Vacancy

Taken on its own B-movie terms, this is a nice little thriller. A man and a women with car trouble check into a motel late at night. They pop in a tape that’s lying on the video deck and see a violent scene, people apparently being killed. They soon realize the murders are happening in the very room they are in. Whoa! Sounds pretty familiar, right? Well, sure. It’s a scary movie about serial killers. But these are killers I can believe in. They’re not real smart. If they were, they could have built an escape-proof mousetrap out there in the boonies, but they didn’t bother to do so. It’s worked so far; what are you going to do if three guys bust into your room with guns and start slapping you around? You’re probably going to die. But the sloppiness of leaving that tape there gives this couple a warning, and a chance to fight back. This seems reasonable to me. Serial killers are not, by a large, a bunch of criminal masterminds with endless money to rent warehouses to torture their victims, and make fiendish and clever devices. (See Saw … just had to get that reference in there. Actually, we used to call a see-saw a teeter-totter. Is that a Texas thing?) These killers are in it for the kicks, sure, they’re psychopaths, but they are also making a buck on the side selling snuff movies. There’s a chilling scene where a truck driver pulls into the motel. Is he their salvation, or one of the killers? Neither. He’s a customer, and goes off with a big box of tapes. This is not Hannibal Lector or Ted Bundy, these guys are more like John Wayne Gacy, a not-too-bright schlub who buried his kills in his own basement … but remember, he got away with it for a long time.
I have to give this movie plaudits for what it does not do, and that is have a man absorb three slugs in the chest from a heavy handgun, then leap to his feet when everybody’s expecting it but the woman who shot him and turns her back on his “corpse.” These guys are easy to kill if you go at it right. This ain’t Halloween … for which I’m grateful enough that I’ll over look a few flaws.