The Innkeepers
To be filed under the category of “unexpected trailer moments”: seeing the preview for Ti West’s The Innkeepers before a screening of Pina at the Lightbox on a Sunday afternoon. This isn’t to say that the Lightbox doesn’t program horror (after all, TIFF is home to Midnight Madness), but more to point out the juxtaposition of a dance documentary by an internationally renowned German director with a paranormal ghost tale from an up-and-coming horror director. Though The Innkeepers had its Toronto premiere at Toronto After Dark, it will certainly be reaching a larger, and perhaps different, audience at the Lightbox.
The Innkeepers, by director Ti West, marks a move away from either the teen-slash-splatter of Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, or the diabolically good Satanism of House of the Devil, to something more supernatural and paranormal. The movie stars Pat Healy and Sara Paxton. As Clair and Luke, the pair explore the hotel where they both work, in search of the ghost that supposedly lives there. Things, no spoiler intended, go bump.
West is one of the directors involved in the budding “mumblecore horror” subgenre (along with the likes of Midnight Madness favourite Adam Wingard, who cast West in his latest film You’re Next), so this certainly won’t be the last the Lightbox will be seeing of him.