Lucas’s review published on Letterboxd:
Film #14 of the October Horror Fest 2013
The Innkeepers is like an R rated horror film trapped in the body of a kids show. Though that sounds like a negative, I assure you that I meant it as a compliment. It has some goofy humour to it, backed up by two quirky lead characters with some fantastic chemistry between them, and an amazingly ominous score. All of this combined with the very low amount of gore makes it so this film could almost pass for children's Halloween special. Where it strays from this path is in its unwillingness to censor itself. As such, The Innkeepers creates a best-of-both-worlds type scenario that I find very entertaining.
The one major thing that I found to be wrong with this film is the same thing that annoyed me on my first watch. For the first eighty minutes or so, the film moves along at a very delicate, lazy pace. But after that, as the film approaches its climax, it suddenly becomes extremely rushed. I can't figure out why the director would shift gears so suddenly and close out the film when he was doing so well with the more leisurely pace that he had been working with for the rest of the film. It is just those last few rushed minutes that prevent me back from giving The Innkeepers a four-star or higher score that the rest of the film deserves.