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Vacancy (2007)
Director: Nimród Antal
Movie review
From Time Out Chicago
A quietly credible portrait of a failed marriage that morphs fluidly into a noisy horror movie, Vacancy skillfully updates a classic setup. Their marriage on the rocks, David (Wilson) and Amy (Beckinsale) get lost and the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. After a hike to the nearest motel, the soon-to-be-divorced couple find themselves in a bug-infested “honeymoon suite” with peeling wallpaper, brown water and decade-old TV listings. Spying a pile of videotapes, David pops one in and soon realizes that it’s a snuff film—shot in the very room where they’re staying. Director Antal captures the palpable claustrophobia of a bad relationship with jarring, fragmented images that often isolate Wilson or Beckinsale’s face in a mirror, along with frequent, effective use of close-ups; indeed, Vacancy is one of the most visually interesting mainstream horror movies in quite some time. Wilson’s Texas drawl nicely tempers his often acerbic dialogue, and Beckinsale, alternately bitchy and vulnerable, is far less stiff than usual. The film’s final two thirds meld the values of the traditional psychological chiller (in keeping with an opening-credits nod to Psycho) with the tactics of contemporary jolt-laden shockfests that work directly on the viewer’s central nervous system. Not exactly groundbreaking, Vacancy nevertheless shows a possible way forward for the beleaguered Hollywood horror genre.Author: Joshua Land
Time Out Chicago Time Out Chicago
Cast & crew
Director: Nimród Antal
Producer: Hal Lieberman
Cast: Luke Wilson, Kate Beckinsale, Frank Whaley, Ethan Embry full cast
Duration: 85 mins
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