Vacancy

**/****     VACANCY (R)

Luke Wilson’s Hollywood career began with the lead role in 1996’s Bottle Rocket, which was co-written by Luke’s older brother Owen and director Wes Anderson. But while Owen Wilson became a household name through his apperances in major studio comedies like Meet the Parents, Wedding Crashers and You, Me and Dupree, Luke Wilson continues to bounce around different genres attempting to find his niche. Wilson takes on his first leading role in a scare flick in 2007, entitled Vacancy.

David (Wilson) and Amy Fox (Kate Beckinsale) are a struggling married couple following the accidental death of their son, whose car breaks down late one night on an isolated highway on their way towards visiting Amy’s family. The young couple decide to seek assistance with their vehicle in the morning, and elect to stay in a remote hotel they passed along the highway about a mile before their vehicle troubles began.

Unable to get the television in the motel room to work, David begins to watch video cassettes left on top of the VCR in the room by the motel’s owner Mason (Frank Whaley). But it turns out the snuff films left in the room are actually homemade tapes of a murderous rampage that occured in the very same room the Fox’s are staying in. Once they notice the same video cameras still located in their room, David and Amy attempt to find ways to outsmart their would-be killers while those killers continue to watch their every move.

A stylistic thriller that relies more on suspense and less on gore, Vacancy is far more intriguing and appealing than the common torture flicks of today’s movie making world, but the overall lack of storytelling serves only as a detriment to the picture. The characters of David and Amy are developed nicely in the beginning with some little details about their relationship hinted at, but also left ambiguous for futher character development later in the story. Unfortunately, the audience remains even more uncertain to the movie’s main characters at the end of the movie as they do at the start of the film.

The script, written by first-time screenwriter Mark Smith, also makes the character of Mason and those behind the impending terror to the Fox’s indistinct and obscure, never once offering a reason or a motive for why this madness is occuring. Smith’s insistence on using several genre cliches like the withdrawn couple driving the broken-down vehicle on a removed path that leads them towards a solitary hotel takes away any fresh and unique feel the picture could have had.

Director Nimrod Antal does a good job at establishing an overall creepy vibe from the start, and once the thrills begin, they are fast and exciting thanks to some tight editing and tight pacing. Wilson and Beckinsale (Click, Underworld: Evolution) also do a decent job of holding your interest, despite their lack of development. Neither of them turn in a standout performance, but they still manage to work well with the material they are given.

Like this year’s earlier film Disturbia, Vacancy steals heavily from a specific Alfred Hitchcock suspense picture, but the filmmakers behind this film only manage to deliver a movie slightly better than the other recent efforts made in this troubled genre.