VACANCY

By
Shannon Onstot
Community Relations Manager
KUNV 91.5 FM
University of Nevada Las Vegas
email: smonstot@yahoo.com


 

 

Vacancy is the perfect example of what every horror movie should do if they want to please audiences, scare them a little then be forgotten completely as soon as viewers throw their empty popcorn buckets away. Vacancy is a generally good film with some great character development, very natural actors and a relatively good script, but it’s not edgy or original in any way, so it’s forgettable.

Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale play David and Amy Fox, a couple who is embarking on their last adventure together – a road trip through the mountains. Their marriage is on the rocks after their young son died in an accident, and they constantly bicker and blame each other over everything. Wilson and Beckinsale created good tension together as they were arguing, which made it needling but not annoying for the audience. Amy Fox is sleeping (because of a Prozac and Zoloft cocktail) in the car so David decides to take a shortcut when the interstate is backed up. He gets lost in the middle of nowhere and when he swerves to avoid hitting a raccoon, also manages to destroy their car.

They see a small gas station and pull up to find a young mechanic there (Ethan Embry). He can’t fix the car, but says it should work to get them to the next town, 30 miles away. Well, it doesn’t, so the tired and cranky couple has to walk back a mile to get back to the gas station. The mechanic has gone for the night, so they go next door to the Pinewood Motel to find a phone. Mason, the manager at the motel (Frank Whaley) is thoroughly creepy and seemingly dumb as a box of rocks, so the couple begins to get even angrier when they see they have no option but to stay the night.

Mason gives the couple the honeymoon suite, and within seconds things get creepy. Someone is calling the room incessantly and someone else is banging on the doors, but whenever David goes to see who’s there, no one is. Once he talks to the manager again, and the banging seems to go away, the couple relaxes and gets ready for bed. Like many Americans, David can’t sleep without a little television to calm him down. The cable is out, and he’s forced to watch a stack of tapes in the room. As he’s watching the horror movies, he slowly realizes that they were filmed in the room and they’re snuff films. Real ones.

The banging noises start again, and for a good half hour of the film the director builds up some really intensely scary moments as a group of killers tries to kill the couple and catch it on tape. David and Amy try every possible solution they can think of to escape. For once I never found myself thinking how stupid these people must be to go behind certain doors or try ridiculous plans. The plot was very well done, in that the things the protagonists were doing made sense, and I could even see myself doing them if I was in a similar situation. Problem is, this kind of plot makes it hard for a build-up and resolution to be creative. It doesn’t seem like the director took many risks, so the overall feeling of the film is nothing groundbreaking.

The best part of the film was it’s high-tension moments that didn’t rely on gore or intense violence to scare people. Some sort of twist or creative ending may have boosted the film in my mind and made it more memorable, I think. It’s so hard to truly scare audiences these days though, and Vacancy has some great jumpy moments and some well-done nail-biting tension, but nothing disturbing enough to make audiences want to stay away from rural motels.