Estranged married couple David (Luke Wilson) and Amy Fox (Kate Beckinsale) find themselves off the interstate and in the middle of the country boonies when their car suddenly breaks down. Almost two in the morning, they head back down the road to a service station they’d previously received assistance at, hoping the kindly mechanic (Ethan Embry) from earlier might still be around to lend them another hand.

He isn’t, but Mason (Frank Whaley), the manager of the rundown motel just right next door, is more than happy to get them into a room for the night. It’s creepy and dirty and not at all a nice place, but it’s safe and they can sleep there, and until morning comes there just isn’t much else the stranded couple really can do.

But all is not as it appears, and no matter what they might think they know David and Amy are certainly not safe. Discovering a serious of homemade slasher films on VHS tapes next to the television, the pair soon realizes these blood-soaked videos were made within their very room. Now, with the cameras rolling and the clock ticking, any differences they might have had must be put aside. They have to escape, and if they don’t then the next movie these sickos promote will be one starring corpses looking a lot like them.

The new horror thriller Vacancy is about as streamlined and as straightforward as these types of genre productions get. A mixture of Psycho, Peeping Tom and The Most Dangerous Game, the film is a crafty and unsettling shocker that’s as uncomforting as anything else this year. It is a solid B-grade amusement park ride, and for fans of the genre it certainly hits all the right notes and then some.

Unfortunately, Mark L. Smith’s screenplay doesn’t end very well (and also features probably the single most inept emergency response police office I have ever seen). A final note coda doesn’t track, the movie fading on an image that’s grossly disappointing and borderline insulting. It is three minutes of screen time, nothing more, but it is still nearly enough to derail the film, the shrug of incredulity in my shoulders copied within the body language of so many others in the packed preview audience I saw it with.

Otherwise Vacancy is a magnificently unsettling corker. At a fast and furious 80 or so minutes, director Nimrod Antal (Kontroll) drops viewers into a feverishly pulsating meat grinder and then refuses to let them go. The man builds suspense beautifully. His compositions with cinematographer Andrzej Sekula (Pulp Fiction) are amazing, the way he creates eerie apprehension by what he chooses to conceal on the corner of the frames recalling the visual motif of Roman Polanski’s seminal horror classic Rosemary’s Baby.

Of course, this is no Rosemary’s Baby, but all the same it is still a darn good thriller for those open to such things. People who want to try and fight moral arguments about the nature of homicidal voyeurism and nihilistic sadism passing as entertainment (even as they are condemned within a film using them to do just that) probably aren’t the audience for the thing in the first place. They should really stay away and not bother themselves with how distasteful much of it truly is.

But then this movie knows how uncompromising and odious some will find its subject matter. Instead of fleeing from that fact Antal and Smith embrace it, the filmmakers crafting a logically sound puzzle box of terror and uncertainty playing upon many of our basest and most primal fears. The leads (especially a sleazily terrific Whaley) go through their expected paces with genuine gusto, while Paul Haslinger’s (Into the Blue) score adds just the right tenor to the horrific goings on. Added together, lackluster final seconds aside Vacancy is one hotel of horrors worth paying the price to stay at.

A side note, Vacancy has one of the best opening title sequences in quite some time. The company who created them, Picture Mill, isn’t exactly a household name but their work here is brilliant. These titles set the tone perfectly, throwing audiences immediately into the uneasy melancholy driving the Fox’s apart. Normally, I don’t point something like this out, but as opening credits are close to a lost art in movies nowadays I’d have felt remiss if I didn’t take the time to do just that here.

Film Rating: êêê  (out of 4)