The Innkeepers Movie Review
February 21, 2012
Did you happen to see director Ti Wests 2009 film, House of the Devil? If so, your enjoyment of Mr. Wests latest offering, The Innkeepers, will probably depend on whether you found HotDs conscientious pace and deliberate aesthetic intriguing or exasperating. Viewers who felt let down by the payoff of the former will probably have a similar experience with The Innkeepers. But genre enthusiasts who are looking for a creepy, old-fashioned horror tale that doesnt rely on CGI sleight of hand should find much to appreciate here.
The story, which unfolds over the course of a weekend, concerns a couple of staff members at an aging hotel that is in the process of going out of business. Claire (Sara Paxton, The Last House on the Left) and Luke (Pat Healy) have the easy camaraderie of long-time associates, and they share a unique hobby: ghost hunting. As the last two staff on site, they plan to use the closing weekend of the hotel as their final opportunity to investigate its haunted past and try to contact the ghost of the previous owner, who supposedly lingers there due to a romantic misfortune and a suicide.
Also on premises are a handful of final guests: a former actress-turned-medium (Kelly McGillis, of Top Gun fame, virtually unrecognizable with short grey hair), an uptight woman and her son, and an elderly man (George Riddle; aka. The Onion News Networks Joad Cressbeckler) who has a history with the hotel. Claire and Luke work in shifts; he naps, she goes out for coffee, they respond to the needs of their remaining guests, and in between they putter around with EMF detectors and sound equipment, seeking evidence of a ghostly presence. There are eerie voices, phantom notes played on the lobbys piano, and the inevitable warning to avoid the basement. Alcohol is consumed, feelings are confessed, and something tragic and terrible takes place in an upstairs room.
But trying to follow the plot thread of The Innkeepers kind of misses the point; its something of a shaggy dog story, after all. Whats fun, interesting, and ultimately pretty entertaining about the film is the collection of small scares that seem like something but arent, and how these false starts crescendo in the end into a genuinely frightening experience. It raises questions about perception and the minds sneaky tendency to play tricks on itself… and whether those tricks can in fact prove deadly.
As with his earlier work, Mr. Wests latest once again includes stylistic callbacks to earlier eras, revisiting the late 70s/early 80s oeuvre. There are particular references here to Stanley Kubricks The Shining, in terms of setting, shot composition, mood, and atmosphere. We have the empty hotel populated by just a few characters, the tragic history of the site, and the older person as a guide to the spirit world. Were invited to ponder questions about emotional resonance, how stories end, and what it means for a place to be truly haunted.
In case were still unclear about the connections, Mr. West also divides his work into chapters like the Kubrick classic, and he takes several opportunities to stage shots either peering down long corridors, or skimming along at floor level. For added fun theres even a long tracking shot showcasing one of the more mundane aspects of the hotels behind-the-scenes functions. Part of the enjoyment of the experience of watching The Innkeepers is the leisurely pace at which it unfolds, the precision and balance of many of its shots, and the elegance of the editing. Again, this wont appeal to all viewers – but its rewarding to see the art and skill thats applied to this quirky little ghost story, and its worth watching a connoisseur of the genre, as Mr. West obviously is, at work.
Filed under: Enjoyment