Every performer must pay their dues, but with this week’s old school-flavored ghost pic The Innkeepers character actor Pat Healy cashes in over a decade of memorable supporting turns and guest spots for the spotlight at an auspicious moment in his career. Having popped up in a number of great films over the years (Magnolia! Ghost World! Rescue Dawn!) Healy stars with Sara Paxton in the Ti West film as a sardonic desk clerk at the Yankee Pedlar Inn, where spooky happenings are afoot; meanwhile, Healy also earned writing credits on the award-winning In Treatment and recently took Sundance by storm with Craig Zobel’s controversial Compliance. And to think: It all began with the one-two punch of My Best Friend’s Wedding and Home Alone 3…
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The heroes and heroines of old-fashioned ghost-story flicks resemble the average horror fan more closely than any other of the genre’s archetypes. Amateur ghostbusters like The Innkeepers’s Claire (Sara Paxton), for instance, troll spooky hallways and scour dank basements for thrills, which is to say without the real threat of physical harm. We go to movies like The Innkeepers, Ti West’s follow-up to his delightful old-school creep-out The House of the Devil, to explore and experience fear from a similarly safe remove. Like the average horror fan, Claire can be her own worst enemy; on both sides of the screen, much depends on the question of whether one can be scared to death.
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Some of you may be tempted to BitTorrent the latest new releases this week (Were you one of those Fast Five pirates? Admit it, rascal!), but let indie filmmaker Ti West bend your ear with a personal plea as his latest film, the spooky ghost tale The Innkeepers, hits VOD on Friday (December 30). "It's not the money," he writes, admitting that he still hasn't made a dime from his excellent 2009 film House of the Devil. Pay to see indie films like West's, he argues, "because if the movie makes money... that's tangible evidence of a paying audience out there for movies like mine. For independent films. For something different. Not just bland remakes/sequels or live action versions of comic books/cartoons/boardgames." Hear, hear.
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The great thing about the massive program at the SXSW Film Festival, which starts this week, is that it runs so deep and it takes so many chances, whether on up-and-coming directors, megastars in need of PR miracles (looking at you, Mel), or random collaborations between artists so awesome, the mere idea of them working together blows your mind (four words: Die Antwoord + Harmony Korine). But many of these folks have a lot riding on their SXSW debuts. Movieline names 10 films and filmmakers with something big prove this week in Austin.
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