VACANCY is another motel-hell horror flick in which an unfortunate, attractive couple (...) discover that "room service" isn't about clean towels, champagne and oysters so much as getting stabbed and videotaped for snuff films. (...) Antal's slickly edited, fast-moving style is the best thing about this otherwise-cliched movie (...).

• http://www.washingtonpost.com

Malgré un début prometteur, qui établit habilement une atmosphère inquiétante ainsi que les tensions maritales d'un couple (...), VACANT devient vite qu'un autre "slasher" reposant sur la stupidité des personnages. Presque tout le film est un jeu du chat et de la souris à travers un motel où être traqué par des psychopathes est apparemment inclus dans le prix de la chambre. Nimród Antal fait preuve d'une véritable maîtrise visuelle, misant beaucoup sur les cadrages serrés et le hors-champ, mais les effets-chocs sont répétitifs et l'intrigue tourne à vide.

• http://www.voir.ca

The movie's only original idea comes when David carefully studies the snuff videos to look for patterns in the attacks and "mistakes" by previous victims from which the couple can profit. But then an avalanche of cheap shocks, leaps in logic, villains in "Halloween" get-ups and other grindhouse moments overwhelm the story. (...) Production values, especially the fingernails-on-a-blackboard score by Paul Haslinger and Jon Gary Steele's set, with its passageways and hiding places, do much of the heavy lifting. Still, at the end of the night, the film feels tired, derivative and lackluster.

• http://www.hollywoodreporter.com

Mark L. Smith's screenplay for VACANCY is kind of a remarkable concoction, lifting tropes from maybe a half-dozen other horror movies, both good and bad, in its first 20 minutes - PSYCHO, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER among the good, the Paris Hilton HOUSE OF WAX among the bad. Hungarian director Nimrod Antal (...) brings a quirky sense of spatial relations to the more standard horror practices of quick-cutting and out-of-nowhere scares. The result is an economical (less than 90 minutes) and often brutally effective scare machine that sometimes, somehow, manages to feel less derivative than it is.

• http://www.premiere.com

Hungary's Nimrod Antal (...) makes a satisfying Hollywood debut with this tight, intense genre thriller (…). The pitch - a couple finds themselves imprisoned in a motel room where their captors intend to make them stars of a snuff movie - is a tasty one and the script by hot Hollywood newcomer Mark L. Smith just about manages to extend the drama to a full-length feature although implausibilities towards the denouement demand certain leaps of faith in the audience. Budgeted at a modest $20m, VACANCY is a more suspenseful and less bloated affair than other thrillers in the marketplace at the moment, namely DISTURBIA, FRACTURE and PERFECT STRANGER. (…) The performances of Wilson and Beckinsale also serve to elevate VACANCY from the glut of routine shockers that crowd movie schedules these days.

• http://www.screendaily.com