Movies
The Innkeepers (VOD)
“Even though it has some issues, The Innkeepers is a fine film that’s not bad, just kind of disappointing. While not trying to really emulate anything in particular unlike West’s last film, it plods along way too much as it tries to make you identify with its characters and their plight, and ends up spinning its wheels for an hour instead. The performances are great, the comedy and horror work well separately and the payoff is worth the wait, but in the end the whole is not as great as the sum of its parts.”
After entering the horror scene back in 2005 with The Roost, Ti West has been building up his reputation as a master of the slow-burn, finally etching his name into the genre history books with 2009’s House Of The Devil. The film recreates the look and feel of early 80s horror, peppering short intense scenes into the story of a babysitting gig gone wrong that eventually builds to a violent payoff. The Innkeepers, West’s latest film, also focuses on the ordinary, monotonous lives of his characters but this time around, it’s not quite as captivating.
Sara Paxton and Pat Healy star as Claire and Luke, two underachievers stuck in career limbo that work the front desk at The Yankee Pedlar. With the owner on vacation during its final days of operation, the two attendants spend the weekend at the supposedly haunted hotel taking care of the few remaining guests, musing about the good times they’ve shared and searching the building for Madeline O’Malley, the resident spirit. Luke, who spends his free time at the desk watching porn and creating ghost sites, feeds Claire’s imagination with tales of spectral sightings and gets her excited about exploring the building as their last hurrah. Armed with an EVP meter, she picks up voices and piano melodies at first, and is later informed by one of the guests (Leanne Rease-Jones), a television-star-turned-healer, that the basement is where the unfriendly energy is emanating from.
West, who’s not exactly a stranger to horror-comedy (he did direct Cabin Fever 2, even though it ended up not being HIS film), gives Paxton and Healy – the latter of whom is well versed in sketch comedy – some sincerely funny material to work with, creating a very organic relationship between the two. It makes the first half of the film feel like new territory for the director, as it’s definitely the most lighthearted and whimsical film he’s ever made. In that respect, it reminds me a lot of The Hole in that it uses skeptical, innocent characters to explores some very adult issues while presenting itself as something younger viewers can get into, even though that’s really not who it was made for.
The biggest problems with the film emerge when “shit gets real”. Once the tone shifts from light-hearted comedy to balls-to-the-wall horror, it makes the two halves feel like separate films. I can tell what the tone is for both sections, but as a whole it really doesn’t have one; the comedy and horror really don’t flow into each other well. The slow-burn is there to build up sympathy for these everyman and woman characters who are stuck in a terrible economy with no prospects or real ambition to do anything above minimum wage work, but after illustrating the point over and over again for an hour, it’s not particularly interesting. Truthful and accurate? Sure. Completely engaging? Not so much. The final stretch, which is intense due to West’s decision not to show too much, manages to stay creepy and work quite well despite cramming in some common clichés – everyone involved really should’ve known better.
Even though it has some issues, The Innkeepers is a fine film that’s not bad, just kind of disappointing. While not trying to really emulate anything in particular unlike West’s last film, it plods along way too much as it tries to make you identify with its characters and their plight, and ends up spinning its wheels for an hour instead. The performances are great, the comedy and horror work well separately and the payoff is worth the wait, but in the end the whole is not as great as the sum of its parts.
It’s been 75 years since The Thing From Another World first warned us to “watch the skies”, and filmgoers have done just that by showing up to multiple instances of extraterrestrial contact on the big screen. This makes sense, as a recent CBS news poll estimated that 63% of Americans believe in intelligent life on other planets, and the ongoing disclosure movement aims to raise that number with each passing day.
With Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day leaving many genre fans hungry for more alien footage (preferably of the spooky variety), today I’d like to share a list recommending six underrated alien invasion thrillers for your viewing pleasure. After all, regardless of whether or not you believe that we’re alone in the universe, it can be fun to dream about the worst-case scenario if our cosmic neighbors ever decide to visit.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be focusing on lesser-known invasion stories rather than the popular extraterrestrials of franchises like Alien and Close Encounters of the Third (or even Fourth) Kind. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own alien favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling movie.
While it won’t be featured in this article, I’d highly recommend checking out Dean Alioto’s UFO Abduction/The McPherson Tape if you’re up for some ufology-inspired found footage thrills.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. The Arrival (1996)
Not to be confused with Denis Villeneuve’s Academy Award-winning Amy Adams vehicle about learning to communicate peacefully with extraterrestrial life, David Twohy’s The Arrival is a much more straightforward (but no less entertaining) genre romp where Charlie Sheen faces a global conspiracy involving hostile alien invaders.
It’s not exactly up there with Close Encounters or even Independence Day, but Twohy’s conspiratorial thriller plays out like an exceptionally fun episode of The X-Files that I’d recommend to sci-fi/horror fans who don’t mind a little bit of wonky CGI and 90s excess alongside their alien thrills.
5. Extraterrestrial (2014)
The Vicious Brothers made a name for themselves with the success of 2011’s Grave Encounters, but that was far from the Canadian duo’s only collaboration. And while it’s not exactly a fan favorite, I always point out 2014’s Extraterrestrial as one of their most underrated projects simply because I agree with the filmmakers’ opinion that there aren’t enough ‘cool alien abduction movies’ out there.
Admittedly, the majority of the picture functions like a run-of-the-mill creature feature with paper-thin characters and familiar horror tropes, but I’d argue that the cosmically-terrifying final act elevates the experience to new and memorable heights. The movie also boasts great performances by both Michael Ironside and Emily Perkins – a combination that more than makes up for the occasionally janky CGI.
4. Alien Raiders (2008)
Director Ben Rock has gone on record lamenting how his John-Carpenter-inspired creature feature was forcefully renamed from Supermarket to the painfully obvious Alien Raiders (a change which likely resulted in many potential viewers skipping out on the experience), but the new title doesn’t change the fact that this single-location thriller is something of a hidden gem.
Taking place entirely within a supermarket, Alien Raiders tells the story of an ensemble of customers and employees who are taken hostage by a group of armed men looking for something far more dangerous than an easy payout. I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoiling the experience, but I’d highly recommend this criminally underseen flick to fans of John Carpenter and the Resident Evil games.
3. Phoenix Forgotten (2017)
You’d think that a Ridley-Scott-produced retelling of one of the most infamous real-life UFO sightings of all time would have a bigger following, but I rarely see Justin Barber’s Found Footage period piece brought up during discussions about extraterrestrial-focused horror movies.
This is a huge shame, as Phoenix Forgotten is just as spooky as it is convincing, with this well-researched dive into the Phoenix Lights incident benefiting from surprisingly believable special effects as well as an appropriately horrific finale.
2. Communion (1989)
I wouldn’t blame you for disregarding Whitley Strieber’s controversial book about his alleged close encounter as sensationalist slop, but I’d argue that Phillipe Mora’s 1989 adaptation of these events is much better than the source material. After all, the movie works as a standalone piece of speculative fiction while also benefiting from an incredible performance by the one and only Christopher Walken!
Mora’s take on Communion may not be particularly scary, but the film is still an unforgettable character study regardless of whether or not the abduction really happened. Not only that, but the flick also paved the way for plenty of future sci-fi stories where the extraterrestrial invaders aren’t as evil as they initially appear.
1. Altered (2006)
Originally envisioned as a Sam Raimi-style horror-comedy titled Probed, Eduardo Sánchez (of The Blair Witch Project fame) eventually realized that it would be much more interesting to turn the film into a serious exploration of the emotional aftermath of a traumatic abduction incident.
That’s how we got Altered, a clever inversion of the standard abduction narrative that follows a group of troubled friends as they capture and experiment on an alien in order to enact revenge for their own abduction years prior.
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