Review: Bad Times At The El Royale

Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

Channeling Quentin Tarantino and utilizing such 1960s touchstones as the Manson Family murders and Vietnam War, Drew Goddard's "Bad Times at the El Royale" is a fun blast of bloody pulp fiction that features a game cast of supporting characters and makes good use of plot twists during its near two-and-a-half hour running time.

The picture is broken down into chapters that convey just enough information to keep you guessing at its characters' true intentions. Each room in the titular hotel - which is situated on the border of California and Nevada to the extent that the building is located in both states - lodges one guest (or pair, in one case) and each chapter focuses on the backstory for the mysterious individuals who spend a fateful and rainy night within its walls.

The film opens with a scene of a man burying money underneath the floorboards of one of the hotel's rooms in the late 1950s. He is soon killed by another unknown man and the story jumps ahead 10 years to 1969. The hotel, we are told by a young concierge named Miles (Lewis Pullman) with a few secrets of his own, was once a popular spot for movie stars and politicians, but has since fallen on harder times due to stricter gambling laws.

Among the hotel's guests is the wonderfully named Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm), who portrays himself as a Southern vacuum salesman, although we quickly find out that he is not quite who he says he is. Sullivan discovers a passageway behind the mirror in his hotel room that allows him to wander hidden hallways, where he can spy on other guests in their respective rooms. All of the characters' secrets are spilled fairly early in the film, however, we later learn that there is more to each individual's story.

The great Jeff Bridges shows up at Father Daniel Flynn, a man who is losing his memory and has returned to the hotel for mysterious reasons, while scene stealer Cynthia Erivo plays backup singer Darlene Sweet, who is passing through on her way to a gig in Reno. Dakota Johnson is the most curious guest as Emily Summerspring, whose car screeches into the hotel's driveway. Rather than signing the hotel's guest book, Emily simply writes, "fuck you." We later find out that she has another young woman in tow, whom Laramie spots tied up in a chair in Emily's room. While she originally comes across as a femme fatale, we learn several backstories later that Emily is the less dangerous of the pair.

Halfway through the picture, another character named Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth, clearly having a great time hamming it up and dancing to Deep Purple's "Hush"), is introduced in a brief interlude. He later pops up for the film's finale, when all hell breaks loose at the El Royale. There's an unnerving and slightly hypnotic scene in which Billy Lee's history with Emily and the other young woman in the hotel room is unveiled and, needless to say, obvious inspiration from a particularly notorious late-1960s serial killer will come to mind.

With just two films - this one and the wildly amusing "Cabin in the Woods" - Goddard has proven he's an ace at pulp stories that end in bloody mayhem. "Bad Times at the El Royale" is long for a film of this type, but its pretty fun throughout. The picture is often several movies taking place at once and it goes heavy on the Tarantino influence - but in terms of knockoffs of that great director, of which there have been many, this is among the better ones. Its cast appears to be having a great time and you likely will as well.