Bad Times at the El Royale takes place in a formerly luxurious motel that is now down on its luck run-down hotel that sits on the border between California and Nevada. One fateful night, seven strangers, Father Flynn (Jeff Bridges), soul singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), traveling salesman Laramie Sullivan (Jon Hamm), two sisters Emily (Dakota Johnson) and Ruth (Cailee Spaeny), the motel’s manager Miles (Lewis Pullman), and the mysterious Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth) all end up at the bi-state establishment for various reasons, trying to achieve their respective goals while getting the others out of the way.
Bad Times at the El Royale is a thrilling period piece mystery that intricately interweaves seven separate shadowy stories and motivations into one fateful night. Writer/director Drew Goddard very cleverly and intriguingly ushers in viewers to the history of the luxury motel with a cold open wide shot that establishes a piece of the mystery that has drawn Father Flynn to the hotel. Subsequently, each character is given a featurette interwoven with the main narrative showing why they are at the hotel and what their motivations are. This style of storytelling allows each character to be provided with some backstory that pulls the viewer into caring about them as well as the plot overall by both pulling you into being invested in the character but providing a bit of mystery as to where things are going. Adding to the plot’s unpredictability is Goddard’s willingness to kill any character at any time, regardless of what you may think their importance to the story is. Bad Times is full of instantaneous, Tarentino-esque bloody deaths that are permanent and long-lasting, providing an air of unpredictability and high stakes to the film.
The cinematography in Bad Times has moments where it is truly great, such as the superbly executed tracking shot featuring Laramie’s discovery of a system of two-way mirrors in the bowels of the motel that allow for spying on each character’s room. Laramie slowly makes his way through the hallway, seeing each character’s shadowy behavior, with an acapella performance by Erivo’s Darlene providing the soundtrack. One of the best scenes in a film this year, the great camera work, tension, and intrigue really gets the ball rolling with thrilling nature of the film. Goddard provides a few easter eggs in the film as well, with the biggest being a speech from President Nixon that plays on the lobby’s television explaining why a cease-fire in Vietnam’s guerilla warfare battlefield is not entirely plausible. Nixon’s rationale that a ceasefire can’t happen when one side doesn’t stop shooting sets the stage for the film’s end scene, a nice touch from Goddard for those viewers always looking to connect the dots.
Bad Times is a coming out party of sorts for star of the stage Cynthia Erivo. Having already established herself as a knockout theater performer for her performance as Celie in the 2015 Broadway revival of The Color Purple, Erivo is already halfway toward an EGOT with 2018 marking her debut on the big screen with both this film and Widows which is hitting movie theaters next month. Here, she frequently has the opportunity to show off her singing chops with the ability also playing a big part in the film’s story. Erivo’s character provides the moral center of the story and her performance rewards the filmmaker’s decision to focus so much on her. Jeff Bridges is his usual self, ably playing the second biggest role in the film. His portrayal of the duplicitous Father Flynn also adds a bit of an emotional, moral center in addition to the intrigue and mystery at the beginning of his story.
Bad Times at the El Royale has some fine technical aspects and blends together seven different origin stories for its characters very well, in addition to crafting a backstory for each that is both engaging and gives the characters some heft. While the mystery and thrills in the film power its first two acts, the third act devolves into a more straight-forward, ultimately unsatisfying conclusion. Despite the big name actors present, only Erivo and Bridges are offered a greater opportunity to portray characters that come off as anything more than average. Bad Times has hefty parts present but the sum of them don’t add up to anything substantial.
Image: 20th Century Fox
