Well, it's that time of year where Hollywood offers us creepy and macabre films. They can be interesting or banal, but nonetheless, they are there to woo us. With the likes of "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th", we have the obscure "The Cabin in the Woods" or "The Strangers" to capture our imaginations and hopefully gross us out...in a good way. So now we have "Bad Times at the El Royale" to get us into that seasonal mood.
The El Royale is a run-down hotel that sits on the border between California and Nevada. It soon becomes a seedy battleground when seven strangers--a cleric, Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a soul singer, Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), a traveling salesman, Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm), two sisters, Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson) and Rose Summerspring (Cailee Spaeny), the manager of the hotel, Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman) and the mysterious Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth)--converge on a fateful night for one last shot at redemption before everything goes horribly wrong. As these different eclectic characters are delving into their pasts, this storyline culminates into a free-for-all with many twists and turns that concludes in a way that you won't expect.
Others to round out the cast are Nick Offerman as Felix O'Kelly, Xavier Dolan as Buddy Sunday, Shea Whigham as Dr. Woodbury Laurence, Mark O'Brien as Larsen Rogers, Charles Halford as Sammy Wilds and Jim O'Heir as Milton Wyrick.
This was eerily and creepily directed by Drew Goddard ("The Cabin in the Woods" '12) plus TV and a documentary short. Even though Goddard's brunt of experience lies with writing, he is an excellent director. Surely all the TV experience has served him well. When a director has as many different characters to bring to life as with this, they have to be able to convey all these character developments to the audience where it all makes sense and this filmmaker did just that. It will be interesting to see how he handles his next project, "X-Force" which has been announced which he also writes. It was equally written well by Goddard ("Cloverfield" '08, "The Cabin in the Woods" '12, "World War Z" '13, "The Martian" '15) plus tons of TV, a video and a short. As I was watching this film, I couldn't help but think that it was like a combination of "The Hateful Eight" '15, "Identity"'03 and "Very Bad Things" '98. Both Hateful Eight and Identity contain a select number of people in which bad things happen in a contained building--a cabin and a hotel respectively and with Very Bad Things, it contains people with many issues who go through very bad things. This isn't to say that this film is a copy to those films, but rather a film, like the others, that allows us to see how these people can get themselves into such hellish situations and wonder how they will come out of it alive or not. This writer certainly likes the macabre hence his resume and will see more of his work with "X-Force", "The Sinister Six" and "Roboapocalypse" all announced. This man is one busy writer as he should be, because his brand of writing is curious, obscure and eerie as with this film as well. Other than a couple of small places of choppiness and some questionable areas of sequences, this is a very interesting and weird story keeping its audience on the edge of their seats in what weird and bizarre thing is going to happen to these characters next.
As with "The Hateful Eight", "Identity", "Very Bad Things, "The Cabin in the Woods" and others that are eerie and obscure films, this is in the same vein as those. These films aren't necessarily for a mass audience appeal which will woo a select audience, and with this, I'm sure the writer and producers know this, but if this kind of film is to your liking, this will give that one two punch and will stick with you well beyond credits end.
Out of 4 Stars: 3.5 Rated: R 141mins.
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