{"id":1770,"date":"2013-04-15T01:11:16","date_gmt":"2013-04-15T05:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=1770"},"modified":"2013-11-08T14:36:11","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T19:36:11","slug":"the-innkeepers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/the-innkeepers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Innkeepers: A Crappy Horror Movie That Could\u2019ve Been One of the Best Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"innkeep\"
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\nThe Innkeepers<\/a> (2011)
\n<\/b><\/b>Written & Directed by Ti West
\n101 min.<\/p>\n

Spoilers ahead. But not in the two paragraphs directly below this sentence.<\/i><\/p>\n

What happened with this one? It really makes no sense how it could be so bad. The House of the Devil<\/a>, Ti West\u2019s film right before this, is pitch-perfect. A modern classic dripping with maturity. Easily one of my favorite horror movies of all time. The Innkeepers, however, is blatantly botched. So much so that it\u2019s hard to believe he didn\u2019t make it prior<\/i> to The House of the Devil. How does one go from being the most intelligent horror writer-director around to being a hack in two short years? Did he get hit on the head or something?<\/p>\n

I suspect the studio insinuated itself during the writing process, with awful script notes and the like. The thing just plain feels tinkered with and compromised, because the story starts off solid, and where he seemed to be going with it was genius and groundbreaking. And then unfortunately, for whatever reason, knowingly or unknowingly, he veered off onto a well-worn, safe, hackneyed path that robbed it entirely of depth.
\n
\nI\u2019l spell it out clearly: basically, the dude had the opportunity to make a movie about a girl scared to death by the guy who loves her, and instead made a movie about a girl scared to death by actual ghosts. If you\u2019ve see the movie, you\u2019re high-fiving me through the screen right now, because you know I\u2019m fucking right. But I\u2019ll explain, for those of you who haven\u2019t seen it.<\/p>\n

The movie is about two innkeepers at an old rundown inn. A beautiful nerdy girl and an average nerdy guy. They\u2019re the sole employees, and they\u2019re friends. The guy is in love with the girl, but she\u2019s oblivious. She\u2019s one of those twenty-something girls who\u2019s basically still 12 years old when it comes to that sort of thing. Also, she has asthma, and carries an inhaler.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re ghost hunting enthusiasts, and what drew them to working at the inn in the first place is that it\u2019s allegedly haunted by the ghost of a woman who hanged herself and then was buried in the basement by the owners. But the inn is closing for good in a week or two, and they still haven\u2019t had a sighting or any contact with the ghost.<\/p>\n

That night, while the girl is putting out the garbage, she hears weird noises coming from the entrance to the basement. She goes back inside and goes around the house with headphones on, holding a microphone, to try and pick up EVP\u2019s. She hears faint voices and some music, and then sees a grand piano start to play itself.<\/p>\n

At this point in the film, it\u2019s unclear whether or not she\u2019s hearing actual ghosts, or if her friend is playing tricks on her. To the audience, I mean. To her, the shits real. But then in the next scene, all mystery\/suspense goes out the window because she wakes up in the morning and sees a fucking box-standard CGI ghost in her room (I dunno much about companies that do CGI for movies, but they must just have a folder full of these fuckers that they just tweak slightly and stick into movies) and the ghosts are now proven to be very real, and the movie becomes very boring as a result.<\/p>\n

For the rest of the movie, she, and sometimes the guy, are running away from CGI ghosts or whatever. But all these scare beats could have easily been filled by simple, subtle eeriness and stuff moving. Ti West is exceptional at that sort of thing. They should have done that, and thus kept the mystery going as long as possible of whether the guy is just doing this to the girl so she can have the contact with ghosts she\u2019s always dreamed of. It would\u2019ve made the movie way suspenseful.<\/p>\n

I really do think there was a draft of this movie where this was the case. Because there are a bunch of great scares here that have nothing to do with CGI ghosts at all. For instance, the first scare is the two of them watching one of those screamer videos on a laptop. Which is fucking brilliant. Ti West, you sometimes-genius fuck, that was lovely. Literally just filming a damn laptop with a screamer video on it. That half the damn audience knows is a screamer video. And scaring the shit out of the half of the audience that doesn\u2019t. So beautiful.<\/p>\n

And the climax of the film even seems like it was a part of an old, good draft where all the shit I\u2019m suggesting was actually there. What happens is, the girl hides in the basement, and she hears ghosts banging against the doors, and she\u2019s in the dark, and the other door towards escape padlocked (by her, earlier in the movie) and she\u2019s having an asthma attack, and she\u2019s all alone, and she doesn\u2019t have her inhaler, and she dies. It\u2019s a sad, awful death. And in the next scene, the next morning, the guy who loves her seems genuinely remorseful over the fact that she\u2019s dead. Almost like he had something to do with it, and was responsible in some way. But he fucking wasn\u2019t. But in a good <\/i>version of this movie, he was. <\/i>In a good version of this movie, he went too far trying to give her a memorable experience at the inn before it was gone forever. Because, although he doesn\u2019t believe in ghosts, he know that ghosts are the only way he can bond with her. So he does it so they\u2019ll have a shared, scary experience. Because he loves her. That\u2019s a good movie, right there. You feel bad for him somewhat. Shits deep.<\/p>\n

How great would that have been? A fucking ghost movie, full of truly scary subtle ghost scares, but no actual ghosts\u2014plus an actually interesting, human story? Shit woulda been wonderful. And the cast was totally capable. The girl who played the girl is great, and same goes for the guy. They were up to the challenge of something deep. Instead, Ti West made a pointless B movie. I\u2019m serious, there\u2019s no actual point to this movie. In my version, there\u2019s a point. This one, not so much. The point in this one is literally \u2018ghosts are scary and real\u2014if you have asthma, always make sure you have your inhaler\u2019. Fuck that shit.<\/p>\n

His next film, The Sacrament<\/a>, has Joe Swanberg in it. Which worries me. I\u2019m worried that the telltale sign of a bad Ti West film is a bad actor-filmmaker having a cameo in it, because Lena Dunham is in The Innkeepers for a scene or two, and The Innkeepers sucked. So maybe this one will be bad because Swanberg is in it. Who knows. I\u2019ll still see it, because I love The House of the Devil so much, and I really hope he has another one of those in him. But I definitely will not see it in theaters. Ya done broke my trust, Ti. We should talk some day. I really wanna know what the fuck happened with The Innkeepers\u2014if it was the studios, or your own insecurity, or your own dumbness, or what. Shoot me an email, bruh.<\/p>\n

2 1\/2 out of 5 Codys.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"innkeep\"<\/p>\n

The Innkeepers (2011)
\n<\/b><\/b>Written & Directed by Ti West
\n101 min.<\/p>\n

Spoilers ahead. But not in the two paragraphs directly below this sentence.<\/i><\/p>\n

What happened with this one? It really makes no sense how it could be so bad. The House of the Devil<\/b>, Ti West\u2019s film right before this, is pitch-perfect. A modern classic dripping with maturity. Easily one of my favorite horror movies of all time. The Innkeepers, however, is blatantly botched. So much so that it\u2019s hard to believe he didn\u2019t make it prior<\/i> to The House of the Devil. How does one go from being the most intelligent horror writer-director around to being a hack in two short years? Did he get hit on the head or something?<\/p>\n

I suspect the studio insinuated itself during the writing process, with awful script notes and the like. The thing just plain feels tinkered with and compromised, because the story starts off solid, and where he seemed to be going with it was genius and groundbreaking. And then unfortunately, for whatever reason, knowingly or unknowingly, he veered off onto a well-worn, safe, hackneyed path that robbed it entirely of depth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,1],"tags":[1186,1188,75,1187,1184,1183,1189,1190,1185],"class_list":["post-1770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-codysreviews","tag-house-of-the-devil","tag-joe-swanberg","tag-lena-dunham","tag-the-house-of-the-devil","tag-the-innkeepers","tag-the-innkeepers-review","tag-the-sacrament","tag-the-sacrament-movie","tag-ti-west"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1770"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3679,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions\/3679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}