By Fred Topel
“I have no fear of zombies breaking in here ever.”
– Ti West
Ti West is becoming a major name in horror movies. His 2009 film, The House of the Devil, harkened back to 1980s atmospheric horror, to the point where it was available on VHS in a big plastic shell case. He’s been invited to speak on numerous panels, such as the 2010 South by Southwest Film Festival’s Directing the Dead one, where he joined Zombieland’s Ruben Fleischer, and Cloverfield and Let Me In’s Matt Reeves, and memorably spoke about the awkward moment when you have to direct a woman to show her naked breasts.
His new film, The Innkeepers, premiered at this year’s SXSW. After continuing to play the festival circuit, it’ll finally creep into homes via VOD on December 30 (and will get a theatrical release on February 3, 2012).
The Innkeepers is a horror comedy about two clerks working at a soon-to-be defunct hotel during its last weekend in business. Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy) pass the time by speculating about ghostly inhabitants and attempting to record EVP.
Claire’s slapstick bumbling and Luke’s sarcastic comments are a change in tone from the popular House of the Devil (a satanic cult movie that exploited the power of silence with nary a laugh). West has also directed The Roost and Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, although he disowns the latter because it was taken away from him in editing. He also directed segments of the forthcoming films V/H/S and The ABCs of Death.
Midway through the SXSW festival in Austin, I caught up with West at a point when we didn’t have a full night’s sleep between us. I was going on three hours and he just barely had me beat. Those are the glorious moments when you just push through the exhaustion on pure adrenaline because you just have to keep up with the prevailing film geekery.
Read my exclusive interview with Ti West on SuicideGirls.com.
