After tackling sequel territory with Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, Ti West returns to moody horror with The Innkeepers -- a movie that I had been anxiously awaiting since I saw the spooky trailer. Much like West's previous slow-building effort, The House of the Devil, this pic focuses on a really slow-paced character driven story, as opposed to your standard ghost tale and manages to be a slight improvement over the man's previous additions to the genre.

The story revolves around a couple young 20-somethings as they work the remaining days at a supposedly haunted hotel named The Yankee Pedlar. The duo spend their lasting hours bantering back and forth, while occasionally attending to the mere handful of guests left in the hotel. Determined to find absolute proof that the place is haunted (in hopes that it will somehow save the place from closing), the starry-eyed and easily impressionable, Claire (Sara Paxton), sports a EVP meter and sets out through the halls in search of the resident spirit, Madeline O’Malley.

The Thing has had a long development process, as it was originally announced as a remake, then later said to be a sequel that would air on the SyFy channel as a two-part four-hour miniseries. Luckily it became neither, as we were eventually given a prequel and "re-imagining" of the series instead. Despite being a prequel, the filmmakers opted to keep the title as The Thing, which has proven to confuse movie-goers into thinking it's a remake of John Carpenter's masterpiece. Going in with doubts, to my surprise, the movie actually turned out to be a fairly entertaining watch.

The flick is set before the events of Carpenter's version, following a young American Paleontologist (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) whose hired by a team of Norwegian scientists to help examine the remains of a possible alien life form that was frozen in the deep reaches of Antarctica. While the group celebrates their amazing discovery, the creature escapes the block of ice and it's not long before fear and paranoia overtake the remaining crew.

After tackling a few Saw sequels, Repo! The Genetic Opera and the Mother's Day remake, writer/director Darren Lynn Bousman now attempts to make his mark in the religious horror sub-genre with 11-11-11, a film loosely based on the 11-11 phenomenon, which many believe to be linked to key events in history and others a sign of mystical powers or a supernatural presence. I wanted to like this film as it offers an interesting storyline and seemed to have potential in this sea of unoriginal genre projects, but it just failed to deliver in many aspects, and those familiar with similarly-themed efforts will find its climax to be incredibly predictable.

The story focuses on Joseph Crone, a writer who recently lost his wife and child after one of his crazed fans sets fire to his home. As if matters couldn't get any worse, Joseph gets into a car wreck, but despite his suicidal urges to end his own existence, somehow makes it out with barely a scratch. Immediately following the accident, he receives a call from Spain about his dying father, compelling the writer to make a trip out there in hopes of seeing the man before his passing.