1st half = wow! / 2nd half = wtf happened?
This movie has possibly the best premiss and the best first half I've ever seen in any horror movie. Even with all its niggling imperfections. Then the remaining half rolls in, the movie stagnates, the disturbing ambience and hitchcockian borrowings disintegrate, and I'm left frustrated. So I hold out for the ending, wanting so much for it to *beep* me with some shocking twist and make at least something out of the failing. But what eventually comes is nothing more than lacklustre.
The thing is Vacancy is a great movie. The whole genre considered, it's great. It really is. But because it gave me such a stellar first half, and staggeringly high expectations of maintaining this to the end, when it panned out to utter disappointment the movie became subpar. And I am so annoyed. This is a love/hate thing I've got going on here and it's driving me insane. I want to buy it. I want to tell everyone about it. I want to inaugurate it into my select A-grade horror collection (alongside REC, The Descent, 28 Days Later, etc). But I can't, it doesn't deserve that. So now the only conceivable reason to buy it is to make a whole new category of it - HORROR MOVIES THAT DEVELOPED UNTHINKABLY HIGH EXPECTATIONS OF ITS AUDIENCE THEN DIED IN THE ASS. If the second half was better or at least on level with the pace, sheer shock value, and near-perfect concept creativity of the first half then it would join the ranks of top-tier horror. But it can't and is now doomed to be the only movie to ever affect me like this - the only movie to enter the aforementioned category.
To be honest, the hardest part of making a horror movie (and every fan knows this) is the initial reeling in. Let me tell you, this movie hook, line, and sinkered me at the start like none before it. HARD PART OVER. Now just continue on that note and end on that note and you've just had my babies. But no, Vacancy just had to flounder like the little bitch it is. It set up strong, then lost everything. This is a syndrome unique to horror movies. I get it. But I wanted so much to like this movie!
As some other posters have said, and as I say again. The imperfections could have been forgiven because it gave SO much on SO many different levels. Testimony to this: I admit I didn't even realise how terrible the casting (cemented in the first half) was until the second half came in at which point I started to pick it apart. Imperfections such as the idea to cast Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale. I get that they were tired, drugged up, and embittered toward each other but that doesn't preclude them from giving a satisfactory level of acting. Acting badly is still acting. In this it was as if "tired", "drugged", and "embittered" translated to "acting not required". I got used to Wilson, in fact I got what he was trying to do and it felt right. But Beckinsale caused my cringe to evolve. At least this would have been fixed if the makers just simply referred to the *beep* manual. Rule #1: horrors are best with no-namers. I mean if you're gonna cast the way they did, why not give the role of Mason to 'The Rock'.
And they never seemed to reach an acceptable level of fear either. Come on, *beep* was going down hard and I don't care if you were tired/medicated you need to start freaking out NOW, you need to start shaking and crying uncontrollably NOW, your adrenaline glands need to start pumping NOW, and you need to start thinking and acting to the point of distressed hysteria NOW when all at once you realise OMFG WE'RE GONNA GET FD UP!!! Instead (after the initial realisation) Wilson and Beckinsale combine to ruin the atmosphere by cruising through the tension and keeping their cool amid a constant and rapidly escalating lose-lose situation. All the while this should've been compounded by the fact that their relationship was in pieces but no apparently, irrationally, it was the glue that ensured they stayed brave, focussed, and co-equally reliant on one another.
Also, why did Mason and his boys wait until day to continue their attack? You would think, regardless of the place's isolation, that they would want to start covering up last night's proceedings STAT or at least before the sun comes up. That night, the chase suddenly ends when Beckinsale hides and goes to sleep. Then recommences absurdly as soon as she wakes up. Ha! That whole interluding block was pointless. And even more so since the disappearance of the cop would have undoubtedly spurred a hasty follow up by the local department.
I could keep going with this grain of qualitative, legitimate argument but I digress because I have stopped giving a *beep* Just like this movie stopped giving a *beep* halfway through and left me destitute and barren.
This movie could have been so much more. SO much more. Everyone has a movie they wish they could makeover or redo or go back in time and attain control of. I guess this is mine.
8.5/10 (first half with hopes of continuity)
5/10 (completed)