Features > Movie Reviews > The Innkeepers…

Well, Claire (Sara Paxton) obviously missed that one. She’s altogether too keen to do just about the opposite of whatever a horror-savvy heroine would do in this old fashioned ghost story from Ti West. I mean, she heads off down into the basement no less than three times, even after the light bulb has blown out and a psychic has expressly warned her not to. This girl is asking for trouble.
 
Claire works on the front desk at a large but empty inn, The Yankee Pedlar, which is due to be closed any day now. Guests are extremely sparse, and in fact the entire third floor has already been shut down and stripped. With the owner away, Claire and Luke (Pat Healy) are what you might call the skeleton staff; they split the shifts 7 to 7, and have agreed to sleep in the hotel for the weekend, in case of emergencies. Meanwhile Luke is trying to cook up some interest in the inn’s resident ghost, which he figures might just generate some cash before the place is torn down.

Claire is 100 percent with him on the scheme – in fact she seems more enthusiastic about ghost hunting than he is, and given that she’s working the night shift she probably has better odds too. Armed with some extra sensory microphone, she wanders the Yankee Peddler hoping to pick up emanations from Madeline O’Malley, the honeymooner who never checked out a hundred years previously.
 
A student of Kelly Reichardt, who introduced him to her friend Larry Fessenden (Habit); West has a thing for slower, more character driven horror films. He came up with The Innkeepers after staying at the Yankee Peddler during the shoot for The House of the Devil (available to watch now on LOVEfiLM Instant, incidentally) – apparently the crew used to think it was haunted, and even if it wasn’t it seemed like the perfect location for a ghost story. He wrote it quickly and shot it for cheap in 17 days, though somehow none of that alacrity shows in the film’s unhurried, careful compositions and suspenseful slow burn.

Lena Dunham has a cameo role as an inappropriately chatty barista, and Kelly McGillis – from Top Gun – has a meatier part as an aging actress turned “healer”. Mostly, though, the movie plays on the quirky Paxton and Healy. There’s a lovely moment when he just stares at her and we realize he’s smitten – that’s the kind of character observation you just don’t find in too many horror movies. In truth, though, he’s not the most expressive actor, and a disproportionate weight of the film falls on her slim shoulders.

It’s West’s thesis that this college drop out stuck in a dead-end job is so terminally bored that on some level she’s desperate to make a connection with the spirit world. It’s an interesting idea, but for me anyway it doesn’t quite justify her kamikaze behaviour in Act III. The movie is a enjoyable diversion for fans of old school horror, but I’m afraid it’s going to leave a wider audience feeling a little dissatisfied.