Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick (and the case against)
Among the crew of popular young filmmakers who took the indie horror scene by storm in the mid-to-late Aughts, Ti West quickly established himself as a distinct voice. His knowledge of, and affection for, the classic horror films of yesteryear ran just as deep as his contemporaries, but West was less interested in the slasher iconography and gore-soaked mayhem and moreso in the actual aesthetic and mood of 80’s horror. Paired with a deliberate sense of pacing that was wildly out of step with what anyone else was doing in the genre, West soon had a style and look that was all his own.
His films House of the Devil and The Innkeepers rapidly developed cult followings among the horror set, with both films becoming fixtures in many a horror fans seasonal line-up when October rolls around and many folks seek out fare that is more spooky and atmospheric than the blood-and-guts fixations that makes up a good chunk of the genre.
The Innkeepers is an especially good fit for that season, as it follows a pair of supernatural spelunkers as they search their place of work for signs of the paranormal. Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy) are the lone employees left at the rundown Yankee Pedlar Inn (a real “haunted” inn that has since closed) over a long weekend before the place is closed down for good. Claire in particular is determined to capture proof of a supernatural occurrence, a drive she may just come to regret as the weekend progresses and the empty hotel starts getting awfully active.
But one film fan who always felt left behind by the love for West’s work is Cinapse writer Brendan Foley (that’s me).
Brendan
I certainly have nothing against a horror film going for the long slow burn versus the chop/stab/repeat formula we get so often. And marrying a deliberately paced ghost story with a slacker slice-of-life dramedy sure seemed like a great combination that could yield interesting results.
But West’s films to me aren’t so much “slow burns” as “no burns”. He seems to find inactivity engaging in a way I don’t. His movies aren’t slowly simmering cauldrons of tension that eventually overflow into mayhem. They are instead long, stultifying exercises in non-activity punctuated by sudden flurries of violence and jump-scares.
The Innkeepers certainly has many positive qualities and good touches, so I’m hoping that a rewatch will accentuate those positives and make my detraction fall away.
Next Week’s Pick:
Revolted upon release but revered today, William Lustig’s Maniac is considered a landmark film in horror, especially in the slasher genre in which it was a nascent entry. But for Justin Harlan, it has always been a disappointment, a movie he expected to love but found only mildly entertaining.
With Maniac now available to stream on Vudo on Us and on Shudder, Justin is ready to give the film another whirl. What about you?
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!
Also, if you have a movie that you disliked but want to give a second shot, let us know and we might feature it as one of our upcoming picks!
The Team
Brendan Foley: The Rewatch!
I do think I enjoyed The Innkeepers more this second time, but it still feels like a swing and a miss to me. Part of the problem lies in how West has conceived and written his main pair: Paxton and Healy are both appealing performers, but their characters are shrill and unpleasant throughout. And if you don’t enjoy hanging out with the main characters in what’s primarily a hangout movie, then we’re kind of done, you know?
When the spooky stuff does arrive, it’s certainly well-executed. West can compose a terrific shot, and they get a lot of mileage out of their legitimately creepy location, plus some pretty excellent make-up effects on the ghouls that prowl the darkened inn. But there’s also a feeling of too-little, too-late, especially since the film doesn’t so much escalate to the scares as drop suddenly from one genre to the other.
That’s maybe my problem with all the Ti West films I’ve seen. House of the Devil, this, The Sacrament, they don’t seem to want to put in the actual work of a slow burn, where you steadily modulate the tension so things escalate and escalate and then finally explode. Instead, all of West’s films that I’ve seen go from 0–60, and that makes the pre-scare sections seem all the more slow, and it makes the scary parts feel unmotivated. For as much as The Innkeepers turns its nose up at jump scares, West also keeps leaning on “AND THEN A THING POPS OUT OF A THING” to give his climax juice. It’s frustrating, because in theory I love everything he is trying to do with these films, but the results just do nothing for me. (@theTrueBrendanF)
My experience with Ti West films up until this point has been House of the Devil, The Sacrament, and his segment in V/H/S — all of which, I truly enjoy a great deal. For some reason, I’ve been slow to check out the rest of his catalog. This week’s Two Cents presented an opportunity to make a dent in the remaining list of his films.
It’s not a bad film, but it didn’t grab me the way Sacrament, House, or “Second Honeymoon” from V/H/S did. There are some great effects and several moments of fantastic tension. The cinematography is stellar and the sound design is well done. However, it just doesn’t pull me in as much as West’s other films I’ve seen do.
Thus, I can’t give it a strong recommendation, but it’s not a bad watch at all. (@thepaintedman)
I’m coming from a similar place as Brendan on this one; I’ve seen this once before and felt a bit let down. A moody haunted hotel movie should be precisely my kind of jam. I really like the duo of Pat Healy and Sara Paxton and am in Ti West’s corner as a filmmaker, but despite a fun last 15 minutes, it just didn’t gel for me as a whole.
On this rewatch, I realized at least one big reason why: No one in this film behaves or speaks like an actual human being. Excepting the interaction between the two leads which tends to be fun and believable, the film’s dialogues and interactions feel stilted and awkward. No doubt this is partially intentional to set up a tense mood, but it mostly serves to make the characters feel alien to the audience.
That being said, I’ve been curious to give this another go and I did like it more overall. I think Brendan hit the nail regarding the movie’s first half being less of a slow burn than simply a wait, because there’s not enough tension being built — but the last act is pretty solid, and I appreciate the impulse of making an old-fashioned scare picture without a lot of gore and nastiness, even if the execution is a little flat.
Next week’s pick: