You might know Ti West from his 2009 film The House of the Devil which was fairly well received by horror fans who appreciated its subtle yet believable 80’s look and feel. If there’s one thing I repeatedly heard about that movie, it’s that it was slow moving and in the eyes of some took a while to get going. I enjoyed the slow nature of the storytelling in HOTD so was expecting good things from The Innkeepers.
The Innkeepers is a ghost story, pure and simple. It reminded me at times of “The Legend of Hell House” with it’s reliance on atmosphere and silence to draw the viewer into a feeling of impending doom. In a nutshell, The Innkeepers follows two staff members of a ‘soon to be closing down’ hotel who attempt to discover the rumoured haunted past of the hotel and the spirits who may or may not inhabit it. It’s a simple formula and that’s a good thing. To complicate a haunted house/hotel movie can be just as clique as leaving it simple and letting the dialogue and story speak for itself. The performers themselves are of a similar quality to West’s previous outings. Hit and miss you might say, but still capable of holding the film above a certain level for the most-part.
In the same way that HOTD did, The Innkeepers moves slowly and develops the relationships between the characters and the hotel. The certain quirks and nuances of the two leads are explored for a good while before the horror part of the film actually gets under way. Sara Paxton (Claire) and Pat Healy (Luke) inject humour into the mix to keep the leisurely pace of the film from becoming exasperating, this does help, but I still admit to checking my watch on a couple of occasions which I didn’t do during House Of The Devil. This confirmed early on for me that this wouldn’t be my favourite Ti West offering, but I kept with it and enjoyed the experience of the hotel itself and the silent scenes of the camera merely sweeping across the hallways and up and down staircases.
Claire and Jake at times interrupted my feeling of dread with comedy which was a little strange. It is only when Claire becomes more interested in following Jakes lead and trying to fathom the history of the hotel that things pick up. Jake is the ghost hunter wannabe who runs a mediocre website but it is Claire who really throws herself into the challenge of uncovering the possible haunting of the inn in which she works. The guests who occasionally appear at the hotel are fairly uninteresting, except for one old man who requests a particular room. I expected more weird and wonderful guests to appear but it didn’t happen. The old man and a “celebrity” who could apparently tap into the land of the ghosties were the only guests relevant to the tale and even they didn’t elicit a huge interest. The problem with The Innkeepers isn’t with its slow and precise nature, now a signature of director West, but more with its inappropriate lack of scares and lack of interesting traits among its sparse amount of characters. It’s running time of 101 minutes shocked me when I looked after I’d finished watching, I felt like I’d been sat there for over two hours.
Ti West is a director that I enjoy and his style is interesting but with The Innkeepers I found it to be all a little too familiar and lacking substance. I enjoyed the tone at times and the hotel itself was a fantastic setting for a ghost story. It felt, to me anyway, like it should have gone full throttle on occasion rather than making the decision to take a step back and slow it all down again. Questions remained unanswered and I am happy to not have most of them answered, I just felt some needed conclusions in order to fully round off the experience.
A director to keep an eye on for sure, but a film that I doubt I will go back to anytime soon. Disappointing, though not by any means terrible, The Innkeepers felt like a girlfriend who kisses you for an hour with her hand on your crotch but then puts her coat on and leaves all of a sudden leaving you wondering why the last hour happened without a real conclusion.
Enjoyable at times but nothing groundbreaking.
2.5 out of 5.
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