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Vacancy (Frank's take)
01/07/2007 . Source: Frank Ochieng 
The film's generic title may be called Vacancy but it echoes that very same sentiment as well-there's nothing worth checking in for regarding this empty, half-hearted horror flick. Woefully tedious, unoriginal and cheaply executed, Vacancy is about as scary and random as a facelift procedure performed in downtown Beverly Hills. This flimsy fright fable is trivial and trite at best. Buy Vacancy in the USA - or Buy Vacancy in the UK  The surprising aspects about the lameness behind Vacancy are based on two specific factors-the director and the leading stars of this banal boofest.
Filmmaker Nimrod Antal, whose 2003 eye-catching entry Kontroll was an unassuming underground cult hit that had stimulating and stylish appeal attached to its pedigree, lets his guard down with this piece of meagre material that couldn't convince a blind woodpecker from chipping away at an aging tree stump. The imagination behind this clichéd-ridden creep show is virtually non-existent. Plus, what are talented leads Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson toiling around in a listless scare piece that wastes their time and ours? Dank, dull and dim-witted, Vacancy revels in its face-paced plotting and slick-looking editing cuts. However, that's not nearly enough filmmaking trickery to excuse this minimal and mundane goose bump gag from choking on its arbitrary and drab-induced presentation.
Screenwriter Mark L. Smith is just as guilty as Antal's dreary direction for concocting an aimless and absurd story that has been lifted from far more productive and passable blueprints about menacing motels and the mayhem that predictably occurs. Naturally, Vacancy tries to riff on a modern-day Psycho but fails miserably in his Hitchcockian copycat mode.
Usually films about tortured souls warrant some kind of psychological landscape. The interminable dribble in Vacancy has no such clue as to claim such depth or dimension. Instead, Antal's 80-minute butcher shop is convincingly slight and serves no purpose other than to end up as just another throwaway thriller waiting to sit in someone's video library tucked away in obscurity.
Wilson and Beckinsale star as David and Amy Fox, a conflicted married couple that happen to be travelling in the early hours of the morning. Not only are they bickering but their car decides to break down leaving them stranded in a middle of nowhere. The Foxes have no choice but to high tail it to a local dilapidated motel named Pinewood so that they can rest up and take care of business first thing in the morning.
Little do David and Amy realize is that Pinewood Motel's proprietor (Frank Whaley) is a twisted individual with a sordid agenda in mind-he likes to victimize his guests courtesy of his voyeuristic tendencies where taping and torturing his patrons is an ominous treat. Yes, the motel's morbid manager and his bizarre associates cherish the notion of snuffing out their bedroom subjects via hidden cameras in an attempt to heighten their jollies. As expected, the troubled tandem of David and Amy will soon learn what it is like to be a complicated item on electronic display.
How will the Foxes take to being made unwilling "movie stars" in this motel's menacing movie matinee? Can the villainous motel overseer continue to seek his passionate perversion over helpless bedroom prey?
Antal is sold on the pseudo-sensationalistic foundation of his creepy melodrama but the shock value is wasted on trashy titbits that are trudged out for methodical show-and-tell. The spontaneous killing of couples never really capture the campy or corrosive vibes of this silly-minded slaughterhouse session that goes no where particularly interesting with the synthetic strife being put forth. Smith's script scratches the surface of absurdity as the movie has little to convey besides distracting dark shadowy images and pesky rodents running around on cue.
As the married folks gone awry, both Wilson and Beckinsale are bland and inconsequential. We're never moved or challenged by their emotional estrangement. The fact that they get caught up in the weirdness that persists at Pinewood Motel is upstaged by the fact that the sadistic ritual of snuffing out human guinea pigs appears quite uneventful.
As the resident evildoer that oversees the titillating trysts, Whaley's tawdry portrayal as the maladjusted motel manager is a carbon copy of every off-kilter character you've seen numerous times before. It may not be saying much but Whaley somewhat redeems this wreck of a movie more so than so-called headliners Beckinsale and Wilson.
Suffice to say there's not much genuine debauchery behind the check-in desk in Vacancy.
Frank Ochieng
© Frank Ochieng 2007
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