The Last Weekend at The Inn

This is the second year in a row Ti West’s The Innkeepers (2011) has made my October round of films. The more I watch it, the more I like it. I won’t write as much as I have the first two times, but I think this film is really about the place itself, The Yankee Pedlar Inn, and Sara Paxton (this is a great part for her, and I think she was also good enough in the Last House on the Left remake to include her on a list of young actresses made for the horror genre if she decided to hang around) as its last night’s paranormal investigator, even if of the amateur variety. I just really, really like her and if you are to hang around with a film for a while, I think it is kind of important not to hate your lead character/actor. While I think The Sacrament proves Ti West can end a film as well as he starts, The Innkeepers, for me, kind of does deflate during the final minutes. I think the locking of the basement wooden doors is a foreshadowing that is unfortunate for the lead as she kind of dooms herself without realizing it.

The piano EVP session is by far my favorite scene as well as the basement investigation. These are the paranormal ooga booga moments that thrive on a quiet methodical move towards a chilling sound or darkness that could produce something quite sinister. There’s a nice bit of “uh oh, she’s here!” scene where Madeleine O’Malley is underneath a sheet right next to (behind) Paxton on a bed at the inn (while she and her co-worker (Pat Healey) remain at the place until it closes). Then there’s the “final customer” who wants a specific room, Room 353, and his insistence on it for its nostalgic purposes (and an ulterior motive that is quite horrific). I love this minor bit of spooky where Paxton is getting sheets and such for the elderly man when she turns around and he’s gone (after being right behind her). It isn’t much in the way of “she’s dead meat” as it just works for me…I like the “someone’s there, and then they’re not” scene. It is one of those long-time eerie tricks used in the horror genre for quite some time.

I will say, watching it again this year, that I actually liked the ending a lot more than last year and the first time I viewed it. I think that the idea that perhaps “her imaginations/fears were getting the better or her” or perhaps “there are spirits residing in the inn” are equally suggested is a good thing. To tell you the truth, the inclusion of “spiritualist”/former-actress (or as Healey’s critical/skeptical cynic considers a kook) Lee (played by Kelly McGillis) didn’t do a whole lot for me. I guess she was part of the film’s foreshadowing. Maybe she is what she is, or perhaps Lee is what Healey considers her. The film does lean towards her actually having “the gift of sight”, using an amulet to help her “see the ghouls that remain inside the Pedlar”. I like movies like this because there is that feeling of fatalism for the heroine. There’s just this sense that all will end badly for Paxton’s Claire. The use of the asthma pump is a device that might hint that if she were carried away in her fear or actually haunted, her health could be affected. The ending puts good use to a traumatic suicide that leaves behind a residue of horror for Paxton to experience. Certainly traumatic for Claire, the “man in Room 353” could very well just be a “spectre of the psyche” and the overwhelming presence of Madeleine in her mind certainly could be an indication that she herself was unable to withstand the haunting of her psychological state. I guess, though, it is just more fun that the spirits are real and that final closed door and the piano earlier playing on its own are examples of its real haunting of the Pedlar Inn. Still, I can see the ever-critical “why didn’t she just get out when she had the chance?” and “why would she even go towards the basement” questions used as strong critiques towards illogical steps Claire made which some would consider damning acts of her own making…she was her own worst enemy.