31 Nights of Halloween Horror part 6 - The Innkeepers

The Innkeepers

101 mins.

Dir. Ti West

2011/USA

Tonight's movie might not be for everyone, it is a real slow burn with not a lot of pay off.  With that being said something about this movie resonates with me and I needed to revisit it on blu-ray once again.  Tonight we are spending the final nights at the Yankee Peddlar as we watch the Innkeepers.

In 2009 newcomer Ti West wowed us all with House of the Devil, another slow burn of a movie, but a real nostalgic throwback of a film that really got the genre talking.  Two years later he unleashed The Innkeepers on us, a movie that I find plays out more like real life then the fast paced life that people live in movies.  Life is just a series of moments waiting to occur, and the Innkeepers is broken up into three chapters each containing different moments over the final weekend at the Yankee Peddlar an old historic Inn that is closing it's doors for good.

The two last innkeepers are Claire played by Sara Paxton (Last House on the Left remake, Shark Night 3D) and Luke played by Pat Healy.  Both are bored on the their last few days of employment and pass the time creating a website chronicling the experiences from this supposedly haunted inn and even doing some ghost hunting themselves.  They are spending the night in the hotel along with a few other guests, a woman and her son staying away from her husband, an old man reminiscing about his honeymoon he spent at the hotel with his now deceased wife and washed up actress turned pyschic healer Leanne Rease-Jones played by Kelly McGillis (yes that Kelly McGillis from Top Gun).

The realism in the movie is that nothing really happens, life is not always a fast pace roller coaster ride like the movies.  Sometimes things plod along and when it comes to catching ghosts, things move even slower.  I figure it is safe to assume that every old Inn is haunted, I mean it is a given.  I know I have stayed in a few, though have never seen anything, but they had claims of the paranormal.  Claire seems to have all of her experiences when she is alone, so it makes us wonder if she is really seeing ghosts or is it in her head, though other then constantly using her inhaler every time she gets scared from something there is nothing to lead us to believe she has an over active imagination.

That is not to say the whole movie is just suggestion to us the viewer, we see what Claire sees and while not necessarily malevolent there is definitely a high creepiness factor to the hauntings.  There are also its share of jump scares in the movie, I don't think they really cheapen the creepiness of the atmosphere being projected, but they are definitely an ice breaker to the tension.  

We had some fun with monsters and psychos, even some cannibals so far, but tonight's feature slows down the pace and gives us an old fashioned ghost story.  If you are lucky maybe you will get a little freaked out walking down your hallway at night back to your bedroom and something is standing right behind you or in the darkened doorway as you pass.  To me this is worth a watch to just see a creepy movie, but don't worry tomorrow we are right back into the thick of things with an incredibly violent feature from our friends in the orient.  Though of course after last nights movie, I don't how much you still trust me.