BY AARON SAGERS
Ghosts are scary, but not as scary as the growing awareness that you're expected to do more with your life beyond just working the desk at the local haunted hotel. So naturally, the best way to distract yourself from your personal crisis is to hunt for ghosts.
That's the setup for the new horror movie
The Innkeepers, directed by Ti West and starring Sara Paxton which hits theaters on Feb. 3 and is already available On Demand. Although West has previously dealt with Satanic worshippers in the lauded horror movie
The House of the Devil, and Paxton has battled creatures of the deep in
Shark Night 3D, they agree the general malaise that sets in during the 20s is more unsettling than monsters - but that ghosts are still freaking creepy.
The film, shot and set at the supposedly legitimately haunted
Yankee Pedlar Inn in Torrington, Conn., follows desk clerks Claire (Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy) who decide to seek proof of the hotel's ghosts in the final days before it closes for good. In between goofing off, drinking on the job, and harassing a spiritualist hotel guest (Kelly McGillis), the pair play with an oversized audio recorder to capture
EVP evidence - which works out a little too well for Claire. The film is scary with its patience; West isn't above toying with his audience and takes his time with the jumps, but when he does unleash the scares on his character, the result is a scary fun flick that's like
Clerks meets
The Shining.
Paranormal Pop Culture recently checked in with West and Paxton in New York City, where they revealed exactly how personal
The Innkeepers is for both of them, both for normal and paranormal reasons. In fact, while both claim to be skeptics about ghosts, they also are viewers of ghost hunting shows and are eager to join a television crew for an investigation - and even want a reading from one particular famous psychic.
Read the complete interview after the jump.
