Vacancy (2007)
A creepy film could be made from Vacancy’s premise, maybe Polanski at his sickest, or George Sluizer from the original The Vanishing. (Although Sluizer is also repsonsible for the god awful American remake of The Vanishing so who knows.) I thought everyone knew this, but judging from just ok horror movies like Vacancy they obviously don’t. The mundane, the obvious, the normal, these things are scary.
A motel that specializes in snuff films is scary, but a motel that looks like the bastard heathen offspring of the Bates Motel and the flop house in Eaten Alive is NOT scary. No one would stop here, because its OBVIOUS. Make the motel a sweet little mom and pop store with a very kick ass continental breakfast and you’ve instantly racheted up the tension by five clicks.
To borrow from Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, a great horror film gives you the uneasy impression that its creator is authentically deranged. Vacancy, like most modern horror movies, gives you the impression that its creator has watched a lot of other, better movies whose creators were authentically deranged. There’s nothing at stake in Vacancy, because we feel safe; the film plays by the same, boring, bullshit rules, and, the one time the film breaks those rules, it takes it back and apologizes for the indiscretion.
Vacancy is competent, which puts it ahead of two thirds of what constitutes your typical horror film, but, even that is a liability in the end. The film may provoke you to say “cool shot” here and there, but it doesn’t raise your pulse. It barely has a pulse of its own.
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