Two-Star Motel

Sunday was actually a double feature at the movies for me -- after I saw Fracture, I went to see Vacancy.

Unlike Fracture, I'd seen a trailer for this movie ahead of time. And it had made the movie look like it could be pretty good. But it also left me wondering if there could really be an entire film sustained by the simple gimmick -- a couple finds themselves in a sleazy motel room stocked with snuff tapes of other people murdered in the very same room, and proceeds to be terrorized themselves.

Well, one way they dealt with that concern was by keeping the movie very short, under an hour-and-a-half, in fact. Another way they freshened things up was to break with some of the elements that have now become "tradition" in these types of movies:

Instead of a young couple of high school or college students (or older actors pretending to be such) shown happily living it up, this movie focused on an older couple on the brink of a divorce.

Instead of casting Kate Beckinsale in another of her long string of "kicking serious ass" roles, she plays "the helpless woman" in this film (and does it fairly well). So while the character adhered rather closely to type, the casting of it was very much against type.

MINOR SPOILER ON THIS ONE. Skip this paragraph if you want to avoid it. At the conclusion of the film, the filmmakers pass by a few opportunities to put in the "one last scare" moment that always pops up in slasher movies.

In all, the movie comes off a little like a version of Hostel, but done better. More focused, more realistic, more stylized, more about the terror than the gore.

But... it's not that much better a version of Hostel. Because while they improved on the "slasher thriller" genre in ways like I mentioned above, they fell into just as many traps. Selectively dumb heroes. Universally dumber villains. Logic problems in the story that just seem to multiply when you start to pick at them.

Despite having better ingredients than some other similar films, it still just isn't that entertaining. I rate it a C+.