Vacancy is a bore

I'm beginning to realise exactly how Hollywood greenlights horror movies.

 

The good ones these days, of course, are all either remakes of moody Korean/Japanese chillers or based on novels written by a certain Mr Stephen King, the pulpfiction Poe who churns scares out with prolific ease.

 

As for the rest of them, it's all about one basic concept, pitched to executives as scary. 'They did an eerie phone film, lets make one about a haunted keyboard,' or 'how about a summer camp built over an ancient burial ground?' You get my drift.

 

The studio executives don't care, except about the logistics. 'You mean the whole film can be set in one room?' or 'You mean there are only three talking characters?' they ask, thrilled at the possibility of a ridiculously low budget and the possible potential of a Saw-like sleeper hit.

 

Once this one hook is established, the scriptwriters try to squeeze in some cliché-ridden meaning to the proceedings. Sometimes, as in the case of the pathetic Hostel films, they manage to slather the scenes with enough gore to distract you from the fact that the Tarantino-endorsed films are pretty damned bad. The rest of the time, they plain suck.

 

Why are we talking Writing Hollywood Horror in such rambling, generalising mood? Because it's a more entertaining -- if somewhat disillusioning -- topic of conversation than the patently boring Vacancy, starring Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale.

 

Here, we have a bickering couple, arguing bitterly as they drive cluelessly on some interstate highway. Lost, and with their car breaking down, they locate a run-down motel. With no garages open till the morning, their only reasonable option is to spend the night there, and so, with keys to the cockroach-friendly honeymoon suite ('at no extra charge') they head in.

 

Initially, the film's problem is with pace. In its urge to realistically convey a tired, dying marriage, Vacancy chokes us with humdrum dialogue and a sluggish actionless narrative, looking stagey despite earnest background-score less scenes, simply because we're smack-bang

in ClicheLand Central. And so it is that two fun actors find themselves in this trainwreck, struggling to make the cheap sets look believable.

 

Finally, once our couple flops onto the filthy bed, the scares start. Ah, so are we getting to something? Not really. Phones ring, doors are pounded upon. Spirits or drunk bikers in the next room? Audiences, mostly comprised of collegeboys hoping their dates would get a fright, are yawning by now as the couple finds a set of snuff films on video, and realise that the room they're in doubles up as the sordid set.

 

They're being filmed.

 

Yeah, whatever. Thing is, even before the scares get scary, the mask drops. The filmmakers spell out that the danger is mortal and -- we realise as the film goes on -- pretty darned incompetent mortals, at that. Loopholes emerge as randomly as trapdoors and passageways our lucky leading pair constantly stumble upon.

 

The one I'd single out, ignoring all possible nitty-gritty, is that if you're a murdering bunch of videography-obsessed maniacs using one motel as your mousetrap, killing a cop checking the place out might mean you're suicidal enough to start filming yourself, instead of your guests.

 

Horror is always about suspension of disbelief. We don't really believe in videotapes that could kill us in a week, but for the time that we're in the theatre, we want to. We want to believe in the monsters under the bed, and that's what makes it all fun.

 

Some of the scariest movies are unimaginably silly, but so long as it makes us skip a beat every now and then, we're fine with it. This one, however, is just a bore.

 

Vacancy is as blank as its title.

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