HORROR; 1hr 25min
STARRING: Luke Wilson, Kate Beckinsale
Horror show: Beckinsale and Wilson
Call it a case of unfair preconceptions, but Luke Wilson and the horror genre looked like square-peg material to me. Kate Beckinsale, sure: anyone from Underworld can handle hell on Earth. But Legally Blonde, My Super Ex-Girlfriend doofus Wilson? So much for preconceptions. The actor does just fine as regular guy David, who checks into a fleabag, nowheresville motel with his estranged wife, Amy (Beckinsale), only to make the horrifying discovery that their squalid room has been the set for a series of snuff movies. Faced with an almost certain, barbaric death, Amy and David must outwit their masked attackers.
As directed by Nimród Antal, Mark L. Smith’s screenplay is lean, honed and scarifying in the ghastly, nonsensical way of a protracted nightmare. How to rationalise animal rage whose chief incentive is to kill? Vacancy doesn’t aspire to rationalise. Bloodlust is simply the engine that drives it — at a ripper, ferocious speed that scorches everything in its wake.
