vacancy

THE FLICK: Call it “torture-porn” or “sado-horror,” the genre pioneered by folks like Eli Roth, James Wan and Rob Zombie might have finally run its course with the poor box-office returns for Hostel 2. Still, there are a few movies left in the pipeline, like Saw VI this Halloween, and the debut of director Nimrod Antal’s hardcore Hitchcock-inspired thriller that puts name actors Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale in the sort of compromising positions you’d expect only desperate TV actors from the CW to accept. Stranded on a lonely backroad and arguing over their broken relationship, David and Amy are forced to stay the night at a questionable motel run by an unquestionably creepy manager (Frank Whaley). A stack of unlabeled video tapes on the dresser turns out to be a collection of snuff films, filmed in the very same room the unlucky couple now occupies. Monitored by cameras from every angle and cornered by a trio of masked psychopaths, husband and wife now have to work together to survive. The plot isn’t just deceptively simple, it’s downright sparse. That’s not a knock on Mark L. Smith’s script, which despite it’s brevity (85 minutes), takes its time revealing the couple’s backstory and leaves most of the explanations behind the motel staff’s motivations frighteningly vague. But that simplicity leads one to expect there will be more twists and turns than what the film eventually delivers, which is a pretty straightforward survival story told with a tad more restraint than the usual teen-marketed stuff. Antal’s Hungarian debut – the criminally ignored Kontroll – had a great sense of humor to go along with its overtly hyperactive style. Here, he makes excellent use of the confined setting with a Technicolor spectrum and streetlight-created shadows, but Vacancy’s unrelenting “bad vibes” and nasty disposition could have used a laugh or two to ease the tension. Ultimately, the film suffers from a case of “too much” and “not enough.” It’s disconcerting to watch Whaley, who manages to make the role of the “psycho” motel manager seem miraculously unique, repeatedly punch a star of Kate Beckinsale’s caliber in the face (even if it does happen off-screen). They all seem to playing down to the base exploitation level of the material, like “A”-movie actors trapped in a “B”-movie alternate dimension. Yet Vacancy has more than a few chilling moments, particularly leading up to the big snuff film revelation, from random knocks on the motel room door to the disturbing soundtrack coming from the manager’s office. The set-up itself is scarier than its eventual execution, but that doesn’t stop the film from delivering a few cheap thrills as good as any one night stand in a sleazy motel. THE FEATURES: Perhaps as punishment for its lackluster theatrical performance, Vacancy isn’t exactly loaded with special features. The deleted scenes consists of a showy alternate opening shot (think Goodfellas-style steadicam work) and a discarded jump scare involving a raccoon. Checking In: Behind the Scenes of Vacancy runs 21-minutes and presents a pretty standard array of interviews and on-set footage. And for those with a taste for the distasteful, you can watch the snuff films (presented in the movie on a 17-inch Zenith) in their entirety. The Blu-ray transfer itself looks genuinely impressive, working wonders with the deep blacks and supersatured color scheme. Along with an uncompressed PCM audio track, Sony proves once again that they’re mastering some of the best looking hi-def material in the business.