When Leanne, the actress staying in the hotel, asks Claire if she’s an aspiring performer, Claire is humiliated to say she’s not. One thing West never explicitly tells us in The Innkeepers is that Claire is depressed.
That was my idea, to subvert expectations and have some of those funny moments be punctuated by music stings and all the scary moments be played violent.” All the actual scares are played very straight. “All the jump scares,” he says, “they’re not actually scares. West subverts this idea in The Innkeepers. To me, that means “loud.” Bad horror always wants to be loud. “Mainstream horror is aimed at the lowest common denominator,” West told The A.V. Also, its relentless bloodshed is continually undercut by the film’s lame-duck nihilism. Red State’s first half features some sharp writing and an incredible performance by Michael Parks, but its final act devolves into an endless barrage of assault rifles. And then there was Kevin Smith’s out-of-nowhere Red State, a film that’s generated an undeserved fondness over the years simply for being such a shocking pivot for Smith, who nobody thought had a spontaneous bone left in his body. Lucky McKee’s The Woman, for example, is most assuredly a striking film, but the extremity of its material does more to alienate than embrace. Still, You’re Next is heads and shoulders better than the rest of the year’s indie horror scene. Though You’re Next was also critically acclaimed (and did much better at the box office), it lacks the elegance of The Innkeepers, as well as its intriguingly opaque themes. West had previously received huge accolades two years prior with his slow-burning ‘80s period piece The House of the Devil, a movie that helped propel the “mumblegore” movement that also produced 2011’s You’re Next, a brutal slasher from filmmaker Adam Wingard that distinguished itself with vivid personality and curiously subdued performances. While some of these movies are better than others, none of them could necessarily be described as either subtle or ambiguous, which are key aspects to the work of The Innkeepers’ writer/director, Ti West. Scream even got a long-awaited fourth installment while The Human Centipede hoped for another strike of lightning with its own stomach-churning sequel.
2011 positively brimmed with sequels: the Final Destination series saw its fifth installment, Hostel its third, and the Paranormal Activity franchise reached the peak of its powers with an entry directed by Catfish alums Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost. Or do they?Īmbiguity is key to The Innkeepers, which in itself is enough to separate it from the rest of the year’s horrors. After the arrival of an aging actress ( Kelly McGillis) and a somber old man ( George Riddle), the myths begin to become reality. Claire revels in the story of Madeline O’Malley, a bride who allegedly hung herself back in the 1800s. They take video and try to capture EVPs (electronic voice phenomena). The only enjoyment they can find is in the possibility that the hotel itself is haunted. While their boss is away, twentysomethings Claire ( Sara Paxton) and Luke ( Pat Healy) check people in and monitor the lobby with drowsy eyes. It takes place at the Yankee Pedlar Inn, a cute, historic hotel that’s on the verge of closing. It was around that same time I started seeing monsters in my closet.
Every day I would leave feeling like Sammy from John Updike’s “A&P”, feeling “how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter” as sick sunshine skated around on the asphalt. I ended up at Wal-Mart, working with a giant group of other losers to help rearrange the store. I was in college and couldn’t even get a job in the cafeteria. My worst summer of unemployment was also the summer of my first love. It’s stressful, sweaty, and your palms get burned to shit.
I got laid when I worked at McDonald’s, too, but I worked at McDonald’s. Reflecting on a summer of flipping burgers, he recalls: “All I did was party and get laid.” Dude, fuck off. I think of Kevin Spacey in American Beauty. It’s tempting when you’re older to look back on the freedom you had being underemployed. Just think back to those first few weeks out of college or that second month of unemployment after getting laid off. I don’t need to cite studies, graphs, or charts. It’s no great stretch to say that depression is a common symptom of the unemployed. With A Most Horrific Year, Senior Staff Writer Randall Colburn analyzes and reflects on the most critically acclaimed horror movie of every year, starting in 2015 and moving backwards.