Film

Vacancy

Cert: 15

Description: Disappointingly tame Psycho homage, in which a stranded couple check into a sinister roadside motel, and get a gruesome kind of room service.

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Dir: Nimrod Antal.

Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Luke Wilson, Frank Whaley, Ethan Embry

Country: US.

Year: 2006.

Duration: 85mins

Escape from the haunted motel

Haunted hotel: Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale find their motel room has been used to film a slasher movie in Vacancy

By Derek Malcolm
15 Jun 2007

This competently made but unoriginal horror from Nimrod Antal has Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson as a bickering husband and wife who land up in a shabby motel for the night when their car breaks down on a remote country road.

They get the best room but, putting on a video, they discover a slasher movie that seems to have been made right there.

Soon they have a hidden camera trained on them and goons trying to create another movie out of their remains.

The bickering has to stop while they try to engineer an escape.

This more than slightly familiar scenario doesn't give the principals much scope for acting.

But they scream well and eventually learn to love each other again.

Short if not sweet.