The Innkeepers

I finally saw Ti West’s The Innkeepers, upholding the longstanding “Zombies are Magic” tradition of seeing new releases long after everyone else has!  That way, people can read my blog and think “She is only now seeing this?  Does she live under a rock?” 

Starring Sara Paxton and Pat Healy as a couple of slackers named Claire and Luke, The Innkeepers is the story of the last weekend of the “Yankee Pedlar Inn,” a historic but woefully neglected hotel.  Clair and Luke are the sole employees on staff the final weekend, and they have decided to use this opportunity to investigate the hotel for hauntings.  Rumor has it a jilted bride hung herself in one of the rooms, and now haunts the hotel looking for a mate.  Luke claims to have seen her apparition, and Claire wants in on the action.

 

The only guests staying in the hotel that weekend are an annoying mother and her son, whom Claire and Luke like to torment.  Another guest is a washed up T.V. actress played by Kelly McGillis (awesome as always.)  The actress is now a new age healer, and she immediately senses that something is very wrong at the Yankee Pedlar.  She warns Luke and Claire that they may be in danger.   The duo, who can’t even take their jobs seriously, ignore her warnings…………. Until it is too late!!

The film has a couple of good scares that the actual Inn is very creepy in an old Americana sort of way.  The real strength of this film is the relationship between Claire and Luke.  Paxton and Healy completely inhabit their characters.  You believe in their relationship 100%.  Claire reminds me of myself at that age (or any age, I am still kind of an awkward mess).  The film ends on kind of a down note, but any other ending would have been cheese ball.   The last scene gave me Goosebumps.   Ti West is definitely one of my favorite new filmmakers, and I hope he sticks with the horror genre.  I just feel he is going to get better and better.