The quarter-life crisis seems to be something that has become pretty prevalent in our society these days. I am not sure how popular they were ten or twenty years ago, as I only recall people going through mid-life crisis.' These were experienced mostly by men in their late forty's mid fifty's, who were usually frightened with the thought of getting older, questioning the validity of their prior decisions, and boredom with their spouse and wanting to seek adventure, which may tie into sexual frustration. This was usually solved with buying a motorcycle or a Ferrari or having extra marital affairs (although with the inventions of Viagra I have to imagine fixing some of the the sexual portion of this process).
The quarter-life crisis is a lot different. It usually happens to youngsters between the ages of 25-35 and they are usually post-college students. There hang-ups tend to be the realization they can no longer go drinking at bars four nights of the week and survive on pizza, or it will cause health issues. They become jealous and envious of friends who are getting married and having kids while they are usually not in a relationship, and finding it more difficult to encounter casual flings. Finally, they are dissatisfied with their station in life due to being stuck at a dead-end job after dumping shit loads of money, or borrowing shit loads of money to go to school to better themselves.
The 2011 Ti West low budget ghost story The Innkeepers is, on the surface, an extremely slow paced and outright boring ghost story. But if you scrape away the ghosts, West reveals an accurate portrayal of characters experiencing unsatisfied lives, while the ghosts become an indirect relation to that theme
This is my second time experiencing Ti West in a week, as last Friday I watched House of the Devil. Both movies were extremely similar in that were extremely slow paced with very little fright factor. However, what he did excel at, and here in The Innkeepers more than House of the Devil was character development.
The movie takes place in an old hotel named The Yankee Pedlar Inn, that is about to be turned into a parking lot. The hotel apparently has a history of having things go bump in the night and the two remaining employees left to man the last weekend are Claire and Luke, who intend to capture something spectacular.
The dialogue between the two is extremely authentic. Imagine if Clerks were a ghost story and there was a ten year age gap between Dante and Randall. The express failure and dissatisfaction. In one scene Claire asks Luke if he ever thought about how he got there after being in college (working at the Inn), his reply is every day, as she looks sad and dejected. Luke's response is, "no one chooses to work at the Inn, it just happens."
That line is so powerful because it's exactly how a large group late twenty-somethings feel. You get done with school, you freak out and take the first gig you can find. Retail, sales, coffee shop, it's a first job just to get a foot in the door. But than you find yourself staying there for one reason or the other, and some can't escape. There are excuses and even solid reasons why you can't move on, but non-the-less, you initially never wants to be there, but you just can't seem to leave. So you find yourself unhappily steadfast, which is what Claire and Luke are in a sense.
The duo make sardonic remarks about the guests throughout the movie and find no urgency to complete their jobs (apparently there is a shortage of towels). They even go as far as telling children ghost stories and being rude in front of the guests. Kind of like what Dante and Randall did (well, more Randall than Dante), but those were two guys who were disassociated with what they were doing at their age. There is even a scene in which Luke gives Claire a coffee mug that has the phrase "Looks like someone has a case of the Monday's" etched on the side. Which is a classic line from the film Office Space, which was an entire movie about guys unhappy with their lot in life.
They even take a classic defensive approach to their job by ragging on other people who are in similar situations. When Clair goes to get coffee is a great example. The barista (who is played by Lea Dunahm, who also had a small role in House of the Devil FYI) tried to approach Claire in a friendly way and ask advice about her relationship. Claire returns to work, without coffee, and giving a huge sigh of exasperation, Luke asks if the "weirdo" was working. Defensive yet ironic, since they work in a haunted hotel.
They also get drunk on Schlitz, which is the quintessential hipster beer for aimless twenty and thirty-something slackers that work in coffee shops.
But there are some sweet moments and exchanges between the two, when Luke shows Claire the website he is working on, about the hotel being haunted. Claire shows legitimit interest and Luke is bashful appreciative It's where the two separate in their crisis' though, while Luke is making a half-ass attempt at bettering his situation, Claire seems determined to find out why she is complacent, and that is where the ghosts kick in.
Mid-way through the film, an actress that Claire completely adores, Lee Rease-Jones, stays at the hotel and confronts Claire and asks here "what do you do." Claire has a hard time answering the question because she has no idea what she wants to do or what she wants out of life. Later, Claire confronts Lee and tells her that she recorded phenomena, "that's what she is doing," but it's not really. Lee, reveals to Claire that she has some psychic gifts and asks Claire what she wants to ask Madeline O'Malley, the ghost who is supposedly haunting the hotel. Claire just wants to know if she is real, and why hasn't she moved, why does she continue to stay here?
This is really a reflective question, Claire looks at herself as trapped. There's never a mention of prospective employment after the destruction of the hotel. She hasn't really expressed interest in trying to accomplish something, other than recording a phenomena. She is really actually worried that she is not able to move forward with her life. Which is why she obsesses over past ghost, a life-force that was unable to move on as well, although for very different reasons. In Claire's mind, it may be a relation that if she can free the ghost, she can free herself.
Luckily for most of us, it doesn't take a haunted house or ghosts frightening us to give us a good kick in the pants to better our situations. It just takes about six Schlitz Tall Boys and your favorite indie record to motivate some change.
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