Ti West is an exceptional film-maker. This I concluded perhaps a third of the way into the first movie of his that I saw, the mind-blowing Jim Jones-based horror The Sacrament, which was a mockumentary. I resist the term Found Footage as the footage-makers got out alive to share said footage. The Innkeepers is an entirely different branch of horror, your traditional ghost picture. However, West's inimitable skill at cultivating horror for the screen makes for a 21st century Kubrick. Alas, there is no King-quality storyline or Nicholson-quality acting, but direction and actual technique is truly remarkable. I might even argue that not since Kubrick making The Shining has a horror director so exquisitely used space and pace to terrify.The movie involves Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), who are the last two remaining employees of the Yankee Pedlar Hotel, which is due to close within the week. There are only enough guests to count on the fingers of one hand, and the two have arranged to stay in the hotel itself and sleep in shifts rather than go home. Luke, a cool-enough bespectacled fella clicks away on a computer all day, alternating between XXX Chinese Pancakes (whatever the hell that entails) and a website he's created to document the supposed haunting of the hotel he works at. Claire, whose appearance and speaking voice seems stolen from 1992 Edward Furlong, is a loud tomboy whose aspirations seep no further than working at a hotel.
Faced with the boredom of only an irritable mother and her young child to associate with, the pair start investigating the hauntings together, and Claire grows convinced that there is some truth to it all. Just then a former actress-turned-medium played by Kelly McGillis turns up, whose work Claire is a fan of. She warns that there is something macabre in the basement, and that the place is not safe. If I'm very honest, standard horror action ensues from here. However, Mr West is an auteur of craft, so the actual format of the movie is something quite unique. Consider, for example, a brilliant scene in which Claire drags out a dripping garbage bag to the dumpster late at night. She starts doing a sideways crab routine to avoid the goo splashing onto her bare legs. When she makes it to the dumpster, which is taller than her, she makes repeated hilarious attempts to open the thing and swing the bag into it. I was in stitches throughout, utterly identifying with being of diminutive stature and not being the world's biggest fan of questionable bacteria-ridden liquids. It is little touches of situational humour and realism like this that help make the film special.
Consider another, in which that classic set-up has been followed, with Claire having slowly approached a darkened window to investigate a strange noise. When Luke suddenly appears, she releases all the pent-up adrenaline in a wonderfully realistic outburst. Again, it was relatable. I remember once being alone in my house and singing at the top of my lungs whilst cleaning a table. I turned around to see my friend standing right behind me, and being scared shitless, I found it took a good couple of minutes of making weird groans and shaking my arms about to calm down again.Then, of course, there is the aforementioned spacial awareness. The hotel is no Overlook, but it's vast on the inside, and West takes full advantage of its long corridors, perpendicular turns and the angles that can be experimented with. He succeeds in planting us in the setting with the characters, and in suggesting to us where danger may be lurking. Technique even, at times, borders on Hitchcockian, playing with what we see and what we don't, and what horrors we can make up in our own minds. Agonising spans of time are used to allow us to work ourselves up, to experience the tension for ourselves. What is so special about Ti West's work is that no matter what source of horror he settles upon, be it supernatural or despicably man-made, he never fails to convince us of the terror. Although I do not rate this movie, in terms of a viewing experience, quite so highly as his amazing The Sacrament, it is an excellent piece in his portfolio, and truly his, and definitely worth watching for anyone who appreciates quality horror.
