Bad Times at the El Royale Review

Bad Times at the El Royale was Drew Goddard’s homage to film noir and ensemble casts. What he created was a film about people with deep, dark secrets coalescing at a single location.

The El Royale Hotel is literally on the border of California and Nevada. On one faithful day in 1969, five people with their own agendas decide to stay. They include a sharply suited man (Jon Hamm), a priest (Jeff Bridges), a singer (Cynthia Erivo), a hippie (Dakota Johnson), and the hotel’s only member of staff (Lewis Pullman).

Drew Goddard has a reputation for being one of the best writer/directors working at the moment. His credits include Cloverfield and The Martian and his directional debut, The Cabin in the Woods was seen as a great deconstruction of the horror genre. His second directional effort was pretty much a Quentin Tarantino film and Bad Times at the El Royale was better than some of Tarantino’s recent efforts.

Like Reservoir Dogs and The Hateful Eight, Bad Times at El Royale focused on dodgy people in one location and there was an emphasis on flashbacks. Like Tarantino’s films, Bad Times at the El Royale showed events from different perspectives. Also like a Tarantino film Bad Times at the El Royale had a retro styling – the film had lots of ‘60s music in the soundtrack and it was recorded on film instead of digitally. The other feature of Tarantino films which Bad Times at El Royale also has was lots of long shots and smatterings of brutal violence. The final directional trait Goddard took from Tarantino was the use of title cards to highlight new segments of the story.

The only thing Goddard didn’t take from Tarantino was humour. Goddard’s approach was more straight-laced, but that didn’t stop Bad Times at the Hotel Royale from being a stylish and entertaining crime-thriller.

Bad Times at the El Royale had a great simple setup; it was a bit like an Agatha Christie story. Christie liked writing locked room mysteries where a group of strangers are stuck in one location and a crime is committed. In Bad Times at El Royale there were few events but the main ones involved Jon Hamm’s character because his actions ended up making things worst.

Bad Time at the El Royale started off showing a man hiding money under the floorboards of one of the rooms. It was a strong hook for a crime thriller, and it had the feel of a classic film from the ‘30s or ‘40s. Yet the story of the film became much bigger than people trying to retrieve the money.

The film had a plotline involving a charismatic cult leader, Bobby Lee, played by Chris Hemsworth. He was pretty much Charles Manson because he was able to convince young women to join his group. In the background there were news reports that there was a murder at a celebrity’s home. This was similar territory that Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood explored because Brad Pitt’s character crossed paths with some of Manson’s followers. Bad Times at the El Royale handled this subject manner better Once Upon a Time in Hollywood because there was more character drama within the cult and there were personal stakes involved.

The film had a wider mystery about who runs the hotel and what was on a film reel. Yet there weren’t even MacGuffins because there weren’t even a driving force to the plot. The real focus of the film was on the characters and their agendas. No one appeared as they seemed: like Father Flynn wanting a specific room and Miles the hotel concierge saying he has done some unforgivable things. The most interesting character was Johnson’s Emily who appeared to be a hostile bitchy character who had kidnapped a young woman – but her motives were more complicated than they seemed.

Bad Times at the Hotel Royale had a revisionist take. This revisionist approach made Bad Times at the Hotel Royale like Knives Out which was released a year later. Knives Out twisted Agatha Christie-style mysteries and Bad Times at the Hotel Royale does something similar with pulpy crime stories due to its character work and various plot diversions.

Bad Times at the Hotel Royale was a film that underperformed at the box office which was a shame because it was a well-constructed story filled with intrigue and excellent acting.