There have been many cinematic tales of horror set in creepy flop-houses since Alfred Hitchcock immortalized the Bates Motel in his high-concept slasher flick Psycho. None have had higher expectations and lower payoffs than Vacancy, the first Hollywood-backed film by Nimród Antal.

The film brashly makes its influences and intentions clear in the retro-styled credits sequence that opens the film, featuring edgy theme music reminiscent of Bernard Herrman. Unfortunately, few of the Hitchcock inspired sequences that follow are as effective or well presented.

Presenting a story in the Stephen King vein (people dealing with banal, everyday misery are suddenly immersed in unimaginable, extraordinary misery), Vacancy follows a soon-to-be-divorced couple in the wake of a family tragedy on an ill-fated nightime drive detour away from a traffic jammed interstate highway to a grungy, desperation-time motel.

The Pinewood Motel is almost surreal in its distastefulness, but the series of events that place the couple in its questionable shelter are believable enough, even though the "car breaks down in the middle of nowhere" device has been spoofed since The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The couple, appropriately named Fox, are soon set up as prey for a pack of tormentors who are as devoid of human character or individuality as a pack of hunting dogs. The only antagonist who is given a human face or personality is the motel's desk clerk, a nerdy nut-case played ineffectually by Frank Whaley.

The first hints that there's something far worse than bedbugs lurking in the Pinewood are revealed in an unnerving and portentious way. Sadly, the chain of events that follow are so illogical, so unimaginative and so clumsily resolved at film's end that the strongest emotion evoked by Vacancy is shocked disbelief.

There are so many questions left unanswered by the numerous plotholes and leaps of faith in Vacancy that an entire prequel -- Vacancy: The Beginning? -- would be required to explain them. Better yet, how about bulldozing the set and next time, instead of taking this detour to nowhere, stay on the interstate. An hour and a half spent in traffic is ultimately more enjoyable.