Can't You Feel It? It's Alive... Watching.

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The 28th of October, 2011

Dearest Diary,

I saw a spooky movie tonight called The Innkeepers, by the director Ti West. He made The House of the Devil which co-starred our pretend girlfriend Greta Gerwig - "Are you not the babysitter?" - a couple of years ago. He was there at the screening and seems a very sharp fellow. Anyway The Innkeepers tells the story of a haunted hotel and its caretakers - so yes, The Shining looms large over the proceedings - over the course of its last week of business as it closes up permanently.

Sara Paxton, perhaps too adorable for her own good, and Pat Healy, who nobody would accuse of being too adorable for his own good, play the employees and the first 75% or so of the movie is basically just us hanging out with them as they chat and talk about the hotel's haunted past and walk around corridors by themselves trying to find ghosts. Ti West said he was inspired by those ghost hunters shows on cable, and what would happen if they actually found something. Sorry, spoiler alert, Diary! There are ghosts in this ghost movie! I hope I didn't ruin it for you. I know you sneak off to the local movie theater when I'm not around on little legs you've crafted from pencils. Oh Diary, I love you.

Anyway the first three-quarters of the movie with all the talking are spotty. There are moments of humor that ring a little bit canned, and everything feels a little too aimless for a bit. I get that we're dealing with aimless characters, but that doesn't mean the movie has to be. It needs to be a little bit sharper in its eying of these folks. There's a scene where they get drunk and lay on the floor that starts to shade their relationship in interesting ways that the movie needed a little bit more of earlier on.

Okay so I need to write a review for the movie this week, Diary. Don't let me forget!

Dearest Diary,

It is now three hours since my last entry. I'm in bed, and as I was just falling asleep I swear I just heard a woman scream in the other room. Not the scream of someone frightened either, but the scream of someone trying to frighten someone else. For now, I am that someone. It was a curdled, guttural horror of a sound. I keep picturing the ghost from The Innkeepers, the bride, out in the hallway around the corner from my bedroom. I'm just staring at the doorway, waiting for her to poke around the corner. I can hear people walking in their apartments above or below me. I can't tell where the footsteps are coming from. They could be right out there, around that corner...

The 7th of November, 2011

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Dearest Diary,

It's been about a week and a half since I saw The Innkeepers, Diary, and I have two things to say about that. First, I haven't written my review yet, and that's a horrible horrible thing. I've got to tell everybody that even despite the sometimes meandering nature of the first half of the movie, how once the last section kicks into gear they'll be covering their eyes and jumping in their seats and feeling the theater walls close in around them in the good old fashioned way of bump-in-the-night pictures. Ti West has proven time and time again that he knows how to close in those walls around you and suffocate you with tension, and once he gets around to it here it's gangbusters. I definitely agree with something that Ti West said at the Q&A after the screening - that generally it's the non-scary scenes in a horror movie that make the scary scenes scarier. You need a sense of normalcy established, so that the violation of that normalcy can feel as rightfully abnormal and disturbing as it's meant to. And so the long slow build certainly works in its favor. I just wish the build had been a little bit more focused.

And the second thing I have to tell you, dearest Diary, is I can't stop imaging the woman in my apartment. It's been a week and a half and I keep hearing her. Groaning, moaning, the whole ghost shtick. I was brushing my teeth this morning and I knew she was there, outside the bathroom door, listening to me. I could hear the floorboards creaking. There's always a shadow moving out of the room whenever I enter it. At night I've begun to lock the bedroom door, and I know if I press my face to my side and listen the only thing keeping her from pressing her crumbling lips to the side of my face is those two inches of wood. Maybe they aren't enough. Maybe I will find out tonight when I lay in bed, hearing to the room whisper around me...