The question at hand in writer-director Ti West's follow-up to the promising but flawed "House of the Devil": Is the Yankee Pedlar Inn, set to close after more than 100 years in business, really haunted by a woman who supposedly hung herself after being left at the altar? Bored hotel employee Clare (Sara Paxton) has nothing to occupy her but this mystery, and her smitten co-worker Luke (Pat Healy) looks like he'll pursue anything if it means partnering up with Clare. But it’s his restraint that leads to one of the best moments, in which Claire sees a ghost directly behind Luke the camera cuts to Luke’s face, yet it’s such a tight close-up that the audience never sees the offending spirit - all we get is a human portrait of utter panic.In a genre of scarily abundant incompetence, few horror movies deliver a triple threat of strong characters, chilly mood and clean storytelling.
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This trope will never get old in horror films - after all, basements are just slightly more spacious coffins - and here, West makes solid use of light (or the absence of it), sound, pacing and other editing tricks to maximize the fear factor. After consulting her magic crystals, she warns Claire not to go down to the basement, which of course means they will both get drunk and proceed to go down to the basement together in the next scene. Great line: “I don’t spend my time trying to figure out what women want - especially dead ones.”Īs he gradually extricates himself from the scene, a third character steps in: Washed-up actress turned spiritual healer Leanne Rease-Jones (Kelly McGillis), who claims “there is no real in this world, only a state of being,” and whose own state of being requires a vodka shooter just to get out of bed. Eventually, Luke wakes up to join her in this quest, but he quickly loses interest in Claire’s mission to probe the depths of Madeline O’Malley’s consciousness. With each sudden fright, Claire has to whip out her inhaler and take a few deep puffs to calm her freak-out-induced asthma. Cue the whispers, muffled screams, doors slamming and a piano playing by itself. Luke is exhausted from a 12-hour shift and asks that Claire use his EVP recording equipment to try and get real proof that the spirit of Madeline O’Malley - a jilted bride who hanged herself at the inn 100 years ago, and whose body was hastily buried in the basement - still roams the hallways. The ghost hunting begins, as all suspenseful ghost hunting should, with a mid-afternoon nap.
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Luke spends his free time working on a website devoted to the inn’s haunted past while Claire slumps around in an ill-fitting polo shirt and chipped nail polish, occasionally going on coffee runs - she is not your clichéd blond heroine who makes ridiculously poor decisions, but she is stupid enough to venture down into the basement on multiple occasions. There are only two employees at the Pedlar, twentysomething ennui-afflicted Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), both relying on each other to provide entertainment and distraction from their going-nowhere jobs.
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The staff, too, might as well be working in the spirit world, constantly forgetting to stock the rooms with towels and ignoring requests to keep the noise down. No doubt there will be a spike in reservations throughout the coming months, as horror junkies flock to the scene.Īlthough it may pale in comparison to the Overlook Hotel, there’s plenty to work with at this venue: Long, dark corridors, vertigo-inducing staircases, oppressive colour schemes and garish wallpaper are just as frightening to behold as any ghost. It’s unconfirmed whether the hotel owners were flattered or mortified by his request, but we can assume the former as the finished product, shot on location, hits theatres today.
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It wasn’t spooky in the least but managed to have a Shining -esque effect on West, to the point where he decided to make another horror movie set entirely at the Pedlar, the result of which is The Innkeepers. While director Ti West was shooting House of the Devil in Lime Rock, Conn., he and the crew stayed at an utterly banal inn called the Yankee Pedlar. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.