Dir. Nimrod Antal, US, 2006, 85mins
Cast: Luke Wilson, Kate Beckinsale, Frank Whaley, Ethan Embry
Review by Matthew Rodgers
In the “Cinematic Cookbook” under the thriller section you will find the following ingredients for Vacancy. Take the doughy base of Psycho, on to which add a sprinkling of Kurt Russell vehicular chase film Breakdown, a thick layer of Saw, and finally stir together with any number of your chosen favourite genre offerings. Consume for little over 70 minutes and you have a surprising, completely filling Friday night shocker.
To the films benefit it is a simple premise that never gets ideas above its station. A relatively quick set-up tells us that David (Wilson) and Amy (Beckinsale) are a troubled couple making one last marital journey, stupidly along a dark road in the middle of nowhere. It’s not difficult for the viewer to see that this path leads to trouble, in their case in the form of a freaky motel owner, over-friendly mechanics, rattling doors, and a mattress factory worth of spring wound tension. Originality is not Vacancy’s strong point.
Director Nimrod Antal is extremely blasé about his influence for his taut tale of terror. The opening credits are pure Hitchcock, the off kilter framing of the couples early exchanges are also reminiscent of the master of suspense, and even the title music hints at Bernard Hermann’s iconic score, but he deserves his own plaudits for the way the couples peril is expertly set-up with unsettling effect before that genuine anxiety gives way to organised chaos both narratively and in film construct.
Of the victims, which are always important to empathise with in films of this nature, we are asked to care for Wilson’s emasculated everyman, and he is successfully appealing in way that makes you root for his survival; the same can’t be said for Beckinsale’s wooden turn as his cold hearted wife whose third reel heroics are completely out of character but completely in sync with the final reel failings. Frank Whaley’s turn as the Norman Bates lite motel owner, surrounded in a Taxidermists pic ‘n’ mix is effectively creepy before a lack of real motivations behind his method neutralise his threat as the films bogeyman.
It’s definitely worth “checking in” to “check out” Vacancy because it is a punchy, sometimes predictable, but never dull film that never outstays in welcome in this summer of bloated blockbusters.
