For the
sake of not having to write the same intro a million
different ways throughout the rest of time, just know that
this column avoids the overly long and sometimes dull
process of full film reviews and instead opts to break
things down based on what I thought going in, what happened
while I was there and what I learned at the end of it all.
Thanks for reading!
The
Breakdown - The Innkeepers
The Impression:
Ti West this, Ti West that - this horror director made a big
impression with The House Of The Devil (a film I
never saw) and his follow up is supposed to be a smart,
funny bit of fright.
The Reality:
I never figured out what Ti West was trying to do in The
Innkeepers. It’s obviously a horror picture - a
seemingly straightforward haunted house story about two
employees of a haunted hotel on its last weekend of
existence - but for some reason I just expected more. I
don’t know if it was the hype behind the film or that it was
so basic in its execution and its concept that I imagined
West was aiming for something more metatextual but the film
just seemed stagnant to me. Sara Paxton is good, if not a
little too quirky, as Claire, the female lead determined to
discover evidence that a ghost haunts the Yankee Pedlar Inn,
but she doesn’t have a lot to do but wander to and fro
through the hotel screaming at things that scare her. It’s a
film that made me think that perhaps I’d nodded off, or that
I’d missed something while distracted, as it ended with an
air of "ohhhhhh, I see" but with no recognizable payoff. I
almost wanted the film to drop the whole ghost schtick, to
just focus on the two main characters and the hotel. Those
were interesting, the ghost B plot seemed a little forced.
The Lesson:
I need to check out Ti West’s other stuff to see what my
thoughts are. This isn’t really a lesson, more just a
description of what I’m going to do after this.
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