Susan Granger’s review of “Vacancy” (Screen Gems)
This week’s violent thriller is a taut cat-and-mouse game set in a rundown motel.
When bickering David (Luke Wilson) and Amy Fox’s (Kate Beckinsale) car breaks down on a dark country road, miles from the California Interstate, they hike back to the seedy, isolated Pinewood Motel run by a creepy night manager (Frank Whaley) who insists that they take the honeymoon suite, free of charge. Amy just wants to go to sleep, but David insists that they put on one of a stack of unlabeled videotapes, only to discover that it’s a graphic, low-budget “snuff” movie which seems to have been filmed in their room. Yikes! With hidden video cameras now aimed at them, masked faces peering into the window and doorknobs rattling ominously, David and Amy must struggle to get out alive before they become the victims in next week’s schlocky slasher thriller.
Writer Mark L. Smith and German director Nimrod Antal (“Kontroll”) contrive an effective, unpretentious chiller, set where the room phone connects only with the front desk and there’s simply no cell phone service. To their credit, the filmmakers spends almost as much time delving into David and Amy’s disintegrating marital relationship (there’s a dead child) as developing the maniac’s murderous intent. But it’s no banal slice-and-dicer, relying, instead, on flashy sound effects and claustrophobia-inducing dirt tunnels that run under the motel for the insinuated horror.
Amid the apprehension, Luke Wilson emerges as quite likeable but Kate Beckinsale comes across as intensely irritating. The best performance comes from Frank Whaley, who channels crazed Norman Bates from the motel hell of “Psycho.” On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Vacancy” is a short, scary, suspense-filled 5 that, unfortunately, sputters to an inconsequential conclusion. Dare I call it doom service?
