Review of The Innkeepers (2011) by Writefilmlive21 — 01 Dec 2012

"The Innkeepers", in brief, is an hour and a half of slow-paced minimalism interrupted briefly by moments of genuine, unnerving suspense. The characters are shallow and pretty boring - we never learn very much about them, we don't become attached to them, and so you're not very interested in what happens to them.

They feel more like outlines of characters than actual, believable, fully-developed ones. The story behind the ghosts is left almost entirely unexplained, so we don't understand anything of the few "happenings" that occur and are teased with a twist to the facts that never comes to light.

With so much potential in this concept and setting, it's sad that the film is so wholly vacant of substance - the only thing it's got going for it is that the spare moments of slow suspense are pretty effective, and sometimes leave you painfully nervous about whatever's about to happen.

However, this also means that director Ti West is capable of making a decent horror film, yet somehow he pulls off only scraps of a decent horror film, mixed in with a somewhat impressively limp arsenal of filler and empty storytelling.

If you enjoy slow-paced movies with little to no payoff, perhaps you'll enjoy "The Innkeepers" - otherwise, your hour and forty minutes is better spent with something else.