![film the innkeepers film the innkeepers](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ifgYUmK4rttnjWsFWiFLs-320-80.jpg)
When Caroline greets them at the gates, her defensively sunny demeanor waves an immediate red flag for Sam and Jake, as does the swiftness with which Patrick is separated from them. Patrick’s reasons for going are twofold: He’s driven chiefly by concern for his sister Caroline (an excellent Amy Seimetz, who recently directed Audley in “Sun Don’t Shine”), a sweetly suggestible, substance-prone type who has effectively fallen off the grid since joining her new “family” at the Parish. Our outsider perspective is shared by the three affable young men - reporter Sam (AJ Bowen), cameraman Jake (Joe Swanberg) and photographer Patrick ( Kentucker Audley) - who arrive at the Parish with the intention of doing an expose for Vice, the irony-fueled hipster media brand that also has a hand in this film’s production. It’s one that West keeps in play impressively far into the film. As we touch down in a remote tropical location - the country is unidentified, but it may as well be Guyana - and travel to Eden Parish, a hand-built agricultural community run on socialist principles that the film never for a second pretends are honorable, the question is chiefly whether we’re watching a restaging or a subversion of the Jonestown events. That may seem a spoiler of sorts, but surely only very young viewers could fail to spot the parallels from the off - even if, as is de rigueur with found-footage films, “The Sacrament” makes a solemn show of passing itself off as a modern-day true story.
![film the innkeepers film the innkeepers](https://johnnymarkham.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/the-innkeepers.jpg)
Four years on, West’s auteur standing is unopposed on a risky venture that only sporadically conforms to the structural and tonal conventions of horror - and uses that inconsistency as a means of maintaining uncertainty in a scenario that will feel quite familiar to anyone who recalls the Jonestown Massacre of 1978. And as an added attraction, indie filmmaker Lena Dunham (“Tiny Furniture”) has a fleeting and funny cameo as an annoying barista in a neighboring coffee shop.“The Sacrament” isn’t the first project to link West with Roth, albeit indirectly and unhappily: In 2009, West directed “Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever,” a disconnected sequel to Roth’s grisly 2002 hit that the helmer disowned after studio intervention. Paxton is enormously appealing, Healy aptly prickly and McGillis effectively ambiguous. For the most part, however, West’s intent is to unsettle, not shock or scare - until, at long last, the audience gets a good look at what’s going bump in the night. Occasionally, West drops in a scene with Kelly McGillis as an aging actress-turned-spiritualist who just happens to be one of the hotel’s very last guests. The Yankee Pedlar Inn is a real place (West and his film company stayed there while shooting “House of the Devil” in nearby Lime Rock, Conn.), and throughout “The Innkeepers,” it appears no more foreboding than any other unremarkable inner-city hotel that hasn’t been refurbished since the 1970s.įor about an hour or so, West maintains interest by alternating between the animated conversations of Claire and Luke, and anxious explorations by an increasingly nervous Claire. West and lenser Eliot Rockett deserve considerable credit for being able to generate suspense and occasionally spring scares without relying on familiar haunted-house atmospherics. Claire is a bit more consistently self-directed when it comes to ghost hunting, but she’s not entirely pleased when she finds what she’s looking for. Luke has already started a website devoted to the hotel’s history of supernatural manifestations, though he’s such a slacker that he hasn’t quite finished the site.
![film the innkeepers film the innkeepers](https://www.dvd-covers.org/d/274762-2/The_Innkeepers_-_Cover.jpg)
But now that almost all the rooms are vacant, Claire and Luke can devote even more of their time to patrolling the hallways, inspecting the basement and scouring the lobby for signs of spirits long rumored to be haunting the inn. It’s obvious that, even if the hotel still were a thriving concern, these two probably wouldn’t tax themselves while attending to guests.
![film the innkeepers film the innkeepers](https://cdn.traileraddict.com/vidquad/dark-sky-films/innkeepers/1.jpg)
During the hotel’s final days of operation, the staff has been reduced to two twentysomething employees - tomboyishly cute Claire (Sara Paxton) and aggressively nerdy Luke (Pat Healy) - who share an avid interest in the paranormal. The drama unfolds in the soon-to-be shuttered Yankee Pedlar Inn, located in downtown Torrington, Conn.