31 Days of Horror: Day 4- The Innkeepers (2011)

Despite the gruesome creatures, flying limbs and buckets of blood, horror as a genre can feel pretty stale. For every excellent film there is a dozen forgettable or terrible ones. And there are so many that it takes a lot of wading through the rubbish to get to the interesting stuff. For each day in October I’m going to recommend a different horror film or film about horror. For the most part they won’t be the accepted classics. My selections range from the genuinely excellent to the delightfully strange with a few that are more fascinating than they are great. Hopefully there will be something for everyone and you’ll find something new to give you a scare or maybe a laugh. This is my 31 days of Horror and today I’m talking about: The Innkeepers.

Ti West really broke out onto the horror scene with his excellent 70s/80s throwback The House of the Devil in 2009. It is an excruciatingly tense slow burn of a film and his 2011 follow-up The Innkeepers is no different. West recognises the power of our imagination when it comes to horror. To entice the viewer with ideas of what could be lurking around the corner, rather than showing it, leaves us in a state of constant unease. He captures the feeling of being alone in your house at night while a little scared. Every sound is suspect and anything could be skulking in the darkness.

Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy) are two young employees of a soon-to-be closed hotel. As many of the floors are closed-off their days are relatively work-free. The only guests are a quiet elderly gentleman and an aging actress played excellently by aging actress Kelly McGillis. The hotel is rumoured to be haunted so their mutual interest in the paranormal, as well as their general aimlessness, leads them to doing some amateur ghost hunting. For the first third it’s more of a workplace comedy but over time it becomes evident that the hotel is not as dormant as it initially seemed.

The Innkeepers is not only successful as an incredibly creepy and scary haunted house movie but it also works as kind of a romantic comedy. The central relationship between Claire and Luke is what brings heart to the story. They’re both like ghosts themselves just floating on through life, she’s a college dropout and his major accomplishment is his website dedicated to this haunted hotel. Just as the supposed ghosts are tied to this old building so is Luke. He has affection for the idea that his building is of paranormal significance. But as the prospects of that being true become all the more real he finds it harder to stick around. The increasing activity of spirits on the other hand draws in Claire. The ghost hunting starts as a respite from boredom and an opportunity to hang out. They genuinely bond over their search for spectres until the macabre reality of what they are looking for becomes clearer. Luke’s growing affection for Claire makes it harder for him to have fun with the idea of the undead. Although ghosts fascinate him he’s starting to actually see something in his future for once and is too terrified to lose that. Their relationship brings a sweetness to the film that is very welcome amidst the terror.

Beyond the core relationship it’s also a fantastic haunted house movie. The sound design in conjuncture with the camerawork is what really makes the film as effective as it is. As scary as it is to see ghosts it’s equally scary to hear them. Claire and Luke use audio recording equipment to search for sounds of phantoms and the silent waiting for any reading is insanely tense. As we trepidatiously wait for some noise to scare us we are not offered any new images to hopefully distract us. The camera lingers with baited breath just hovering by the characters. We are offered no reprieve from the tension and are made to experience it as the characters do. Part of us hopes they hear nothing but we know what film we’re watching, it’s not a question of if the ghosts will make themselves known but when. The camera slowly enters rooms rather than just cutting to the interior, which just adds to the tension. Every time it floats round a corner there is the prospect of something being there. It would be too easy to just be shown each of the dead hotel’s barren rooms but we are made to slowly examine every inch of them. Many times the room is as empty as predicted but on some occasions the close inspection reveals something quietly terrifying. Something screaming at the screen is nowhere near as scary as noticing that there has been a ghostly presence in front of us all along without us even noticing. One is a fleeting shock while the other imbues us with an unease that will follow us throughout the rest of the increasingly spooky film.

Many horror films have the feeling of being on a haunted house ride. We’re taken from scare to scare and get a shock every time but when it’s over we’re just laughing at how scared we all are. Then there are horror films that hit you like a scarily unexplainable experience that leaves you wary of darkness. The kind of experience that makes you notice every sound at night and makes you turn on lights before you enter rooms. The Innkeepers encapsulates that feeling as well as providing it. For the most part the comedy works to alleviate some of the tension but it gets to a point where there is no release. The film slowly shifts into full-on terror without letting up until the end. With The House of the Devil Ti West showed he was someone to take notice of and The Innkeepers cements his position as one of the best current horror filmmakers.