VACANCY is a thriller about snuff films starring two actors who can’t act for shit but SURE ARE PURDY! It doesn’t leave an enclosed space, doesn’t even hit the ninety minute mark, features little to no character development or backstory and the bad guy is a former teen star in the process of aging most ungracefully. In addition, this is the English language debut of a Hungarian director who’s a dropped “t” in his last name away from being named “Nimrod Anal.”
And yet, because of good ol’ Nimrod, most of these things turn out to actually be advantages. So not only is VACANCY a damn fine thriller on its own, it manages to redefine irony. A smart movie directed by a guy named Nimrod. Whoda thunk?
Wooden clotheshorse Kate Beckinsale and asexual plastic drone Luke Wilson play Amy and David Fox, a married couple in dire straits after the death of their son. They’re making the long drive to Los Angeles after a party at Amy’s parents’ house when their car breaks down. They walk the two miles to a fleabag motel on the east side of west Hell run by Mason, played by Frank Whaley, who was the guy who was confused on whether or not Marcellus Wallace “Looked like a bitch.”
They settle in for the night and find tapes on the VCR and David pops one in. They’re snuff films… That took place in a motel room… that looks an awful lot like the one they’re staying in… Cue suspenseful music…
So begins a straight-up game of cat-and-mouse, with the Foxes on one side and Mason and two henchmen all dolled up like The Smileys on that MANHUNT video game on the other.
VACANCY is not really a horror movie. It’s a suspense flick that’s kinda-sorta like good ol’ Alfred used to make. And it’s high fuckin’ time, too. It’s been so long since one of these hit mainstream theatres that I’ve practically forgotten what they look like. VACANCY is drenched in seedy, shitty atmosphere, supplied liberally by PULP FICTION cinematographer Andrzej Sekula with dark shadows and low light. The dark areas hold secrets and menace, adding to the suspense.
I also like how VACANCY concerns itself with building tension and not with anatomical attention to gore. Now, I’m not gonna be the prick on the horror site who doesn’t like oozing, dripping, nasty bouts of viscera in his movies but sometimes it has less to do with scaring the audience or going for the gross-out and more with just wasting screentime. With some other movies it’s like JUST eating the lemon wedge and ignoring the shrimp you’re supposed to squeeze it over. And it works better this way anyhow. We hear a lot of screaming on the videotapes David watches, but we don’t see a whole lot. VACANCY knows that every person watching could imagine something infinitely worse than something that’s just plainly shown to us.
And VACANCY is fast as hell. Why is it eighty-six minutes? Because it didn’t need eighty-seven, smart-ass. All that screenwriter Mark L. Smith concerned himself with was THE MOMENT, which is a wise decision from where I was sitting. We don’t get to know the Foxes well at all, except for the bare essentials of who they are, what their relationship is, where they’re going, where their from and why. But seriously, do we need to hear them opine about their lives? That’ll just slow the movie down. Sure there’s a little bit of texture, but who gves a shit? And they wouldn’t soliloquize about their lives anyway.
We don’t get to know our killers either. There’s no backstory or motivation other than the fact that they sell those tapes they make. But ya know what? Good. I don’t really care as long as they pose a threat and act on it. ‘Cause Lord knows every time me and MY wife are in a shithole motel and the staff starts breaking out knives and cameras, I always stop and listen to the free complimentary expository Bad Guy monologue on WHY they’re trying to kill me. Hey, I take the USA TODAY at other places, too.
I give Beckinsale and Wilson plenty of shit because, well, their movies suck more often than not. Beckinsale has just the two stages of demure pissiness and Wilson seems incapable of saying anything other than “Aw, shucks” with a straight face. But these are actually advantages in VACANCY. Imagine Sean Penn and Naomi Watts EMOTING in a B-movie like this. Remember in THE MATRIX where Keanu was just plain ol’ Keanu, but that was okay because the script didn’t call for him to be anything else? It’s a lot like that. And hey! Katie and Lukie manage to look scared, which makes three facial expressions between the two of them.
But because Antal runs a tight and speedy ship, there is nothing permanent about VACANCY. Norman Bates lasts and endures throughout the decades because he was a character and not a cog in the Giant Plot Machine. You’ll find no such perks in this film, which just wants to set you on the edge of your seat and does so. You will not remember anything about VACANCY other than the fact that you were thrilled.
That’ll do, Nimrod. That’ll do.
3 out of 4
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