Review of Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) by Mrmoviebuff — 02 Nov 2018

'Bad Times at the El Royale' is fiendish and dark, not to mention a very sly movie that I'm sure many film-lovers will absolutely enjoy. But for me, there was a lack of spark, I admired the film's somewhat originality and its diverse range of characters.

But overall, the film feels flat and rather underwhelming not to mention that I felt it takes too long to get to the point. The first characters we meet are Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges) a priest who checks into the hotel alongside another guest Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Ervo), a soul singer who is currently struggling in the industry to make the career she had hoped for.

The hotel is currently placed right in the middle of California and Nevada with the structure split into two halves and contain two different themes. We meet Salesman Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm), who also checks into the hotel with its only employee Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman) and the last guest to arrive is Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson), they all book their rooms and we see the different stories each character experiences.

The movie spends a lot of the time building on these different character arcs and showing us what they get up to. It's broken up into different chapters with each event affecting that of another character's.

Every story is the same, but told from a different point of view, and everything seems to add up once we get a bigger picture of what's going on. I would mention that Chris Hemsworth is in this movie, but I cannot discuss what his role is without spoiling it too much, what I can say is; the movie does pick up slightly the moment his character comes to play.

Writer and director Drew Goddard ('The Cabin in the Woods' and writer of 'The Martian') has structured a movie I'm sure he's waited to make for so long. He knows what characters he wants to see and he knows what story he wants to tell and how to tell it.

I liked the puzzle piece style of storytelling that he was able to craft here, I guess what really placed this movie in the gutter for me was the lengthy run-time of 141 minutes as well as my overall indifference to any of the characters.

It felt gimmicky from time to time, and I think that, had Goddard got straight to the point, I would have enjoyed myself a little bit more. I admire his ambition and craft, but was underwhelmed by the overly ambitious result.