But at the same time, as if taking its cue from Luke and Claire, “The Innkeepers” does not seem to work very hard. What was that noise? Don’t turn around! Don’t go down those stairs! It works every time.

‘Drive My Car’: In this quiet Japanese masterpiece, a widower travels to Hiroshima to direct an experimental version of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”.‘Passing’: Set in the 1920s, the movie centers on two African American women, friends from childhood, who can and do present as white.‘Spencer’: Kristen Stewart stars as an anguished, rebellious Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín’s answer to “The Crown.”.‘Summer of Soul’: Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Mavis Staples and others shine in Questlove’s documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival.Scott and Manohla Dargis, selected their favorite movies of the year. Hardcore horror heads may scorn its snail pace and shaggy-dog sweetness, but for discerning viewers, ‘The Innkeepers’ is a slow-burning charmer.The Times’s chief film critics, A.O. But this only serves to make the film’s sparing moments of suspense all the more unsettling: we truly care for these characters, and can’t bear the thought of them coming to harm. With a rambling plot and effortlessly likeable comic turns from both leads, this is much closer to the loose, semi-improvised freshness of mumblecore than to a traditional horror movie. The ghost story element of ‘The Innkeepers’ is determinedly, perhaps even lazily, old-fashioned, but the heart of the movie is in the characters and their interactions. But Luke knows all about the Yankee Pedlar’s troubled past and is determined to get evidence on tape before the place is boarded up.

It’s there we find Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), bored twentysomething no-hopers manning the desk in the days before the inn was sold off and repurposed. ‘The Innkeepers’ is set – and was shot – in the infamous Yankee Pedlar Inn in Torrington, Connecticut, known by aficionados of the paranormal as one of America’s most haunted hotels. All of which is essentially true – but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad film. So maybe it’s unsurprising that horror chatrooms are filled with bilious attacks on West and his movie, accusing it of being talky, gore-free and not especially terrifying. The posters for this latest low-budget chiller from American writer-director Ti West (‘The House of the Devil’) show a scarred, ghoulish face looming through ominous clouds while a quote from ‘Hostel’ director Eli Roth screams that it’s ‘one of the best… scariest indie horror films I’ve seen’.

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