As with King's "1408" and "The Shining," West wants this well-kept Connecticut hostelry (it really is called The Yankee Pedlar) to cast its spell and give us chills. But he lazily wrote no backstory for it and makes no effort to give it a haunted history or vibe. He pointlessly breaks the movie into titled chapters, e.g. "Chapter Three - A Final Guest."
Basically, he had a location and the always fetching Paxton - the current "scream queen" ("Shark Night 3D") - and that's it.
Claire, dying of curiosity, wants to know why this ghost is still there. Luke, the instigator of all this ghost-busting, doesn't: "I don't spend my time trying to figure out what women want - especially dead ones."
One of the inn's guests is a faded actress turned psychic (Kelly McGillis, 30 years after "Witness"). West wastes her in a glorified cameo that has her doing little more than mentioning the "danger" in this situation.
When Claire enthuses, "We're going to get something good, I can feel it," she's lying.
Worst of all is the film's pacing. Nothing remotely scary happens for the first 40 minutes, and not much that occurs afterward - repeated trips to the dark and dank basement - manages much of a jolt, either.
The production values are solid, and West plays around with sound (characters wear headphones when they're ghost-hunting). Otherwise, there's nothing to recommend "The Innkeepers."
As Stephen King himself might have put it, "Scary isn't here, Mrs. Torrance."
Produced by Derek Curl, Larry Fessenden, Peter Phok, Ti West, written and directed by Ti West, music by Jeff Grace, distributed by Magnet Releasing.
