Vacancy (film)

2007 American horror film by Nimród Antal
Early in the film's development, it was thought Sarah Jessica Parker would star; but, in September 2006, The Hollywood Reporter announced Beckinsale had been signed instead.

Vacancy opened at #4 in its first week at the box office grossing $7.6 million at 2,551 locations. In its second week, the film had a 45.9% drop off, falling to a #8 position. The film has grossed a total of $35.3 million worldwide. It was also released on Blu ray Disc and UMD for the PSP. Many versions shipped to Australia featured Sony DVD "anti piracy" technology, which led to them being unreadable on most DVD players, including Sony DVD players. The DVD featured a commentary by Nimrod Antal, Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson, all of whom said they thought the film was a great addition to the horror genre and for not using gore for scares but using psychological horror.

The advertising strategy for the film made use of the Internet as well as a toll free phone number. In addition to the TV spots and trailers shown in theaters and on television, the toll free number was made to sound as if one is actually calling the motel in which the film is set. In the background, screaming can be heard accompanying the voice of the proprietor, who informs callers about "slashing" prices and the "killer" deals that the motel has—if it has a vacancy. The voice of the proprietor is Frank Whaley's. As of August 7, 2015, the toll free phone number is no longer valid.

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 55% of 123 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 5.4/10. The site's consensus reads: "Vacancys restraint with gore is commendable, the thin characters and B movie cliches less so." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 54 out of 100 based on 27 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale. Ty Burr of The Boston Globe described the film as "a stripped down suspense drama" and "the kind of taut B movie chiller they don't make any more", with a set up "as simple and stark as an urban legend." However, he was careful to mention, "I don't want to oversell the thing. There's no agenda in Vacancy other than to keep you in a state of nervous collapse for 85 minutes", and he criticized the film's ending, which he called "a disappointment", writing, "I don't know when I've seen a thriller this unpretentiously well crafted sputter to so inconsequential an end." Writing for The Guardian, feature writer Rob Mackie favorably compared the film's opening to "classic period Hitchcock, and Psycho in particular", writing, "What makes Nimrod Antal's film genuinely scary and gripping is that the script and acting are far better than [ ] your routine slasher/shocker knock off." He further noted that "[t]here are plenty of shocks and surprises" and described the film as "psychological horror rather than gorefest," although he expressed ambiguity over the film's abrupt ending: "One of the biggest shocks in Vacancy is that, after 84 minutes, it ends. Just like that." In a 2007 episode of Ebert and Roeper, film critic Richard Roeper gave the film a negative review, calling it an "uninspired, unoriginal, and chills free thriller", and was disappointed with the central characters, saying "apparently these two have never seen any scary movies because they make rookie mistakes" and "do one stupid thing after another so the movie can keep going." He concluded that "with two appealing leads and a nifty opening credits sequence, Vacancy seems like it has potential" but that it was ultimately "a slick and lazy effort." Empire magazine awarded the film three out of five stars, praising its director as "genuinely good at this stuff, honing mercilessly in on faces in extreme close up and investing ordinary items [ ] with disproportionate levels of menace", and calling the film "a lean and slightly unusual genre pic" that has "Psycho's crimson fingerprints all over it", but concluded that while the film "starts off strongly", ultimately "the build up is better than the main event."

Vacancy 2: The First Cut was released in 2008. Written by Mark L. Smith, and directed by Eric Bross, it serves as a prequel, and focuses on how the motel's employees started their tortures. The film stars Agnes Bruckner and Trevor Wright.