| WITH HOSTEL INTENT? : Nimrod Antal's 'Vacancy' [6/10] |
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| Sunday, 10 June 2007 | |
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Audiences seeking stomach-churning nastiness in the Hostel mode - and both trailer and poster hint in that direction - may be somewhat disappointed by Vacancy, an 85-minute shocker that's short but decidedly not sweet. It's the second feature from director Antal, whose darkly Budapest-underground black-comedy/thriller Kontroll (2003) was one of Hungary's more successful recent exports. Indeed, although the LA-born Antal has lived in California for most of his life, it's tempting to regard Vacancy as an eastern-European 'response' to Hostel. Because whereas Eli Roth's delirious, deadpan 2005 gore-fest (sequel imminent!) painted Slovakia as a den of amoral psychopaths eager to snare and slaughter hapless young 'western' tourists for financial gain, Antal and his scriptwriter Mark L Smith remind us there's no shortage of similarly nightmarish dangers lurking in the (vacant?) heart of the United States. This is a fundamentally old-fashioned cautionary (and, indeed, reactionary) tale which warns that, whenever possible, travellers should avoid detouring into areas not yet colonised by the reassuring forces of Big Business. Our protagonists/surrogates are a well-heeled thirtysomething couple, Amy (Kate Beckinsale, slumming) and David Fox (Luke Wilson), forced by unfortunate circumstance to overnight at the Pinewood, an old-school, run-down, decidedly non-chain motel in the proverbial back of beyond. Amy's reaction to the crummy 'Honeymoon Suite' (an ironic touch, considering the bickering couple are in the throes of divorce) makes it clear she's accustomed to more salubrious accommodations. But it soon transpires that cockroaches and grimy sheets are the least of their problems: the motel's creepy manager Mason (Frank Whaley) has been supplementing income by shooting explicit 'snuff' movies (in which the participants are tortured and murdered in grisly fashion) on the premises using an array of hidden cameras - and Amy and David are lined up to be his next unwitting 'stars'... Antal pulls quite a clever trick with Vacancy - one which enables him to remain within the confines of the '15' certificate. He restricts the most upsetting and gruesome imagery to the fleeting glimpses we get of Mason's snuff footage - elsewhere, the picture is notable (and, in the current gore-hungry climate, somewhat refreshing) in its careful restraint. On one level this is a nod back to the 'daddy' (or rather the 'mother') of the "motel hell" sub-genre: Hitchcock's Psycho, where we never quite saw a knife make contact with flesh. There are countless other nods to the Hitchcock picture (even the opening titles and music are overtly 'Hitchcockian') but Antal and Smith are at least as reverent in homaging another seminal classic from 1960, the movie which arguably pioneered the entire snuff 'concept': Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (filmed and partly set at Pinewood studios, of course.) Needless to say, Vacancy is very small beer indeed alongside such illustrious antecedents (there are countless major and minor plot-holes along the way; despite numerous 'boo!'-style jolts, there's disappointingly little the way of claustrophobia, suspense or genuine tension; the ending is rug-pullingly abrupt) and we're much closer to the uneven level of more recent motel-centric thrillers such as, say, Roadkill, From Dusk Till Dawn, Identity and The Devil's Rejects. The fact that there are only two protagonists (disregarding a sympathetic, doomed cop who shows up halfway through), meanwhile, severely limits the amount and degree of peril into which they can realistically be placed before the climax, which is perhaps why so many modern-day slasher pics fill their cast with interchangeable cannon-fodder youth to be picked off one by one. If nothing else, however, Vacancy stands out from the pack by dealing solely with adults - indeed, the Foxes are still grieving over the death of their infant child - and by explicitly avoiding several of the more threadbare cliches of the post-Halloween stalk-and-slash tradition. The cinematography by semi-retired Polish veteran Andrzej Sekula meanwhile adds an incongruously classy touch to the fundamentally sleazy subject-matter, his pin-sharp visuals a crucial element in a film which revolves so intently around the power and impact of the recorded, moving image. Neil Young 28th May, 2007 (publication of review held until week of release due to distributor embargo) VACANCY : [6/10] : USA 2007 : Nimrod ANTAL : 85 mins (BBFC timing) seen at Sony screening-room, Soho, London (UK), 23rd May 2007 - press show with thanks to Rich Cline and Anna Whelan |
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