Vacancy (2007)

Anyone else out there ever rent a room from an isolated roadside motel in the middle of the night? If so then you probably understand the debate that often follows once in the room, one that tries to decide whether or not you are actually going to stay in the creepy room or just get back in the car and continue forward, the seemingly unstoppable need for sleep that brought you to the motel in the first place suddenly having been nullified due to the surroundings. Many believe this fear of roadside motels is the result of horror movies, but having studied history I have a strong belief that it is actually the long held fear of roadside motels that resulted in the horror movies. Throughout much of human history travelers have had to choose their lodgings carefully while on the road between destinations, the threat of seedy motel owners or nearby guest always a possibility. Adding to this fear was the frequency with which travelers never reached their destination. Most of the time these unfortunate people were probably the victims of outlaws who prowled the roadsides looking for coin and other goods. Other times they might have just gotten bogged down by weather and eventually succumbed to the surrounding elements. Whatever the case stories on what happened would naturally rise up and since no one really knew for sure what happened, speculation would rise up, some of it undoubtedly pointing at that one place where people should never attempt to stay the night.

In Vacancy the place where no one should stay the night is the Pinewood Motel that sits in the mountains alongside a back road that gets very little traffic, and thus, provides few customers. Needing to supplement their income, and also because they are crazy, the owner of the motel and the two employees from the gas station next door, create snuff films with the guest that stay the night. Fear followed by the kill is their theme for the films, and, given the fact that they have managed to stay in business despite the infrequent guest / victims, one has to assume the films are pretty popular amongst the snuff crowd. One also has to assume they are very good at keeping what they do a secret because if they weren’t the police would eventually have caught on because even if friends and family didn’t know the route being traveled or where the victims stopped for the night, a pattern would have had to have developed over time, one that listed the road itself as a dangerous place to be. Or maybe one hasn’t, the vast expanse of land and the sheer randomness of taking such a route when a perfectly good expressway or interstate is present making it impossible to pinpoint an area for the disappearances. Enter David and Amy Fox, a bickering couple that is in the middle of a divorce who are returning home in the middle of the night after staying with Amy’s parents who were celebrating their anniversary. Due to an accident that has backed up the interstate, David has taken the two into the mountain back roads, his goal being to go around the accident. One never really knows if his plan is a good one because an hour or so into the journey he swerves to miss a raccoon which causes a strange noise in the engine. Fearing something is wrong he pulls into the only gas station around, which is a mistake because the employee does something while under the hood that causes the car to break down a mile away. Unable to fix the car until the morning the two decide to stay in the seedy guestless motel next to the gas station, one that they quickly realize is a death trap.

Aside from the last few minutes of the film which just didn’t work for me (no one lays on the ground unconscious for a long time after being stabbed in the lower gut and then simply wakes up), I thought Vacancy was a very good horror movie, one that was a huge relief from the endless cycle of story-less torture porn films and remakes that clogged up the horror genre during the post millennium years. Unfortunately I seem to be part of a minority in this appreciation and enjoyment of the movie. I don’t know why, but horror audiences just didn’t like this one -- at least this was the impression I got then and still get today. Because of this I can’t help but think there is a huge disconnect in what the horror genre is supposed to do and what today’s audiences want it to do. Blood and guts rather than terror and fear are what they crave, and because the latter requires skill and the former doesn’t, movie studios are happy to deliver such films. I, and most of the horror fans I associate with, however, will never be satisfied with such films and will continue to count down the days when the rest of the horror world tires of such garbage. Until then we will appreciate films like Vacancy, which, though far from perfect, at least attempt to go back and make something scary rather than just gross. And for those fans who enjoy being disturbed, but make the mistake of thinking this can only happen when grossed out, take a look at the scene where Amy Fox is being beaten to death off camera, or go back and watch the dinner scene in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Both are incredibly disturbing moments in film history, yet both show very little because the film makers knew that something implied but unseen is far more effective than those scenes that leave nothing to the imagination.