Pretty vacant

If you are seeking thrills, "Vacancy" delivers. If you demand an original storyline, well, this one has been done before.\nThe film opens with feuding married couple Amy and David Fox (Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson) having car trouble in the middle of a night. They walk to the nearest motel they can find and check in for a night they will be lucky to survive. The couple get to their hotel room and are annoyed and slightly frightened by constant banging on their walls and door. The couple's tired indifference turns to true terror when David finds a videotape on the VCR that contains a murderous snuff film seemingly made in their motel room. Suddenly the power to the room gets cut and it is clear the couple broke down in front of the wrong motel.\nThe killers watch everything the two do through video cameras placed throughout the motel complex. They hear audio, too. The video camera not only adds to the scariness of the film by showing graphic violence, it is also chillingly disturbing how the killers like not only slaughtering strangers; they get off on watching it again and again.\nWilson and Beckinsale are great as a couple teetering on the edge of divorce. When survival instincts kick in, so does the love they once shared and it is that love that ultimately fuels their attempted escapes. Antal's direction is dark, sometimes too much so. Horror movies are supposed to be dark, but when most of the action is happening in a dimly lit hotel room, the audience gets confused. Some of the action was hard to believe simply because it was hard to see.\nThere are some genuine jump-out-of-your-seat scary moments in this film, which any decent horror flick must have. And even though you've seen "Psycho" and "Turistas," this movie was surprisingly unpredictable. The movie, which runs a little less than 90 minutes, is short and abrupt. Unlike watching "CSI," where the resolution will come within the hour, "Vacancy" was sudden and added to the feel and atmosphere of the film as a whole experience. But you have seen it before and there is no resolution so if it does well at the box office, you will probably see it again as a sequel. That's good. This is a great popcorn movie and an interesting way to spend an afternoon. \n"Vacancy" is by no means a horror classic, but it does add the video camera to the cat-and-mouse horror genre. At least it doesn't take anything away.