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List Price: $19.94 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 13613
Released: January 20, 2009 |
| Our Price: $11.58 |
| Used Price: $2.41 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Experience the gruesome beginnings of Mr. Smith and his hotel of horrors in this terrifying prequel to Vacancy, starring Agnes Bruckner (Murder by Numbers). Suspecting only a night of hard beds and tacky décor, Caleb, his sexy new fiancée Jessica and his sarcastic best friend Tanner, check into the Meadow View Inn. They have no idea that it is not just another lonely motel, but a horrific trap where guests are brutally tortured and murdered while the sadistic maniac Mr. Smith and his greedy accomplices film the grisly slayings for profit. Caught in a deadly game or cat and mouse, the three young friends now must fight to survive.
Description of Vacancy 2: The First Cut:
"Make sure you get it on camera!" That's the creepy mantra of the killers in Vacancy 2: The First Cut, a prequel to 2007's Vacancy. And why not a prequel? The premise of Vacancy, with its motel room rigged with video cameras (to film the murders of the unsuspecting boarders), was already in place at the beginning of that movie. So here's the backstory. One of the killers from the first film (played by Scott G. Anderson) is back, helping refine the system of instant snuff filmmaking, along with help from two mutton-headed Peeping Toms (David Moscow and Brian Klugman). Their main target this time is a trio of travelers: snuggly lovers Agnes Bruckner and Trevor Wright, and obnoxious third wheel Arjay Smith. Among the film's decent surprises (and there are a few of them) is the fact that the body count doesn't go in exactly the order you might suspect--and the whole movie actually begins with a pretty good fakeroo in that department. Nothing in the picture, which was penned by Vacation scribe Mark L. Smith, is anything more than basic chase-'n-slash, but director Eric Bross keeps the thing moving swiftly along. It also has the advantage of a real actress, Bruckner, who was so good in Blue Car as a teenager. Vacancy 2 went straight to DVD, and one couldn't make a case for theatrical release; but as straight-to-DVD goes, it's cut (sorry) above the average. --Robert Horton
Vacancy 2: The First Cut Reviews:
So Bad I Can't Remember What It's About 
2009-06-04 - (1.) You check into the same cheesy motel where a dozen other movies with the same cliched theme have been a dozen times in the past 40 years. You would think someone would actually be creative and make it a 5-star high tower in Singapore or something.
(2.) You get the same obviously weird clerk that has been in the same movies.
(3.) You get the same torture and fake blood and fake screams from those same movies.
(4.) Finally, you get the same "let's chase the outnumbered girl around awhile" so she can run in circles, scream a little and look very dumb doing so.
(5.) Bad guy, badly wounded (by fire no less), escapes, but that night by himself clears out all of the bodies (including blood soak into the soil and floors) and removes all other evidence and leaves no tracks or traces to a point that police believe nothing has happened - sure!
(6.) End of movie.
Falls Short Of The Original, But Still Good In Its Own Right 
2009-05-05 - Vacancy 2: The First Cut follows very close to the original, with the main exception being that it's a prequel where we can see the beginnings of the whole motel-as-deathtrap theme. In place of Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson we have a trio - engaged couple Agnes Bruckner and Trevor Wright, and their friend Arjay Smith - that checks into the secluded motel where the psychotic staff runs their own real-life snuff video outfit, utilizing hidden cameras to film the terrorizing and killing of the hotel's occupants.
In the first Vacancy, the premise was deadly effective and seemed believable; here, it comes off contrived. Part of the problem is that it's a prequel and showing how it all came about just felt forced. Prequels often have a hard time because they often over-explain what didn't need to be explained; in horror prequels it often tries to tear away the shroud of mystery that's remained even after the villain or phenomenon had their origins partially revealed in the original. In Exorcist - The Beginning (Widescreen Edition), it worked because when they went into the backstory that had been hinted at in the original, they retained the element of the unknown by hinting at a much broader backstory way further in the past. In Ginger Snaps Back - The Beginning, it added in a much more otherworldy air of eeriness than its predecessors had. In Vacancy 2, we learn that the motel was originally a set up whereby sleazy employees secretly filmed the sexual encounters of tenants and sold the tapes on the black market; as their profit margin begins to fall they accidentally film a murder in one of the rooms, and subsequently they work out an arrangement with the killer that he keep on this track and they film their murders, switching the nature of their black market product to what they hope will be a more lucrative field. This whole angle, in contrast to the first movie, felt contrived and almost campy to me. From then on (this set-up part all gets handled in the first 15 minutes or so) the movie rapidly gets better. It never manages to match the scares and razor-taut tension of the original, but it's pretty good in its own right. The ending, however, didn't feel like it completely synced with what we know comes after it.
Alright, there's the negatives. Here's the positives: judged on its own merits, this is actually a fine horror thriller. While I said it didn't match the scares and tension of the first, that was an awfully high bar, and Vacancy 2 manages some suspense and fright of its own. It's more violent this time (most of the really vicious carnage in the first one was seen in relatively short glimpses - it was a masterpiece when it came to using measured doses of gore and brutality to suggest much more and really ratchet up the fear of what was coming around the next corner), although how much it helps the movie is up for debate. The individual scenes do raise the fright factor a bit, but it doesn't sustain its tension long enough, and after well-done examples of very brutal torture horror like Turistas (Unrated Edition) and most of the Saw series, it didn't have as much shock impact as it might have. Scenes like the victims's desperate flight into the woods, trying to hide in the dark from pursuers who know the forest much better than they do, proved more effective though. The acting in the film was well-done all-around, with frequent horror heroine Agnes Bruckner standing out as usual. The special effects were good and so was the camerawork.
Vacancy 2 had the same writer and the same producers as the original (different director, though), but I feel they may have had more success if they'd skipped the prequel aspect and had it as, say, a copycat situation in a different motel somewhere. Or just done a different horror movie with the theme of an isolated motel, but not attached directly to Vacancy. I'm a big fan of sequels and series - often the more chapters the better - but Vacancy was one horror movie that I'm not sure was really the right pick for a follow-up. It wrapped up pretty definatively, and its lack of a clearly spelled-out origin of its central premise didn't really need to be filled in.
I'm making this movie sound worse than it was. Judged by itself, it's a good horror movie that's definately worth watching, if not necessarily buying. Well made and never boring; I just personally felt it didn't live up to the first one.
Vacancy 2 dvd 
2009-04-17 - Thanks for my recent order.I was very pleased with my item.It was just what i ordered.It also came in a very timely manner.I would and will definatley buy from Amazon.
Entertaining Sequel 
2009-04-05 - I enjoyed "Vacancy 2"
and found it to be quite believable .I also love that scream queen vixen Agnes Bruckner was the heroine.
I actually liked it as well as the first one. there was plenty of action and some good kill scenes nothing over the top but it's very well done.
Your not going to find lots of gore but you will see believable kills and it's not mindless teenagers you don't care about being killed but well esablished likeable characters except for one at the beginning we know nothing about , so that makes it all the more disturbing but effective to watch.
Again the powerplay at the end of the movie is really a good one and makes for a tense and exciting watch.
not worth more than a dollar to rent it.... 
2009-03-13 - The first one was pretty good- this one on the other hand was horrible. I wouldn't rent it unless you are really board and can rent it from the dollar rental machine.
