rated R

If you’re going to steal, they say, steal from the best. So, if you’ve got a script about a secretly disturbed hotel manager hassling his guests to death, it makes sense to go directly to Alfred Hitchcock for tips. In this barely camouflaged “Psycho” update, a few evolutions have taken place. The lonely killer is given a couple of henchmen. Spy-holes cleverly bored through wallpaper patterns are replaced with cameras cleverly concealed in the vents. Instead of a single young victim, we have a troubled couple on the verge of a rocky divorce. But really, this is just the ol’ Motel Hell scenario as we’re accustomed to seeing it. There’s one Hitchcockian element in particular, however, that sets this movie apart from the recent deluge of torture-porn gristle flicks that have been flooding cinemas for the last few years—restraint.

American-born, Hungarian-trained director Nimrod Antal hit the ground running in 2003 with his debut film “Kontroll,” which he filmed entirely in Budapest’s underground railway system, using nothing but available lighting and existing environments as sets. An exhilarating and effective exercise in shoestring filmmaking, “Kontroll” quickly established itself as an indie cult favorite on the festival circuit. Making an assured transition now to more mainstream, American-funded projects, Antal continues to demonstrate a refreshing “less is more” aptitude.

The best directors know it’s what we don’t see that scares us most (think “Alien” or the original “Halloween”), and even as a sophomore filmmaker, Antal exhibits a notably mature instinct for what not to show. For a movie that revolves around a snuff film factory, there’s a conspicuous lack of gore, recalling the famous shower scene in “Psycho,” which never shows a single actual stab. For example, a series of videos discovered by the victims depicts other poor travelers caught in the same iniquitous trap, dying gruesome deaths at the hands of mysterious predators. But the scenes are revealed predominately through the looks on the faces of the lead actors, Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson, who wring admirable levels of anxiety out of roles primarily concerned with jumping at loud noises and crawling around on the floor. We hear the screams and see brief flashes of video, but the gory details are left to the audience’s imagination.

Handed a fairly derivative, pedestrian script, troubled by plodding dialogue and dubious plot devices, Antal manages to pare the concept down to its fundamental necessities. He takes advantage of the claustrophobia of a few small, confined sets, and leaves us with almost nothing but the white knuckle, “Hey, don’t go in there!” tension we’ve come to expect.