Vacancy

Written by Tom Clare in Film Reviews, Friday 27 February, 2009

Released: 2007
Genre: Horror
Certificate: 15
Country: US
Director: Nimrod Antal
Format: DVD

Vacancy has to be among the sleeper hits of 2007. On the surface, it’s another outing for the slightly oversubscribed drive-in/motel horror sub-genre, but adds a couple of new twists added to the well-worn formula, it really comes good. The cast put in strong showings and this coupled with fine camera work and impressive set-design allows for a high level of tension and a gripping atmosphere – just what you’d want from a horror film then.

Things kick off with troubled couple David (Luke Wilson) and Amy Fox (Kate Beckinsale) bickering their way towards an inevitable divorce as they drive through the night. David, in an attempt to take a shortcut, only succeeds in getting the pair lost in the darkness, and when their car picks an inopportune moment to give up the ghost, they eventually decide to call it a night after discovering a motel off the beaten track.

After meeting the obligatory creepy owner, the couple are given a room – and are seemingly the only residents in the whole complex. Things start to become rather sinister however when they happen across some gruesome snuff videos in their apartment, apparently filmed in the very room in which they’re situated. The couple discover there are indeed a number of cameras monitoring them from within, and soon the masked killers in the video appear and it becomes David and Amy’s job to fashion an escape plan, and outwit those who are watching their every move.

Vacancy successfully instils a healthy dose of paranoia and claustrophobia in the viewer and maintains it for much of the running time. The motel rooms are true to form though the dingy lighting and voyeur-like camera shots help sustain a suffocating atmosphere whereby you feel the central characters are distinctly vulnerable, as much generated by what the relatively close shots don’t show as what they do.

The lead figures develop nicely over the course of the film too. The early insults David and Amy throw at each other seem cheap and petty, and the lack of empathy you’ll share, particularly with Amy who is a moody and cold character, is a concern early on as you wonder if Wilson and Beckinsale are really at home in this sort of setting. However, the two use their horror-themed journey to reconcile where appropriate, and by the second half not only are the two offering noticeably more emotionally-driven performances, you’ll find you care significantly more for the welfare of the pairing in the closing stages.

Sure, it plays on horror clichés – mechanics in masks; rat-filled, tight tunnels and phone-calls that, rather than leading to the police, go back instead to the villain of the piece, but perhaps more relevant to the horror fan is how effectively it carries these tricks off. In an hour and a half, you get a beginning that credibly sets the scene and fleshes out the main protagonists; a middle that offers plenty of fear and scares; and an end that is both tantalising in what it leaves unfinished and riveting in its execution. In many ways then, it’s the perfect rental.

 

Leave a Reply