This movie wasn't the Bates Motel of horror movies, but more like the cheap motel of horror. It's cheaply made, but what they do with the resources they had is interesting. The opening credits use a very Saul Bass style. They're being creative with fonts and titles in the opening. The music was surprisingly catchy as well. The banging at the beginning was good, that created an atmosphere of tension. A vacationing couple, David (Luke Wilson) and Amy Fox (Kate Beckinsale) check in a nearby motel, when their car breaks down. This motel is run by a weird little night manager Mason (Frank Whaley) and the couple take the honeymoon suite. In their room, looking for entertainment for the evening, the pair finds a VCR tape. They put it on their television, and find it to be a low-budget slasher film. After watching for a while, they come upon realizing that all of the films seem to have been shot in the very same room they currently occupy. David and Amy suddenly become the stars of a real life horror snuff film. They realize they must escape, or they will become the next victims. The filmmakers sketch in enough of David and Amy's back story for us to want them to survive. This thriller is scripted by Mark L. Smith and directed by Nimród Antal. Nimrod use hidden cameras to track their every move, and takes the cue from Hitchcock opting for suspense over graphic violence and torture. Vacancy might not get Mr. Hitchcock smiling from above. But he won't be spinning in his grave, either. The film has a pure cat-and-mouse chase. The movie squeezes the maximum in suspense out of one location, as all the scenes are film just there. It runs through every permutation of the motel-hell concept. The film has a nice sense of claustrophobia, particularly when the couple discovers a labyrinth of dirt tunnels under the motel. Luke Wilson doesn't have time to indulge in acting when surviving. The roles of both can be judge by the amounts of yelling and running, not only between them and the killer, but with each other. The audience can really felt the distance between the 2 main characters in the beginning. Other than that the female character Kate plays is bitchy and Luke's performance was boring and wooden. I'm all for female empowerment, but I found Kate Beckinsale's survivor transformation a little hard to believe. Up until very late in the film, and after she stops being a jerk, she's usually whimpering in a corner. In fact, she doesn't seem to be able to do anything but follow her husband around. And yes, I understand that it's all about juxtaposition, if she wasn't fragile at first, her later transformation wouldn't be as evident later. Still, survival instincts can only go so far. Whaley creates a memorable cracker-barrel crazy man that borderlines modes his role on Dennis Weaver's jittery night clerk in the Orson Welles classic "Touch of Evil ." The film use subtle fright tactics: sound effects over gallons of blood, a shard of glass over a chainsaw which gives it props, but Vacancy suffers from too many horror flick clichés using killers in masks, cellphones that are conveniently out of range, etc. etc. There is still enough violence to warrant its R rating. Without spoiling the ending—check out the film to see how it ends. Check in the motel, indeed.
Review of Vacancy
