The Innkeepers

At the soon to be closed Yankee Pedlar Inn, the last remaining employees consisting of college dropout Claire (Sara Paxton) and amateur paranormalist Luke (Pat Healy) while away the hours tending to the limited assortment of guests or hunting for ghost activity to post on Luke's website detailing the Inn's hauntings. With the arrival of former actress turned spiritualist Lee (Kelly McGillis), Claire uses Lee's guidance to push her amateur paranormal hunts to greater extremes.

The Innkeepers is the third major film from writer/director Ti West following his two 2009 films The House of the Devil and Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever. Although West had been slated to The Haunting in Georgia (better known as The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia), West dropped out early on presumably to avoid a repeat experience of producer interference that befell Cabin Fever 2. Centered around the real life haunting hot spot the Yankee Pedlar Inn in Torrington, Connecticut the movie was filmed on location with many scenes shot at the actual Inn. Much like West's House of the Devil, The Innkeepers is undeniably influenced by past genre staples, but also like House of the Devil, West showcases a strong understanding of character and atmosphere.

A big part of what appealed to me with The Innkeepers was the performances and dynamics between the two leads Sara Paxton and Pat Healy. Both of them feel like well rounded everyday people who are underemployed and their interactions where they play silly games or pranks reminded me of the interactions seen in Kevin Smith's Clerks where he explored minimum wage tedium. The movie does a solid job of making the Yankee Pedlar a character unto itself and we get some moments between Claire, Luke, and the guests with Kelly McGillis quite good as the obligatory psychic expert who adds some solid humor and humanity to her performance. Much like House of the Devil, The Innkeepers is a slow burn with most of the scares situated in the back half as we build character and atmosphere in the first. Granted there were times where maybe I began to wander a little bit, but there'd always be something around the corner that would pull me back in.

Ti West continues to show his penchant for mining familiar territory and making it feel knew with solid characters and atmosphere. Definitely well worth a viewing.

Y'all's 5.5 review is out of line. If you have a short attention span and/or don't understand the disturbing subtlety of a perfect ghost story, you won't like this movie. Those of us that could listen "true" ghost stories all day will be completely spooked. This puts you right in the middle of one.

I actually really loved that we got to know the characters a bit more than a typical scary movie. I thought Paxton was charming.

Not a masterpiece or a perfect movie, but definitely one that will stick with me. I feel like it's a true testament to the subtle power of a ghost story. Watch it in October.

This movie had a lot of potential with an interesting hook and great location but failed to deliver all around.

A horror movie relies on tension and atmosphere to build fear. This movie takes a very long and tedious time establishing characterization instead of mood. Unfortunately, the two main characters and in fact all the characters in the very small cast are so two-dimensional and stereotypical that all that time was thoroughly wasted. To add insult to injury, there is even a cheap jump scene at the beginning that breaks what little mood is established by the opening credits and pans of the set. When the movie finally reaches its climax, it still is not scary or horrific. It just falls flat. The ending was unsatisfying as well with no real resolution or twist.

It's just good enough to keep you watching and waiting for something to happen, but it never does.

I'm a little ambivalent about The Innkeepers, much as I was about Ti West's previous opus, The House of the Devil. Both films put nary a foot wrong on atmospheric or technical levels, both are backed up by solid little stories, yet for all their little pleasures neither really wowed me, as if not all their elements gelled, or perhaps they didn't go far enough. The Innkeepers has the advantage of simpler and far more forthcoming entertainment, making it an overall pleasurable ride, one that I may even revisit and enjoy more. Its a character rather than scare driven affair, focusing on Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), last staff of the going out of business Yankee Pedlar inn, and later Leeanne Reece Jones (Kelly McGillis), ageing actress turned psychic. With adept performances from the three leads the characters portray a spectrum of vulnerable humanity, Claire quirky and likable, but asthmatic and somewhat mindful of her lack of direction, Luke a droll slacker slowly reaching that point where falls life and the weight of what could have been and Leeanne fully self aware but only a little bitter, of the three the most in possession of herself. It being the last night of the hotel customers are scarce so Claire and Luke set out to investigate the inn's alleged ghost, a girl who committed suicide whose body was hidden in the basement to avoid scandal. At first the tone is light, the characters trade off one another, there are jump scares played for light humour and the audience gets to be a part of the films little world. Later on though the laughs are dropped, as Claire and Luke get serious in their investigation and things get rather spooky, leading to a nicely jolting conclusion. Everything works here, yet it didn't really stir me until the final scenes. Its not the measured pace, not gripes with the plotting (which maintains plenty of pleasing ambiguity), more I guess the issue of things not really gelling together. The film is intentionally episodic, broken into three chapters and there isn't much flow between them other than the flow of plot. So the inspired humour, a sort of light and likable slacker vibe with several true to life moments, and the horror, mostly swift creepy jolts and some brooding atmosphere, never really feed each other in a manner fit to hold the film together and make it really effective, the two veins subvert each other quite nicely just not in a manner that works so well in the moment of the film itself. Still, I can see people liking this one a lot and its done pretty nicely on the critical circuit so I may be in a minority. Definitely check it out for yourself say I, its worth experiencing for yourself.

I began watching this with a a sense of hesitation due to a couple of reviews which were very negative. In a way I can understand why some people might not like this. There are no great action scenes for starters, blood and gore is kept to the bare minimum and a lot of time is spent on building on the characters. If you are going to watch this, you really are just best watching it knowing the bare minimum of the film's storyline... i.e set in a hotel. I would go as far as to say the storyline is obscure and really does not impact on the film at all. For me, the acting was great. After the first half an hour of getting comfortable with the two main characters I found myself getting nervous for them until by the end of the film my heart was beating ten to the dozen, which is the aim of a good horror I feel. I waited for my wife to go to bed before putting this on. I watched it by myself around about midnight with the lighting on low and I have to say that had I got a pillow to hand, I would have been sitting behind it.