Movies Reviews

The Innkeepers – Movie Review

By Ron Wilkinson Dec 30, 2011, 17:09 GMT

During the final days at the Yankee Pedlar Inn, two employees determined to reveal the hotel\'s haunted past begin to experience disturbing events as old guests check in for a stay. ...more

A galloping mish mash of horror clichés that comes up with too little, too late.

Ti West’s latest horror show is a few spooks short of a full house. Or maybe, a few short of a full hotel. The wannabe ghost story takes place in the Yankee Pedlar Inn, a hotel with a very bad past. A young bride to be, full of hope and life, was left at the alter by a cad of a man. Brokenhearted, she killed herself efficiently, but not attractively. Unless you call....never mind, you will have to see the film yourself, if you dare.

The opening scenes of the film are suitably creepy, in a PG rated introductory way. In fact, it will be awhile before the audience sees anything horrific enough to write home about.

The original music by Jeff Grace (reuniting with writer/director West after “House of the Devil”), coupled with the great photography of DP Eliot Rockett (also reuniting with West after “Cabin Fever 2” and “House of the Devil”) sets this up to be a cozy and bloody corpse fest. Still, we wait, and wait and…

The hotel is suitably creepy, oozing that famous, flinty, Yankee hard-heartedness. The audience visualizes the dirty skinflint of a philandering rascal strolling within the Spartan painted utilitarian interior, wringing his hands with glee. He will soon be violating his young fiancé’ with the promise of a life of wedded bliss followed by his taking the first carriage south. There is going to trouble. Someone is going to pay for this.

Or maybe not.

For the next sixty minutes there plays across the silver screen a vapid screenplay, coupled with feckless and saccharine acting. The film is acted out by two leads and an almost completely supporting character who adds little or nothing to the story. This build-up could be a promise of big things to come, but no such luck with this flick.

This is not the fault of the actors, who were saddled with a dismal screenplay. The plot should have allowed Pat Healy to make something of his part, the very dumb hotel clerk who gets in over his head. He should end up skewered on the weather vane, or something.

Sara Paxton, as Claire, is doomed to look like the tomboy next door and is badly miscast in this role. There has to be a sense of foreboding in this young lass, presumably set up to repeat the history of the abandoned bride. Instead, she comes off like Haley Mills in “Parent Trap,” and this is not that kind of film.

Supporting the two leads, Kelly McGillis plays Leanne Rease-Jones, an ex-actress turned faith healer who sees the future, and George Riddle plays a really homely old man who seems to get what is coming to him.

There you have it, the entire plot of the film. One good stair fall with some nice gore for Ms. Paxton, but nowhere near enough action to fill the void. Her character needs to get messed up at minute 20, not minute 85. Rease-Jones’ and Healy’s characters do not seem to change much at all throughout the affair. This film badly needed for them to be shredded in one way or another.

Her, for her sophomoric spiritual self-righteousness, and him, for his deep-seated lameness. They both had it coming. However, no one in the audience will ever believe Claire (Paxton) did. She is just too, well, normal.

Overall, in the beginning “Innkeepers” held so much promise, it was disappointing to see how little the screenplay made of it. The sound track and cinematography are great. Overall, the movie deserves to be enjoyed in the context of lush, wood grained, rural impersonality and richly crumbling brick cellar sadism.

West takes three quarters of the film to introduce the three blandest characters ever to appear on screen and provides one, exactly one, hanging. Yes, it is a good, howling bloody-mouthed hanging. Yes, it is the hanging of the revenge obsessed violated bride-to-be. Unfortunately, that is not sufficient.

The least he could have done was rolled Claire down the stairs a couple more times, earlier in the film, just to build the tension. Or, perhaps, disclosed that one-dimensional Luke was actually the cad reborn and believed Claire was his long lost bride to be, to be violated in memory of the original lost woman. Or he could break a fingernail on his computer keyboard. Something. Anything!

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Directed and Written by: Ti West
Starring: Sara Paxton, Pat Healy and Kelly McGillis
Release Date: December 30, 2011
MPAA: Rated R for some bloody images and language
Running Time: 100 Minutes
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color