With only a few features (we’ll forget Cabin Fever 2) Ti West has made a mark for himself as a horror director with a unique sensibility. His House of the Devil (2009) was a movie drenched in a mood of lurking doom that remained hidden, building tension so gradual as to be almost imperceptible, until it eventually exploded into violence and overwhelming horror. For his follow up feature Ti West applies that structure to a film that nevertheless manages to feel quite distinct from Devil in tone and mood.
The Yankee Pedlar is an historic inn that has seen better days. Now on its final weekend, it is left in the care of two of its lowly staff. Luke (Pat Healy) is content to spend the weekend catching as much sleep as possible in one of the empty rooms and maintaining his website devoted to the mysterious, supernatural occurrences that supposedly take place within the walls of the Pedlar. Claire (Sara Paxton) is a bit more anxious to explore, to discover whether she can make contact with those spirits, one of who is the ghost of a bride who, after her fiancée’s betrayal, killed herself. Armed with a tape recorder, Claire sets out to record evidence of these strange phenomena in order to solve the old building’s long-buried mysteries and to keep herself awake through the night shift.
It’s interesting that, like many a horror fan, I have long considered “the jump scare” to be a tactic used exclusively for cheap thrills, more a jolt than a scare, which forgoes mood in order to get a rise out of the audience. Two horror films at SXSW forced me to reconsider this attitude, as The Innkeepers, following closely on the heels of James Wan’s Insidious, utilizes jump scares to great effect. Even more surprisingly is that Innkeepers features the kind that I hate the most: the “fake-out,” where a startling noise turns out to just be an innocuous animal or person. The reason that it works so well in this context is that West is meticulous in building his mood. A detractor of this film could easily claim that “nothing happens” for the majority of the film’s runtime. The long static shots of largely empty spaces that dominate the film’s runtime could become repetitive if one is not on the film’s wavelength. For my part, the slow pace of the first 75% of the film constitutes an extraordinary mood of creeping dread, so gradual as to be nearly unnoticeable. The possibility of horrors lurking in every corridor and corner, the sense of mounting unease, similar to the one achieved in House of the Devil
That isn’t to say that the film is one note. On the contrary, the film is often quite funny. The playful relationship between Claire and Luke keeps the tone surprisingly light; when the film isn’t scaring the hell out of you it is building a dynamic between the two that feels real and contributes greatly to the emotional impact of what transpires at the end. Both Sara Paxton and Luke Healy turn in solid performances, selling the fact that these people are very comfortable around each other as friends, while also hinting at hidden depths to the relationship which come into play in unexpectedly poignant ways in the latter third of the film. Special mention must also be made of Kelly McGillis, playing a washed up old actress who is one of the only other occupants of the hotel during its last weekend. She has a hidden purpose at the hotel, and the way that her connection to the supernatural occurrences is revealed provides another element of satisfying mystery to the film.
Much like House of the Devil, the film trades in its slow burn effectiveness for a full-on assault at the end. To my mind it works even better in this film. Devil was a lot of (very well-done) set up, but the pay off was so sudden that it was over before you knew what to really make of it. The Innkeeper’s long wind up leads to a more sustained release, as the film kicks into a high gear so intense that it was almost too much to take, before down-shifting into an epilogue that is suitably spooky and surprisingly emotional. Moreso than Devil, West invests us in his characters here, making us care about them and hoping that they survive. It is an encouraging sign of continued growth from the director, a sign that he is indeed one of the more unique and interesting horror filmmakers working today.
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