The Innkeepers

The Innkeepers is a refreshingly straight-up scary movie from Ti West (House of the Devil, Triggerman) that is pleasantly free of plot twists, self-referential humor and meta-storytelling tricks.  It’s just a good old-fashioned, low-budget ghost story with modern, relatable characters contained, for the most part, in a single location.  West has a great eye for composition and camera movement.   He knows the power of shadows, long hallways, and empty rooms is much more effective and fun than trying to redefine a genre.  He doesn’t shy away from treading familiar ground with this story or his camera and editing techniques (he is his own operator and editor) and thus his style comes off as confident, refreshing and playful.

Apparently the Inn of The Innkeepers is a real, supposedly haunted hotel in Connecticut—The Yankee Pedlar Inn. The idea for the movie was born when the director and much of the crew stayed at the Pedlar while making another horror picture, and found the experience of staying there to be creepier than the film they were making.  West wrote this script around that experience (though the fictional backstory of the hotel is his own).  The fun of making the film is palpable as the simple two-character story unfolds.  The movie is never about its creation or creators, but like an old Roger Corman movie, the excitement of filmmaking is as much of a presence as the exhilaration of being scared.