Summary:
Seven strangers all harboring secrets meet at El Royale, a mysterious hotel on the border of California and Nevada.
My Thoughts:
I really wanted to like this movie. For about the first hour, I really did, but by about the two-hour mark I was ready for the film to end, and by the time the credits rolled I found myself walking from the theater slightly disappointed. “Bad Times at the El Royale” was written and directed by Drew Goddard (“Cabin in the Woods”), a man whose work I’ve been largely split on, but whenever he hits the nail on the head, his stuff really works for me. This film started off great; there were lots of great twists and turns, memorable and diverse characters, and a mysterious premise. But as the film rolled on, and the character’s secrets were unveiled, I found myself growing disenfranchised with the film. Goddard continuously hints at darker things happening, but he never really delivered what he promises. The movie felt like it was trying to emulate the overlapping storylines of “Pulp Fiction”, and even some of the dialogue felt like it was Tarantino-esque, but Goddard never quite reaches the level of snappiness Tarantino infuses into his films. Goddard’s writing seems uneven; some of the lengthy dialogue scenes are great, while others are dull, borderline boring.
“This is no place for a priest, Father.”
As 99% of the fun of this movie comes from not knowing who the people in the film are or what their goals are, I wont go into the details as I normally would with other films. This film is fine for a rainy Saturday afternoon if you come across it on Netflix (though you could find better things to watch), but I wouldn’t recommend seeing it in theaters.
As I mentioned, the first hour of this film really kept my attention. There were some startling revelations, some really cool character twists and overall a very interesting setting. The first hour is easily the best part of the film. The storyline constantly shifts from one character to the next, giving us little bits of insight into what happened with the characters lives and why they are at the El Royale. For the first hour or so I didn’t mind constantly shifting between characters and learning their backstories, but as the film went on, I found myself growing tired of the multiple flashbacks, some of which were five to ten minutes long and had very small sway over the overall plot. The flashbacks continued happening almost all the way to the end- there is literally a multi-scene flashback that happens at the climax of the film- the film grinds to a halt for three minutes to give back story on another character. Really, the length was my biggest issue with the movie. If they’d have trimmed thirty-forty minutes of the length this film would’ve been fine, and honestly they could’ve accomplished that by speeding up the pacing of the dialogue. There were a lot of sequences where the dialogue was stretched out with dramatic pauses that felt somewhat unnatural. The other problem I had with this film is that it posed a lot of interesting questions, and then chose to only answer the least interesting questions. I found myself growing irritated towards the end of the movie because the film went in a direction that seemed lackluster compared to what the first half had hinted at. The climax just felt long and drawn out, and I found myself checking my watch every ten minutes as we drew to a close. I think this movie just had a lot of cool ideas, but it didn’t know how to wrap them up.
I will say that everyone in the film gives a fine performance. I though Jon Hamm (“Tag”) and Dakota Johnson (forthcoming “Suspiria”) gave the best performances, but Jeff Bridges (“The Big Lebowski”) was also good as usual. Chris Hemsworth (“Avengers: Infinity War”) was decent for most of the film, but there were one or two moments that were meant to be intimidating and instead came off as silly.
Verdict:
This isn’t a bad film, but it’s certainly not a great one either. I guess I just expected a little more from such a great A-List cast and an Academy Award nominated writer. See this movie if you want, but maybe wait until it’s released on video.
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