VACANCY

David and Amy are a couple in crisis, returning from the anniversary party of her parents. During the trip, David leaves the main road and the car unfortunately breaks down. Alone, in the dark and in the middle of nowhere, the couple walks in search of help and arrive at a motel. Since it is too late to contact a mechanic, David and Amy decide to spend the night in a motel room. Upon arriving in a very squalid suite, David notices that in the TV cabinet there are some videotapes showing scenes of violence and killings, and it seems that the place where the recordings were made is precisely the room they are staying in. Realizing that the room is full of hidden cameras, for the two it will be a night of terror, as they have ended up in the network of ruthless snuff movie producers! Urban legend or reality? It has never been clearly established whether the phenomenon of snuff movies is really widespread or is the product of someone's imagination; but one thing is certain: there is no material evidence of the trade of these films, but thriller cinema seems occasionally attracted by the theme. In reality, there are not many titles that have dealt with snuff movies, but the phenomenon in question has provided the inspiration for some good quality films ("8mm: Moment by Moment" and "Tesis", to name the most famous ones); now comes "Vacancy", an effective summer thriller, tense and fast-paced that takes inspiration from the production of snuff films to then create an adrenaline-packed b-movie spectacle. Everything starts in the most classic of ways, like a true manual of the horror film: the secondary road, dark and isolated, the car breaking down, a hostile place populated by ambiguous and disturbing characters and the horror that grows little by little; to the simplistic but effective plot must be added a playful (and fun) subtext of citationism that targets - as was easy to predict - the immense and much-quoted "Psycho" (for example, the intervention of the policeman and what follows explicitly winks at Hitchcock's film). Director Nimròd Antal (a Hungarian imported to Hollywood after making a name for himself with the fairy-tale-like "Kontroll") deserves great skill in building the scene times, as well as an appreciable management of the suspense that, for once, is not resolved with the overused (and annoying) device of the alternation of sound planes, but is constant throughout the duration of the film; the film, therefore, manages not to give the spectator a single moment of respite to drag him immediately into the heart of the story. The merit of this also goes to the choice (winning, in the opinion of the writer) to give the spectator the possibility to follow the characters' actions in real time, with a natural continuity in the narration of the story. Some small banality can be found in the construction of the two main characters who present the character traits of hundreds of other characters belonging to the sphere of modern thrillers: a couple in crisis with a family tragedy in the background, about to divorce but with good chances of finding love again in the extreme danger they are about to face. He is played by a Luke Wilson who has been put on weight, not suitable for this type of film, but rather convincing in his role; she is Kate Beckinsale, always charming and good, here in the role of the abandoned wife in pain but also capable of showing her claws. A greater exploration of the "snuff" theme would certainly have been appreciated, but "Vacancy" still offers a good performance, a quality thriller that does not fail to bring to mind the simple but appreciated genre films that were produced thirty years ago. It also deserves half a pumpkin more!