Vacancy

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Vacancy is a schlock surprise: a no-frills motel-hell slasher film -- with a bit of soul.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

For the most part, this movie hits the right notes and gives its audience a dose of white-knuckle tension.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

It's a sordid but expert shocker.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Stylish and surprisingly effective thriller.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

The acting is solid, especially Whaley, whose nasty variation on Norman Bates is his showiest role since he memorably played Kevin Bacon's assistant in "Swimming With Sharks."

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Succeeds where so many other recent horror pictures have failed: It consistently scares you silly.

Los Angeles Times Sam Adams

A ruthlessly efficient stalk-and-slash machine.

Village Voice Tim Grierson

Antal smartly adheres to the no-frills demands of B-movie horror, eliciting impressive chills from old-fashioned suffocating dread rather than the now usual gore. And Wilson and Beckinsale superbly execute everything that's required of their characters--namely, yelling and running.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Making an assured transition to Hollywood after his Hungarian cult sensation "Kontroll," director Nimród Antal gets his business done with an efficiency that recalls "Red Eye," another thriller that clocks in under 90 minutes. But efficiency isn't everything, and Antal sacrifices too much in order to sustain tension.

Baltimore Sun Gene Seymour

A mangy-looking mongrel with a lot of familiar markings and a little more on the ball than you'd expect at first glance.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

At its worst, Vacancy is merely the kind of taut B-chiller they don't make any more, other than to riff on them in "Grindhouse."

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Vacancy could have been some sort of satirical masterpiece had this whole scenario been finally revealed as an extreme form of couple's therapy designed to get Beckinsale and Wilson back together.

USA Today Scott Bowles

It isn't the Bates Motel, but the Pinewood Motel has enough creepy visitors and creaky floors to make Vacancy worth checking into for 90 minutes.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Short, sharp and to the point, Vacancy has a single goal, and that is to scare the hell out of you.

Film Threat Michael Ferraro

It's rare to see Luke Wilson in such a serious role. He does an admirable job of ignoring his mostly comedic background but the real scene-stealer is Frank Whaley.

Empire Nick de Semlyen

This stripped-down chiller has some decent jump-frights, but a dearth of memorable moments.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Vacancy, in the end, simply offers a particularly aggressive brand of couples counseling.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Wilson and Beckinsale, as the couple on the rocks, do their damnedest to go along for the creepfest, but nothing in Vacancy manages to come anywhere close to the quiet and steadily mounting dread of the real thing, much less the purview of Norman Bates or his beloved mother.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

If "Psycho" and "Peeping Tom" are the seminal killer-as-voyeur movies, Vacancy is the nasty little runt offspring with no other purpose in life but to gnaw on you.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

While the sadism doesn't stoop -- rise? -- to the level of the "Saw" horror-thrillers, Vacancy does have a name cast.

Variety John Anderson

At the risk of spoiling anything, Vacancy, is one strange movie. It ends so precipitously, one can only assume it's a setup for the sequel (which, given all that happens, seems a mite unlikely).

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

This ghastly swatch of pulp horror is compelling at the most basic level, but so little is going on in it that you might as well be watching a sadistic lab experiment performed on mice.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It is a fairly routine exercise in New Millennium movie mayhem.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

For horror fans who appreciate a bit of craft with their second-rate experiences -- Paul Haslinger's fear-mongering score is terrific for what it's worth -- this might merit a future late-night rental.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

80 minutes of formulaic unpleasantness isn't even close to my idea of a good time, and I doubt that Hitchcock himself could have done very much with Mark L. Smith's script.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

This banal horror retread involves a couple of critters flailing inside a sticky trap for what is, in effect, the big-screen equivalent of a roach motel.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

This is a no-cable, no-wake-up-call, cash-only dump of a film, where you breathe through a hankie and bring your own Lysol.