When I was in my mid 20s, my sister and I made a cross country trip for college and ended up in a Colorado motel where the beds were placed at odd angles in the room. We were tired from driving all day, and took the room anyway. A decade later we read the Gay Talese article about a motel where the owner had watched people have sex in their rooms, but it wasn't until the Netflix series that we realized we had probably been victims of the peeping Tom, Gerald Foos. Then we realized the beds were placed so he could see us.
Whether he actually watched us or not, I will never know, but knowing that something like that could happen added to the creep factor of watching this movie for me.
In the movie, the characters played by Cage and Tunney buy a motel in the desert after a family tragedy. The isolation doesn't do anything to heal their marriage and they sink further into an unhealthy and depressing relationship. As his wife sleeps, the Cage character seeks solace in watching the guests in the rooms.
At this point in the film, it isn't quite clear that the motel is a metaphor for hell, but it will do until one comes along. Everyone in the town seems to be engaged in S&M sex or sex with hookers. The sheriff seems to either be the devil or someone who does a good job acting like him. And, of course, the desert is hot as hell.
In many ways, the images in the movie reminded me of "The Sentinel," a 70s film about a woman who must guard the gates of hell. They made me uneasy, which is what a movie like this is supposed to do.
And the minie helped Nic Cage work off a little more tax debt, and that is a good thing. He's a fine actor, and this movie is one more step to try to get back to acting in real films,
