him and turns to face the source of the sound. When he looks back, the woman has become a rotting corpse, which lunges after Michael. Back up in the Managers office, Leah gets a phone call, and when she picks up, she hears a staticky voice inform her that a robbery is happening at the bank she is in. She knows that this cannot be anyone of her hostages, and is slowly becoming convinced of Susan's story. Meanwhile, Vee is speaking to Ed, who asks her what she plans on doing next, as she seems to be the only one with any sanity left. This is out of the ordinary for Ed, who hasn't commented on any of the odd occurrences up until this point. Almost immediately after the call indicating a robbery in progress, Leah gets another call from the Detective, apologizing for the shot that was taken at Leah and Vee. Leah says that she can only keep control of the situation for so long, and to keep the police at bay a little longer, releases one of the hostages. After releasing the hostage, Leah gets yet another call, and it is the same ghostly call from earlier, complaining of a robbery at the bank. Susan, who is sitting near the phone, looks up at Leah and asks her if she heard 'it'. Returning to the basement, Vee beings to search for Michael. In one room she finds Cyrus' body, with his head blown of from the jaw up, with blood splattered all over the wall behind him. Going a bit further she sees Michael, looking deranged, and splashing gasoline all over the walls of the corridors. Seeing Vee, Michael grabs her and tells her that the escape pipe has been cut and is ready for her to escape through, and tells her to run. Vee asks Michael what he is doing, and begs him to go with her, but he picks his jerry can back up and continues to douse the walls in gas. Vee returns to the vault and begins to look inside it, as Michael lights the gasoline and begins to burn the bank. As the fire alarms start to go off Ed, with whom Leah is now with, indicates that now the police will be forced to come into the bank. Leah, realizing that she is running out of time, cuts Ed free, gives him a knife, and tells him to let the rest of the hostages go. She then grabs the duffel bag of cash and runs down to the basement. In the basement Michael has begun to throw Molotov cocktails into rooms as he walks by them, spreading the fire. Leah runs to the escape pipe, but thinks she hears Michael calling for her, so she runs in the direction of the voice, eventually coming to the vault. When she enters the vault, she spaces out for a moment, but soon becomes aware that the ghosts of the hostages are now surrounding her, and the vault door is closing. She manages to get her arm through the vault door and is trying to pry it open, and eventually manages to when Michael comes to the vault and helps her. Together they run from the ghost hostages, Michael throwing Molotov cocktails behind him as they go. Eventual he falls behind, and Leah makes it to the pipe first. She calls for Michael but begins to hear a song playing lightly down the hallway. Out of the fire's smoke appears the masked man, as well as several of the hostage ghosts, with Michael following behind them. Realizing that they are about to kill Leah, Michael opens a gas line and lights it, blowing up the masked man and the other ghosts just as Leah entered the escape pipe. The next shot shows Leah driving down a back road, with the radio playing in the background. The radio host is talking about the robbery, and says that police believe all the suspects to be dead. Leah pulls to a stop on the side of the road, and the camera pans over to Vee, who is revealed to have made it out safely. Vee angrily asks where the money is, and what happened to Michael. Leah gets the duffel bag of money out of her car, and throws it at Vee's feet, explaining that Michael had died, and begging Vee to tell her that she saw the ghosts too, and that she was not going crazy. Vee explains that she doesn't know what she saw, and that all she remembers is the police shooting at her. In a police interrogation room, the Detective Tom is questioning the hostages about who helped the robbers with the codes, the vault and disarming the alarm systems. Every hostage says that they did not recognize Ed, even though he claimed to be the assistant bank manager. When questioning Susan, one of the only hostages to have admitted to seeing Ed, she recognizes Ed's picture on the wall of the police interrogation room. Detective Tom tells her this is impossible, as Ed was one of the original victims of the 1982 bank robbery. Susan realizes that Ed himself was a ghost, and that was how he knew about the basement vault. The film then cuts to the same scene from the beginning of the movie with Ed in the break-room. This time, however, he hears screams and gunshots from outside the break-room, and calls the police, which is recognizable as the same call that Leah had been hearing throughout the robbery. Back at Leah and Vee's meet-up point, Leah's car won't start, prompting Vee to get out and check the engine. Suddenly the radio turns on, and every station is playing the same thing, which is the song that Leah heard in the basement of the bank. When Vee drops the cars hood, Leah sees the masked man behind her, and screams as he snaps Vee's neck, and the credits start to roll.