Review

Ti West’s The Innkeepers is a poky but blood-freezing throwback to the gothic horror films of the seventies, when ingénues moved tremulously down dark corridors without holding digital video cameras. True, the heroine, Claire (Sara Paxton), has a souped-up microphone that detects phantasmal cries and whispers, but that’s audio—it seems pleasantly old-fashioned. It’s the last weekend of business for the Yankee Pedlar Inn, where once upon a time a bride took her life and the innkeepers hid her festering corpse in the basement. Despite the warnings of an alcoholic spiritualist (Kelly McGillis, also back from the dead), Claire heads more or less straight for the scene of the desecration. Paxton, de-glammed, is so wonderfully gawky and funny, we’d follow her anywhere—and do, alas. — David Edelstein