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THE INNKEEPERS: My Review, Thoughts, Ramblings And Spoilers!

I finally got to watch The Innkeepers last weekend, a movie that I’ve been looking forward to watching nce I first heard about it, and as soon as I was finished I hopped online to see what the general consensus of the movie was. Did people hate it or did they love it as much as I did?

It seems that there were many differing viewpoints on it. Like I said just a second ago, I loved the movie and thought it was creepy as crap. I had to watch half the movie out of my peripheral vion so I wouldn’t die of a heart attack at the jump scares I was expecting throughout the movie. Those jump scares rarely happened, though, which I was very happy about.

Jump scares are effective on me, but they can seem a little cheap at times. There were tons of times in this movie that I was expecting something to jump out, but nothing ever did. When the scares did come they were more of a semi-jump scare. Something came out of the darkness, but it was slow and creepy, not throwing itself at you with a blare of muc. The main example I’m thinking of is the scene where Claire (played to near-perfection by Sara Paxton) is trying to get some sleep.

On to the characters and actors, I thought everyone did a great job. Claire and Luke are lovable losers stuck in a rut. Coming from a small town myself, I could relate to their outlook on life and having big dreams go unfulfilled. They were very realistic and funny and I liked seeing them on the screen. The other redents of the hotel served their purpose as well and I couldn’t find any glaring faults in anyone’s acting.

Now to the meat and bones of my thoughts on other people’s opinions of the movie and what I think a lot of people may be overlooking (SPOILERS AHEAD). Some of these things may have been mentioned in reviews or comments that I missed and I apologize for being redundant.

Looking at some boards, a lot of people were confused/unhappy with the mother and child staying at the hotel. They were trying to make sense of these characters and how they fit in with the story. Were they ghosts? Were they connected with the hotel? The answer to that is, no. These were just people staying in the hotel. If anything they were meant as a red herring to make people think they were going to be some part of the big picture. Nope, just a mom and her kid getting away from her husband for awhile.

Another big question that’s come up is: is the hotel really haunted? My view on this is, yes and no. Let’s look at a few things here:

The only person to see the “ghosts” is Claire. This subject has been touched upon, where Claire is the only person to actually see a ghost or experience a haunting. Claire is overworked, underpaid, and exhausted and susceptible to an overactive imagination and hallucinations. Now, let’s take a look at the ghosts that Claire sees. This may have been gone over before, but I didn’t see it anywhere. Starting with Madeline…when she pops up doesn’t she look a little…familiar? Let’s rewind to the beginning of the movie to the YouTube video. Notice the wedding dress hanging in the background? Or what about the face that pops up to scare us? It’s not an exact match, but it’s very milar to Madeline’s appearance throughout the rest of the movie. Claire doesn’t know what Madeline looks like, I think her mind used these images from YouTube to create Madeline’s ghost and determined its horrific appearance. Reinforcing this is the ghost of the old man. Why wasn’t he blue with white eyes and a blackened face? Because Claire saw his actual dead body and knew what the ghost was supposed to look like. My opinion is she never saw a ghost, she just got so worked up that her mind created these monsters and that’s eventually what killed her. Not the ghosts, but the pure terror her illuons caused paired with her lost inhaler.

Now let me retread a little bit and maybe contradict myself. I do believe the hotel had its spirits, but not malevolent and not in the way that Claire sees them. My first point on this would be the piano playing. This could have been an illuon created by Claire as well, except Luke acknowledges hearing the sounds on the tape as well. Haunted muc, but still no evil ghost. The next point comes from Claire’s conversation with Leigh and I have to thank somebody who posted on the imdb board about this one. Leigh mentions the three spirits in the hotel which leads us to a new mystery of who the ghosts are and why they’re there. She then warns Claire to stay out of the basement so we, as viewers, think that the ghosts are in the basement. Now, let’s go to the conversation between Luke, Leigh, and Claire and the déjà vu speech. Leigh mentions hers works backwards so when she talks about seeing three spirits she was seeing them in the future. She knew Claire was going to die in the basement and that’s why she warned her.

I think that was all my theories/thoughts/mungs. Overall this is a great movie and if you haven’t seen it I hope you will. If you have seen it and didn’t care much for it, try to watch it again in a different light (figuratively and literally) and try to enjoy this movie for what it is.