Vacancy

While driving during the night, David Fox (Luke Wilson) leaves the interstate and takes a shortcut through a lonely road. He is in a divorce process with his wife Amy (Kate Beckinsale), who is sleeping in the car, after the loss of their son Charlie. In order to avoid hitting a raccoon, David breaks down the fan of his car and the couple finds stranded in the road. Without any other alternative, they decide to spend the night in a nasty low budget motel in the middle of nowhere. While watching some amateurish slash movies in the VCR, David realizes that they have been shot in their room. Sooner they discover that they are trapped in the place and surrounded by sadistic filmmakers of snuff movies.

"Vacancy" has a promising and claustrophobic beginning, with the scared couple stranded in a lonely place with a weird manager of an awful motel and listening to aggressive beats in the doors of their room. The development is also tense and good. However, the corny and commercial conclusion like in a television film spoils the story. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Temos Vaga" ("Vacancy")

Grieving over the loss of their son, David and Amy Fox are driving thru the night heading towards their destination...the signing of the divorce papers!. David unwisely leaves the interstate looking for a short cut and swerves to avoid hitting a raccoon, this causes engine trouble and eventually they have to settle for staying at a grotty roadside motel until the car can be fixed in the morning. Upon attempting to relax in their dirty and poorly decorated room, they are disturbed by loud banging on the doors to their room, this is merely the start of a night of terror as the Fox's will be forced to fight to stay alive in the confines of this Horror Motel!

Seen it before? Yes we all most certainly have, from proto slashers to Euro terrors, the couple under siege formula is as old as the hills themselves. But Vacancy has such a sense of fun and a unique use of its plot setting, that even a terribly formulaic cop out towards the end is mostly forgiven. The setting is one dirty hole of a motel, but the dirt is not merely confined to the structure and basic house keeping of the place, the worst dirt comes in a terrifying form that is fully formed from the moment we meet the creepy motel manager (a wonderfully cheesy Frank Whaley). From here our intrepid couple, very well played by Luke Wilson & Kate Beckinsale, must use the most basic resources to hand, to hopefully escape the clutches of masked assailants intent on gutting them in the name of entertainment.

What follows is the usual jumps and perilous set ups, and a quirky line in labyrinth adventure. But then that ending that almost derails the whole picture, it does hurt it because we the viewers can only feel let down that the makers chose to not stay with what would have been an impacting turn of events. But for a film that's homaging films (and thriller maestros) from the past and clearly doing what it set out to do, it's to me a forgivable error. It's not taking itself too seriously, and you shouldn't too, just check in with the Fox's and get involved with the thrills. 6.5/10

To tel you the plot of this movie would be telling you the plot of a hundred other films of the horror genre. Couple in car, car breaks down, couple goes to motel, motel people are crazy and try to kill them. So how does Vacancy try to step out of the conventional horror genre it has already set itself up as? Why not cast Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale...oh yeah, they are being killed for a snuff film too.

Vacancy isn't so much a film, as it is an exercise. It's an exercise in the genre of horror. It doesn't amount to anything, it simply exists to see what they could do with film. It's not good enough to be classified as experimental and not crappy enough to be called B movie trash. Hell, it's only 85 minutes long. It's a film that has both positives and negatives and if you take it with a grain of salt, you can have a lot of fun with it.

The negatives this film has can be turned into positives if you're willing. That is of course if you don't take this film too seriously. It has all the horror clichés, broken down car, creepy hotel, creepy guy, cell phone that doesn't work. These little things seem to be mandatory in horror films these days that involve slashers. So where does Vacancy separate itself from other slasher films? It has no teens in it. Instead we get a married couple who are getting a divorce. Unfortunately, we hate them just as much, if not more then any teen in any teen slasher.

These two characters do a lot of stupid things. Who goes down a tunnel not knowing where it leads, especially when the people trying to kill you use it. Who breaks a mirror to use a sharp piece as a weapon....and not use it. Hell, I was yelling at him for not using the shower curtain rod as a weapon. I never cared for these people at all, Wilson is miscast and Beckinsale is irritating. She looks good, but looks aren't everything. I couldn't cheer for them to live, but I couldn't really cheer for them to die either. For some strange reason I found many scenes to be suspenseful. It's an odd feeling when you don't like the main characters. Aside from the desk clerk, the bad guys are basically faceless mutes. Their reasoning for doing what they are doing is never mentioned. I can only guess they make these sick videos for some sick truck drivers. The snuff film aspect was a nice addition and it set up for some good tension, but it never delivers on that initial tension.

It sets itself apart as much as it could, but falls into its own tricks. It doesn't have the gore that other films these days have, but the actions from characters are so clichéd that whatever it tried to do to set itself apart is meaningless. Vacancy doesn't go to the twist ending route, nor does it try to go out on a downer. It simply ties everything in a nice little bow. It cheats the audience. The film would have been stronger had it ended with a death, and not a cop out.

While Vacancy isn't as bad as people have said it was, it isn't great either. As previously mentioned, it isn't so much of a film as it is an exercise in a specific genre. It does well in some areas and fails greatly at others.

If I learned anything from "Psycho" it's not to stay at a remote motel. If I learned anything from "Dead End" it's that you never leave the interstate as a detour--no matter what. If learned anything from "Breakdown" it's that if a stranger touches your car it will stop working shortly thereafter. David and Amy Fox (Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale) committed all three errors.

The bickering passive aggressive couple were on their way home from a family gathering when David decided to take a detour due to a crash on the main highway. Eventually he reached a point where he was lost and on top of that he damaged the car when he swerved to miss a raccoon. They stopped at the first gas station they saw for directions and perhaps a mechanic's opinion. Instead they got a mechanic who tampered with the vehicle and debilitated it. With it being too late to do anything else the couple stayed at the nearby roach motel. And that's when the craziness started.

Much like we'd see in "The Strangers" in 2008, "Vacancy" was about a sadistic group of men who loved to terrorize the guests of the out-of-the-way motel. These psychotic freaks videoed their activities. And judging by their film library, they were prolific killers. With multiple hidden cameras set up in every room, the masked murderers aimed to get as much screaming and frantic behavior as they could from their unfortunate guests.

"Vacancy" keeps you on edge and your heart pumping. Every whimper, word, or whisper makes you flinch as you try to will the protagonists to be quiet and survive their ordeal. "Vacancy," like most thrillers and horrors, requires some suspended disbelief. A few things will annoy the thinking viewer, but it's not enough to make you pack it in. "Vacancy" keeps it interesting and suspenseful from beginning to end.

This is a typical thriller if you want to have a little scare at night. It is pretty fast-paced and gets to the action almost right away, from a divorcing couple's (Wilson and Beckinsale) issues on the road to ending at a freaky motel with strange banging noises in the room and finally to the mysterious video tapes in the room.

The movie became predictable midway towards the end, where the chase between the bad guys and the good guys begin. The villains take credit for being probably the most clueless I've seen on the screen. Their dialog is very cheesy and campy (I mean, who throws their opponent on top of a gun on the floor?). There's plenty of action, but I think the climax was a little rushed through and too predictable. Otherwise, it's an OK movie for a scare.

So, never check into a motel at night in the middle of nowhere. Sleep in your car instead.

Grade C