Kevin Ignatius and Nick Psinakis were last at FrightFest in 2023 with their supernatural horror Cheat. This year the writers, directors and actors return with something much more grounded…In the 1970s.
Valley View Motel drips with the decade, from the haloing lights and atmospheric pacing to the cars, taches and stunning grain peppering the picture (even more so in flashbacks). It’s an impressively atmospheric crime thriller, not least because it was broadly shot in sequence. That wasn’t for budget reasons, as the directors told us in the post-screening Q&A (although it came in at the $120,000 mark), but because it made the best use of their time heading up a strong ensemble in front of the camera.
Ignatius plays Cliff, who, along with his partner Reg (Soulo Smith), gets on the wrong side of a powerful crime boss after a bodged diamond heist that leaves the goods in their pockets and a trail of bodies. Psinakis plays Hal, the psychotically calculated hitman sent to track them down after calling in sick from his job as a maths teacher. With his big sideburns and glasses, obsessing over his pristine new suit as he closes in on his prey in small-town Pennsylvania, he’s mesmerising in every scene, and effective too. Soon enough, he’s tracked his prey to the motel of the title, where a Korean mother and daughter have also rocked up, and which is run by a brother and sister who seem far too accommodating to be true.
A crime leading to a motel? So far, so Psycho, but Valley View Motel has much more in common with the early films of the Coen Brothers than Hitchcock’s seminal proto-slasher (“This is a true story… sort of” reads the Fargo-aping opening title). It takes a while to get to the digs – a little odd, considering the motel inspired the story – but it gives us valuable time with the players, who all have titled introductory chapters. Most importantly, we learn more about Cliff and Hal, the film’s central rivals played uncoincidentally by the filmmakers.
Both character journeys are pretty satisfactory – they get the resolution they deserve given their treatment of others and the sympathies they elicit. Cliff is in too deep, rubbed along far too easily by Reg, but circumstances lend him empathy just as it counts. Hal feels like more of a lift from Frank Miller’s ‘Sin City’: a study in psychosis. Psinakis plays him with pent-up precision, and his origin story, such as it is, even has a payoff joke at the film’s end (although, if anything could have been dropped, it’s that).
While it’s fine to spend time with them, though, it doesn’t rise much above a pretty good time. Valley View Motel doesn’t so much break the mould as capture a time and feeling, and there’s the constant feeling Ignatius and Psinakis could stretch things a little bit more.
Taking its time to motor to the motel pays off, letting the elements combine well, but the winning part comes from the texture of cultures. Ignatius has talked about how keen he was to bring his half-Korean heritage into the mix, and it pays dividends. A little timeout to plate up a Korean meal in the motel is just the antidote to the stewing mystery of the landlords and the incoming, inevitable psycho. Alongside that, it’s the little details that fill out the tale—things get a bit lurid, a bit gnarly, a bit silly, but that’s all part of the grunge.
Valley View Motel is a good pick for the last day of FrightFest, and a great demonstration of the festival’s range. Sometimes it’s good to sit back and watch an ensemble wallow in this kind of atmosphere, after all. Still, it’d be great to see Ignatius and Psinakis return sooner rather than later with something just as ambitious but a little more ambitious.
Valley View Motel received its world premiere at FrightFest 2026 on Monday, August 31
