Editorials
The Snuff of Nightmares – Checking into ‘Vacancy’ 16 Years Later
Stopping at an isolated, run-down motel for the night does not bode well in a horror film. Audiences expect — even want — something bad to happen. Vacancy more than satisfies those expectations, seeing as how Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson’s hapless, anguished characters almost instantly find themselves in peril once they book a room at the Pinewood Motel. Dirty sheets and bad plumbing are the least of their problems when they discover their accommodations come with one additional, not to mention creepy, amenity: secret cameras.
Had things gone differently, Vacancy would have starred Sarah Jessica Parker, and it would have been directed by Simon West. As interesting as it would have been to see Parker fight for her life in a straight-up horror film, plans changed and Kate Beckinsale filled the role of Amy Fox. Luke Wilson, however, was David Fox from the very beginning when the film was first announced in 2006. Mark L. Smith’s script was then eventually handed over to Hungarian director Nimród Antal, who had previously made a splash overseas with his subway thriller Control.
Vacancy is, in some ways, a “home invasion” film. A hotel room is not necessarily considered a home, but it is intended to be a respite from the outside world. A safe space to heal and rest. And for the Foxes, they especially need some reassurance that everything is going to be okay, at least for one night. Not only have they suffered a tremendous personal loss, their marriage is now over. Before they can make the divorce official, though, David and Amy have to survive another of life’s challenges, albeit an unusual one.
Image: Screen Gems
By the time Vacancy came out, there had been a rise in vacation horror. On-screen graphic violence and torture experienced abroad were not uncommon to see. This film does not buck the cruelty and suffering trend, yet its story is domestic. Vacancy instead opts for a familiar and nostalgic setting as opposed to a grimy interpretation of a foreign destination. The Pinewood, which was specifically built for the film, evokes memories of those crummy, outdated motels visited during road trips.
After a deceitful mechanic (Ethan Embry) fails to fix their car during the long drive home, David and Amy take a short hike to the Pinewood. This remote motel is a tad charming but also completely out of fashion with its mid-century design. The many open-screen walls alone are a hint at the false sense of security. The Foxes hunker down in the honeymoon suite, of all places, for a mere minute or two before the requisite creepiness starts up. At first it is a series of spectral door knocks from the room next to theirs. In true fashion, the bespectacled front-desk clerk, Mason (Frank Whaley), reports the other room is empty. The audience, of course, knows better.
What Vacancy lacks in exposition it makes up for in prompt panic and stalking. The film runs around 80-minutes long, so the director wastes no time cutting to the chase, so to speak. Once David and Amy realize their predicament — in a clever and horrifying reveal, the couple turns on the TV and gets a glimpse of their imminent future — the film drops the act. Whaley and Embry’s characters continue the scare tactics before closing in for the kill. As to be expected, these Foxes are not so easy to catch.
Beckinsale and Wilson deliver credible performances as the hostile couple grieving their dead son. Their cutting remarks are one too many, yet the blame shifting and animosity make Amy and David feel a great deal more real. And as if their lives cannot get any worse, they end up the victims of snuff peddlers. Then there is Whaley’s Mason, who is very well the star of this film regardless of his lower billing. He wears three hats in the story; first he is the laidback and seemingly nonthreatening motel manager, then the smug ring leader of the snuff club, and finally the wavering last man standing whose whole outfit has come undone. Whaley is a man of many faces here, and each one is more unnerving than the last.
Image: Screen Gems
Without seeing the film, someone would be apt to lump Vacancy in with extreme aughts horror, such as Hostel and The Hills Have Eyes. Masked men breaking into motel rooms and murdering the guests is prime slasher material. However, even when taking the snuff element into account, Antal’s film focuses far less on carnage and physical torture and more on sheer thrills. The most graphic scenes are typically limited to the video footage seen on the TVs, whereas Amy and David’s ordeal is light on blood and gore. Anyone bothered by the protagonists’ plot armor would be advised to stick around for the nail-biting if not somewhat rushed third act.
While viewers can infer just about everything that happens in Vacancy, its prequel lays out the origin of the snuff ring. Returning as the screenwriter in Vacancy 2: The First Cut, Mark L. Smith details how the business started under different ownership and at another motel. The unlucky guests this time are a couple (Agnes Bruckner, Trevor Wright) traveling cross country with the boyfriend’s jealous best friend (Arjay Smith). Director Eric Bross puts less emphasis on style than Antal, but he also does not pull punches. He supplies more violence and a slightly larger universe for the victims to roam around in, and on occasion the film offers a surprise development. As unnecessary as this prequel feels, it should satisfy slasher enthusiasts.
The first Vacancy takes the idea of sinister surveillance and runs with it. In addition, it makes an urban legend like snuff films scary again. The whole concept of motels recording their guests would likely not have the exact same effect today, given how devalued privacy has become. Yet in an era of horror so substantially influenced by its real-world anxieties, paranoia and distrust, the existence of something like Vacancy makes perfect sense.
‘Vacancy 2: The First Cut’ – Image: Stage 6 Films
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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