Review #6 "The Innkeepers"

Will Means

Cannes Study Abroad

05/30/11

Review #6:

The Innkeepers

As many people know, I am an avid fan of the horror genre. It’s sort of like my abusive lover and I am it’s weak spouse; it’s not always good to me and sometimes it even treats me badly, but I always come running back to it, ready to give it another chance. When I first heard of Ti West’s breakout feature film, The House of the Devil, I wasn’t going to give it a chance. Not until the film started garnering solid reviews from the critics did I decide to check it out. That film ended up being one of the biggest surprises to come out of the horror genre in a long time, and it is one of my favorite horror films of the past ten years. It’s combination of Hitchcockian slow-burn storytelling, Roman Polanski-ish camerawork, and 1970s setting gave the film a very unique and legitimately scary feel. It was a reminder to other creators of horror films that the majority of fun in a scare comes not from the delivery, but from the buildup to it.

I had high hopes from Ti West but started to doubt him when he agreed to make the straight-to-video piece of crap, Cabin Fever 2. But now he brings us The Innkeepers, the second film ever actually written and directed by him. West calls the film his official “follow-up” to The House of the Devil. Upon viewing the film, it became obvious that this was indeed his real follow-up…not Cabin Fever 2. The Innkeepers marked a welcome return to West’s signature slow burn style, with the main difference being that instead of this film exuding a 70’s vibe like House, West obviously took inspiration from the 80’s horror genre this time around.

The plot revolves around the two innkeepers of a hotel called “The Yankee Peddlar Inn,” who are required to run the hotel during its last weekend in business. There’s the youthful Claire (played by Sara Paxton) who despite her tomboy looks is also strikingly pretty, and then there’s the older nerdy innkeeper Luke (played by Pat Healy). Luke and Claire believe that the “Yankee Peddlar Inn” is haunted, and in a last attempt to capture some evidence for Luke’s paranormal website he is putting together, they walk around the hotel trying to record EVP in its last weekend of business. Their amount of opportunities is greatly amplified as they are required to not only run the hotel for the entire weekend, but also spend the night in it and sleep in shifts each night.

Just as he did with The House of the Devil, director Ti West takes his time getting to the scares in this film. In doing so, he proves that he has quite the knack for character development. In fact, the two leads in the film were some of the most believable characters I have seen in quite some time. They’re dialogue and interactions are so well written and realistic that you feel like you’re hanging out with friends whenever they share screen time. West also seems to have a knack for picking his actors. Most of them are relatively unheard of, but they deliver superb performances. Poor Sara Paxton has somehow become quite the underrated actress, despite the obvious range she has shown from her brutally realistic rape-victim role in the Last House on the Left remake to her charming character in this film. As Claire, she really wins the audience over. She’s witty and funny and she’s heartbreaking when we see her dreams crushed by a has-been actress who happens to be staying in the hotel. She even has a cute little inhaler she has to whip out whenever she gets startled. All of this only serves to make us feel for her more when the scary things start going bump in the night.

Speaking of those things that go bump in the night, they occur in waves throughout the film. The movie is broken up into three chapters, with each one building up to a scary climax for that section of the film. The first two are minimal and it’s the final chapter where all hell really breaks loose, but it takes quite some time before we get to that last ten minutes of the movie. The buildup to the big release in The Innkeepers is significantly longer than the one in The House of the Devil. In fact, I feel that if one were to remove the last fifteen minutes of The Innkeepers and replace it with something happy, you would have a funny, warm-hearted, character-driven story on your hands. It’s for this reason though, that the ending of the film becomes all the more devastating when we see some truly horrific things happen to our beloved characters. The effective usage of chapters serves to create an ever-amounting sense of dread leading to that final release. We know something bad is going to happen to our lead characters, but we’ve come to like them so much that we don’t want it to happen.

Nonetheless, this film is still at fault because despite all of its simmer and slow-burn, it’s pay-off is not quite as rewarding as the one in House of the Devil. The ghost makeup could have been a bit more effective for when it is finally revealed, and the ending didn’t have that same sense of fun chaos that House’s ending oozed with. I can even pick out one scene in particular during all the build-up that could have been removed altogether. Still, the movie has its truly chill-inducing moments. There were some scenes that had me sitting in awe at the wonders of horror as I literally felt waves of repeated chills crawling over my body in response to some of the sights in the movie. A lot of people would say that there is not enough horror in the film, but I feel that West truthfully gives us the perfect amount to make it memorable. He gives you just enough to leave you wanting more, and yet the storyline is still completely concluded and wrapped up in the end.

The Innkeepers is yet another solid piece of proof that you do not need gore and shock value to make something scary and sensational. Sure, it’s the gore that makes us want to throw up upon first sight, but it’s the scary campfire tales that get under your skin and force you to sleep with the lights on. Had I watched this movie at home alone, I probably would have struggled a lot more to get to sleep, but I had the benefit of watching it in a crowded theatre. Even so, that did not stop me from closing the doors to my hotel room a bit more hastily every time I walked inside for the rest of the week, and that is an example of well-done and effective horror: when it actually has a lasting effect.

“The Innkeepers”

Runtime: 100 minutes

Director: Ti West

Production Company: Dark Sky Films

Starring: Sara Paxton, Pat Healy, Kelly McGillis, George Riddle