“This is a true story…sort of.”
Wasting no time in getting its players on the board and establishing its own sardonic spin on Americana, Valley View Motel (2026) is a love letter to the 70s crime genre cinema with which it shares its setting. We start with what looks like a robbery gone very wrong – there are dead bodies and there’s a constantly wailing alarm – before we’re shifted away from this cold open to far more affluent and (apparently) easeful surroundings. In a mountain cabin, an elderly man receives some unpalatable news, no doubt about the heist, and his command is simple: “Call Hal.”
It’s always good to have someone you can rely on, but who’s Hal? It seems he’s a high school maths teacher with a grim sideline in murdering blokes tied to chairs (remember when every new horror had one of those?) Then there’s a pair of diamond thieves, Reg (Soulo Smith) and Cliff (co-director/co-writer Kevin Ignatius), who have found a moment to discuss the distinct pros and cons of their line of work. It seems to be the case that habitual thieves never have enough money, and as such, Reg is keen on one more call, one more job – something which could affect both of them, potentially in catastrophic ways. Oh, and then we have a mother (Judy J. Lee) and daughter Sunny (Laura Im) off to start a new life in a new state – though rather unwillingly, after the gambling-addicted Mr. Kang sold out their life’s savings from under them before, shall we say, making his own way out.
In turbulent times such as these, the two men decide it’s necessary to go to ground, so they do the tried-and-tested thing: finding a remote motel room for the night. Now the film is named for the motel; that tells you, without a review to establish the fact, that this place will come to figure very importantly in what unfolds next, and accordingly, proceedings get weirder and more menacing from here on in, as our respective players congregate at the Valley View.
There’s a lot to like and admire here. The 70s aesthetic developed here is strong and consistent, wisely dodging things which might give the game away, whilst a lot of the shots used are nicely reminiscent of 70s-era crime dramas and, to an extent, crime comics (which developed in tandem with genre cinema). The broad array of views/shots are confident, and they do come together well to build a sense of a world at large here, even when much of the film takes place in more confined spaces. As for who we follow, the characters in Valley View Motel are right on the cusp of overblown and plausible, which works perfectly well with the style and themes in play here. Taken as a whole, the film itself feels like an agreeable blend of the likes of the Coen Brothers and – yeah, let’s just address it – early Tarantino, or if that’s a bridge too far for some readers, certainly the cinema which influenced Tarantino himself.
But the film is also able to bring in elements of other genres, most notably horror; it’s getting its premiere at a horror film festival, after all. It does need to import some horror tropes to do it and, arguably, this part of the film isn’t as secure as the rest (feeling much more incidental than integral), but it certainly shows that the film can accommodate different styles and developments. This isn’t a high octane crime flick – it’s not full of car chases, it doesn’t have a vast cast and nor does it dig into the wider world of police procedural or gangland drama, but its close focus on a small number of characters, sticking with something closer to vignette in places, still allows for emotional investment to take place, and the film’s more oblique approach to violence – it’s not all men tied to chairs – doesn’t strip away the film’s more disquieting moments.
The glue that holds it all together is the interesting – if necessarily remote – villain of the piece, Hal (co-director/co-writer Nick Psinakis), and he does great work bringing all of the film’s discrete chapters together, as well as driving the film towards its final act. There are occasions – more often that we might like – when a director/writer appearing in their own film feels like a mistake, but that’s not the case here: Ignatius and Psinakis are great on screen, and their performances are genuinely solid.
If there’s maybe one beat too many before the film’s close, then nonetheless, Valley View Motel showcases a real love of genre film throughout. It almost sneaks in its commentary on cycles of violence and the ramifications of momentary decisions, too, so you only really realise that’s what happened right at the end credits (but without feeling you’ve been hit over the head with The Message). I don’t know that this is a true story, sort of or otherwise, but it’s a really good film, and what it achieves on its no-doubt tight budget is impressive.
Valley View Motel (2026) received its FrightFest World Premiere on Monday, August 31st.