The Innkeepers (2011)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Innkeepers (2011) – T. West

Billed as an old-school haunted house tale (eschewing gore and CGI, I guess), this is another one of those films where you end up thinking that you yourself could probably have done better. I mean you’ve got the location (an old inn that apparently is “really” haunted) and the genre with all its trappings – you just need a respectable plot and then direction/editing skills to make it work.  So, it seems that director/editor Ti West is lacking in that department. When they say “slow build”, I think it should mean the gradual introduction of suspense – but instead we just see a couple of bored hospitality workers (Sara Paxton and Pat Healy) making time pass with some idle chatter for 20+ minutes. It might be authentic but it sure is boring.  Kelly McGillis shows up as a retired actress, now new age psychic.  It’s a fine turn but she doesn’t really get much to do other than to say, “Don’t go into the basement!”  And, of course, they do.  Perhaps the scares are okay from that point on, but no one bothered to really fill in the holes in the plot. This is a common issue with horror films but here, where everything is bare bones, there isn’t much to counterbalance the absence, to make the film worth recommending. However, if you are scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for old-school ghost stories, then here is one.