"Well, see. Blue's dead. Frank's divorced. I lost my house. Nicole thinks I'm a total jackass. And now we got nine kids who are gonna get expelled from school, and you're not even gonna help them."
-- Mitch Martin from Old School
"Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were goin' all the way. Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole fuckin' program."
-- Captain Benjamin L. Willard from Apocalypse Now
The great joke is that Vacancy gave me a lot to think about while watching it. I had no idea it was going to be Two For The Road meets Breakdown with a touch of Hostel. I saw it with a crowd of kids who wanted nothing more that to yell at each other. They could care less about the trials of Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale. I doubt they have seen Old School or Bottle Rocket for that matter.
Mention the film's director, Nimrod Antal, to them and they might think you insulted them. Antal's Kontroll made all of this possible. One of those favorites on the festival circuit that you hear so much about. It is a great little Hungarian film and worth the piles of hype. With a name like Nimrod, you better come out fighting and Mr. Antal does not disappoint. Is Vacancy a great film? Hell no. Far from it, but it is the one of the oddest bits of casting in quite some time. Luke Wilson, Kate Beckinsale and Frank Whaley seem very out of place in this latest wave of torture suspense porn. Vacancy is not really a horror film in the traditional sense. It is a suspense thriller that indulges us with the notion that America is in the middle of its dark age. Jonathan Mostow's Breakdown kept coming to me while watching it. I thought of a lot of other films too, but we will get to those later.
There is a golden rule that needs to be observed in these types of films. Never get off the Interstate should be the most important one of those rules. I really wanted to yell at Luke Wilson's David Fox to just get back on the main highway. Having driving through Needles late one night one my way back home from California, you just want to stay on the main road. Shortcuts should be avoided. Richie Tenenbaum, Mitch Martin, Anthony Adams or any of the other characters Wilson has played in the past would not make this kind of mistake. Other mistakes, sure, but they would not do anything this careless. David Fox has bigger problems. He and his wife, Amy (Kate Beckinsdale) have reached the end of their marriage. Divorce is only two signatures away. As we learn throughout the film, it is their child's death that has made their marriage a wasteland. Having said that, the tension between the two of them throughout the first act begs for Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Could you imagine the two of them in this film? I would love to see Frank Whaley try to mess with Richard Burton. Do you really want to mess with one of The Wild Geese? Whaley would be begging to be tortured by Kevin Spacey's Buddy Ackerman again in Swimming With Sharks. For that matter, who in their right mind is going to mess with George and Martha from Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? I would rather take my chances with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner from The War Of the Roses.
Speaking of Frank Whaley, is his Mason the epitome of America's hedonistic and voyeuristic dark side? Is he the unholy union of David Cronenberg's Videodrome and Brain De Palma's Body Double? Is Mason and sick buddies the end of the road for America's dark age. A superpower ready to eat away at its very core. David and Amy Fox should have never gotten out of their car. The motel where they end up represents not so much the death of the American Dream, but the perversions of the fruits of victory. The open American road is full of places that sell fireworks and adult videos. In one sense, Vacancy captures this in ways I never thought possible. David and Amy have stumbled upon one of those places we do not want to ever end up-- the ultimate roach motel. When the front desk clerk is Robby Krieger, trouble starts there. Folks, it is not good. First of all, if the motel still has a VHS player and no cable television-- get the hell out there as soon as possible. David discovers the videotapes and decides to watch them. The product is not from the San Fernando Valley. It is homemade, amateur torture porn. And it was shot in the same room much to David and Amy’s horror.
These are Mason's previous victims. What is worst is that Mason and his crew love to watch the tapes. There are cameras everywhere and they record everything. Mason's main control room looks like an out of date video dub house. Could Vacancy have been released at a better or worst time? As it turns out there is a whole underground network that loves to watch these videos. Where is Frank the Tank, Beanie and Old Blue when you need them? Where the hell is Royal Tenenbaum? Personally, I would never think of starting trouble with Selene from the Underworld films.
The third act of the film proves to be a test of survival for David and Amy. Their new ordeal makes them realize that they only have each other to depend. Maybe if they can get though this nightmare, they can give their marriage a second chance. That is a tall order as they play cat and mouse with their captors. Hiding in crawlspaces and going through underground tunnels. Can they turn the tables on their tormentors? The third act of this film reminds me of last week's Disturbia-- Rear Window for the millennial generation. I like that film a lot more, but I did not expect anything of that film either. There is so much chaos in these third acts. Vacancy has enough to keep me interested. Vacancy continues the downward spiral of life in the violent ward. We are living in the dark ages. I have one piece of advice. Beware of the person who says they can lead us out of these dark ages.
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