Film Review: The Innkeepers

After watching his previous directorial effort House of the Devil, it was clear Ti West was not your usual trashy horror hack. It was a slow paced tribute to films of the past, and had a great retro feel to it. So I was looking forward to his next film, The Innkeepers. Unlike 'House...', The Innkeepers takes place in the present-day and is basically a traditional haunted-hotel film. It's nothing overly original, but is done so much better than you'd expect.

About to break Horror Movie rule #36 - Don't go down there!

Two employees of a hotel (The Yankee Pedlar Inn) that is about to close its doors for good, while away the last days of the building by investigating paranormal activity within its walls. Luke (Pat Healy) even starts a website covering all the spooky goings on, whilst Claire (Sara Paxton) gets increasingly creeped out as visitors from the past (including Kelly McGillis from Top Gun!) return to the hotel for one last stay...

In this day and age, a haunted building film should provide absolutely no scares whatsoever. But West manages to scrape tension from a lot of situations, that in other hands would fail miserably. It helps that the build up to any of the happenings is nice and slow. It's almost 25 minutes before anything vaguely ghostly happens!

Also worth a mention is Sara Paxton in the lead. The last thing I saw her in was the woeful Shark Night, and her performance improves ten-fold in this. She is one of the most likable horror leads in recent years, and you feel genuinely sympathetic for her character as the film goes on.

The Innkeepers is nothing you haven't seen before, but it's done really well, and has a likable cast. And these things speak volumes these days.

***1/2
Does lose a half point for its lack of originality, but the good cast and the scares that you should really know better about make The Innkeepers a great little horror flick. Check it out.