The strength of Innkeepers lies in the execution, not the story. This is a well-made, low-key horror. As such, it reminded me a lot of Stephen Soderbergh’s Haywire, the stripped-down action movie from earlier in the year. However, there is one crucial difference between them. Haywire, despite thin story and basic characters, was nonetheless a great movie. Its roughhousing brutality had enough impact to make up for their lack. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the horror of Innkeepers. This film may be well-crafted. But there is nothing striking about it.
Innkeepers takes place within a soon-to-be-closed hotel called the The Yankee Peddlar. The owner being in Barbados, he has left the running of the hotel to Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), two aimless twentysomethings. As for guests the hotel is basically empty, aside from an unnamed mother and child, and an old actress, Leanne Rease-Jones (Kelly McGillis). Claire and Luke, as is the wont of onscreen college dropouts, do little but bitch and lollygag. Except that is, for when they hunt for the ghost they believe is haunting the Peddlar.
The best parts of Innkeepers come from behind the camera. In the creation of suspense, good camerawork and music is crucial, and Innkeepers has both of those. Composer Jeff Grace’s score has a real energetic creepiness that sets the horror stage perfectly. This is enhanced by the craft with which writer/director Ti West composes a scene, and cinematographer Eliot Rockett shoots it. The camera in Innkeepers is a graceful creature, exquisitely fluid in its movements, and the filmmakers display great confidence in their play with light and shadow.
The acting is also very good. Innkeepers takes its time in introducing and establishing its characters, and the actors own their roles so completely that their performances have real weight. Healy is great as the cynical, tech-savvy Luke: he’s not witty exactly, but enjoyably dry and sympathetically nerdy. McGillis is similarly fun to watch, though Leanne is more arch than cynical. But where her talent shines is in the sincerity with which Leanne expresses her slightly unconventional beliefs.
These two, when combined with Paxton’s performance, makes for a very competent trio. Claire is an interesting character. Though on the surface she is a cynic in the same mould as Luke, beneath she is a much more emotional, easily wounded person. Whereas Luke treats the ghost as little more than a marketable curiosity, Claire is the one invested in the investigation and the hotel’s tragic past. And when things begin to go bump in the night, Paxton delivers an infectiously fearful performance.
But though the movie is brilliantly shot, creepily shot and excellently performed, fact of the matter is, it fails to leave much of an impression. Part of this no doubt is down to its low-key style: as Snow White and the Huntsman shows, melodrama can go a long way towards making an interesting movie. But really, the problem is a simple lack of invention. Innkeepers is a film of well-crafted visuals, but lacking in terms of visual spectacle. It is a film whose characters are aggressively ordinary, and possesses nothing even resembling thematic subtext. In short, Innkeepers may be a display of artistic competence, but it is sadly lacking in artistic brilliance.
It should be emphasised that Innkeepers is technically a good movie. The problem is ‘technically’ is the right word. Ti West and his team have proved themselves good filmmakers. But knowing how to put a film together does not make a film great and Innkeepers lacks the spark of greatness.
— Adam Brodie
Rating: 18
UK Release Date: 8th June 2012
Directed By:Ti West
Cast:Sara Paxton, Pat Healy, Kelly McGillis, Lena Dunham
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