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List Price: $14.94 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 19457
Released: August 14, 2007 |
| Our Price: $2.99 |
| Used Price: $0.53 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
When David (Luke Wilson) and Amy Fox's (Kate Beckinsale) car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, they are forced to spend the night at the only motel around, with only the TV to entertain them... until they discover that the low-budget slasher videos they find in their room were all filmed in the very room they're sitting in. With hidden cameras now aimed at them... trapping them in rooms, crawlspaces, underground tunnels... and filming their every move, David and Amy must struggle to get out alive before they end up the next victims on tape.
Description of Vacancy:
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A confined setting is a useful tool for thriller-makers, and Vacancy is definitely boxed in: a rundown motel way, way off the Interstate, the kind of place where unsuspecting movie characters go to get stabbed to death in the shower. If Vacancy doesn't quite live up to its Hitchcockian forbears, at least it provides 80 minutes of well-designed mayhem. You know somebody's paying attention just from the opening credits, a clever vortex with pounding music by Paul Haslinger. Then we meet unhappy couple Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale, driving along in the dark and forced to stay at the Pinewood Motel after a car breakdown. There's a night man (Frank Whaley, decadent) in the tradition of Dennis Weaver's Touch of Evil gargoyle, but the real mess of trouble is waiting in room number 4. Director Nimrod Antal, who scored a stylish international hit with the Hungarian thriller Kontroll, squeezes maximum juice out of the Route 66 atmosphere of the motel, although the movie doesn't get under your skin the way Kontroll did. Wilson and Beckinsale are a little too marquee-namish for this kind of heavy-breathing work, and the script doesn't give them much to play with. But hey, it's not that kind of movie. Where it really belongs is on the top half of a drive-in double bill, or maybe as a nightmare-scenario TV movie from the Seventies. Either way, it works. --Robert Horton
Stills from Vacancy (click for larger image)
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Vacancy Reviews:
gotta depart from the editorial review a bit here 
2009-11-29 - it sorta works . for the couple to get (even a portion of) the drop on the baddies does not ring true . after having seen a very well constructed and compelling trailer for this film i'll admit i was really hooked . additionally , there is some good filmaking and are some well earned scares here . sadly , there is just no way i buy it could have gone down that way . every one on the many killers would have had to simultainiously "get sloppy" and start running around like a bunch of nincompoops . what , they'd never seen folks fight for their lives before ? mind you , i was rooting for the young couple , but the ways and means committee has stamped this film implusible and the antagonists collectively too stupid by half . i thought the implication was "this is not their first time" ? our heros would have had to be a lot more resourceful than writen and shown here . adequate .
EXCELLENT 
2009-11-28 - An upper class devorving couple gets stuck on the backroads and has to spend the night at a fleabag motel. In their room they find video tapes, made in the hotel by the front desk man. Smart, they figure out they are next.
Vacancy is basically a cat and mouse film around the motel, which is filled with trap doors and secret hatches. There is not a lot new in this film, but this is good.
The script is stripped lean to the elements of the chase, and the suprises come in how the couple gets away. There are no cheap tricks, and everything seems plausable.
This is classic good vs. evil horror, and for good horror, simplicity and formala, with a few twists, is all it takes.
Reccommended.
A quality and geniuely scary thriller! 
2009-10-19 -
David (Luke Wilson) and Amy (Kate Beckinsale) are a married couple in need of a place to stay as they are in the middle of nowhere. They stumble to a motel where they think they feel safe and more confortable as they have a TV with VCR to entertain them, but the videos shown are low budget slasher movies that actually are murder films. There's a secret about the motel that the owners are actually murderers who create snuff films for their pleasure, now David and Amy must find a way to escaped the motel from hell.
Intense and riviting psychological horror thriller from director Nimrod Antal and writer Mark L. Smith is a fun and very Alfred Hitchock-like suspenser. This one differs from the recent glut of torture flicks as it does focus on the plot and characterizations much like the original "SAW" movie but more to "Psycho" and 1980's underrated "Motel Hell". The film co-stars Ethan Embry and Frank Waley, it's a go-for-the-throat thriller that harkens back to the good old fashion psychological thriller days with suspense and twists.
This Blu-Ray gives a wonderful theatrical quality transfer on the image and terrific sound with a few extras like extended snuff films, featurette and deleted scenes.
very vacant in the shock department
2009-10-17 - how many times, hollywood?? when you advertise a flick like this based primarily on its shock value, you have to deliver some of the shock value you advertise! everybody knows the Saw movies started the recent influx and deluge of shock movies of this genre...but so many of the recent Saw rip-offs fail to even try to give up the torture and gruesome brutality that the original portrays so eloquently. this flick is such a blatant Hostel rip-off..all in the same vein as Saw...it advertises shock in the premise of a young couple getting caught in a hotel where people are making snuff films...you expect to see some of the snuff film stuff going on, and the movie just doesn't give it up! the couple sees a few momentary glimpses of a snuff film, then they spend the last hour and 15 minutes of the film trying to escape...with no torture, very little brutality...nothing but running away! kate beckinsale is a beautiful actress who does a good job at delivering the script she is given...luke wilson (who i most remember as his role as casey kelso in 'that 70s show') does a good job at giving us the role he is given...the couple is having problems, which is adequately portrayed in the opening 20 minutes of the flick...but ultimately, this is just a film about an innocent couple running away from a couple of jerks...with almost no shock value! luckily, this disc offers the extra feature of 10 minutes of the snuff film the couple was watching in their hotel room...a nice bonus feature on the dvd, but not enough to bump this dvd above the 3-star rating the flick deserves on its own merit...especially since the snuff film shots are seriously inadequate. if you like movies about innocent couples running away from jerks, you might rate this movie more highly than i did. there is some nice action and tension. like i said, it's not a bad action, drama flick...but i was looking for more. i wanted shock, torture and something that took me outside the box. this movie fails to deliver...it fails to deliver in a number of ways. sorry, but better luck next time.
4 Stars for Film, 0 Stars for Extended Snuff Films Feature
2009-09-17 - The film has the effective "creep" factor, impressive lighting and cinematography, and the great performance by Frank Whaley! The fact that it takes place on a rural byway at night preys upon one's innocence and vulnerabilities...effective suspense.
That said, the fact that there is a short "video" of "Mason's Video Picks: Extended Snuff Films" with NO apparent reason, i.e. discussing the psyche of those involved in snuff films OR any criminal's rehabilitation from such a crime OR the screenwriter's/director's thoughts on making a film involving said content....well, it is absolutely revolting!!! What is the point?? To JUST entertain! It is like watching a Special Features section from a movie involving a serial killer and it just being a video collage of murder after murder and that's it! Don't get me wrong: if it was peppered with humor as a Gag Reel or used as a Trailer that is COMPLETELY different. Context is everything: the snuff scenes in the movie are not gratuitous and shape the plot. Now I'm left wondering if the writer/director/producers are sick-in-the-head. WoW. That special feature isn't "special" at all....rather, disgusting.
