The Innkeepers – 3.75 stars
The pushback on the gore porn of Saw, Hostel, etc . . . is in full swing. The Paranormal Activity flicks, The Woman in Black, Trick ‘r Treat, The Last Exorcism, and now, The Innkeepers all fall in a sub-genre that emphasizes pace, suspense and the little things that do not require splatter, chunks of flesh and no possible hope of escape.
The Innkeepers is about a haunted Connecticut inn on its last legs. Two slacker employees (there are 3 guests and the workers can’t manage to have clean towels for any of them), one of whom is working on a website trying to trumpet the inn as a haunted locale, do 12 hour shifts on the inn’s last weekend in operation. Bored, and stoked by a guest (Kelly McGillis) who is some sort of amateur medium in town for a convention, the duo pass the time filming and recording the inn in an attempt to engage its ghost. They succeed, and the patience director Ti West exhibits in getting to a truly scary payoff is impressive.
It’s not flawless. The principals are a bit stilted, though they warm to their roles; the humor is not always humorous; the character development is not super; and I wish we were given a little bit more on the history of the ghost. But the strength is the feel and that feel is well-represented in the trailer.
Also, one caution – remember Kelly McGillis from Witness?
This is McGillis from The Innkeepers
I’m still laughing.
In our defense, McGillis just hasn’t aged well, or is making a defiant point of showing it. She’s roughly the same age as Michelle Pfeiffer and Debra Winger, and neither of them look so aggressively grandma.