1968 in all its terrifying glory
Welcome to the El Royale. A classic party hotel near Lake Tahoe on
the border of California and Nevada. I mean right on the border. The
border runs right through the hotel and neatly divides the rooms
available into California and Nevada rooms. There are a lot of
available rooms. The hotel recently lost its liquor license and with
it all of its regular customers.
“Bad Times at the El Royale” is a nice compact story that uses
some old tricks of the trade to confine its characters in time and
place. These tricks of the trade (I won’t get into too many
details) will feel like familiar tropes of horror and mystery
stories. For instance, many horror movies requires that all the
characters stay in the same place so as to limit the chance of
escape. Mystery movies limit the amount of characters so as to help
flush out a culprit. “Bad Times at the El Royale” is not a horror
or a mystery movie. What it does is use the above tropes to gather
and force a suspicious and varied group of characters to interact
with each (sometimes violently) within the course of one day/night.
Like most great writing, the writer/director Drew Goddard imposes
these constraints through the reasonable choices of his characters.
The movie acts at many points like a very good play with areas of
extended conversations that never get tired punctuated with reveals
and reversals.
The movie is divided into chapters based on the rooms that each of
the characters originally let. There is Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon
Hamm), a sociable southern traveling salesman, intent on taking the
Honeymoon Suite he can finally afford since no-one uses the hotel
anymore. There is Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges) in town to visit
an old acquaintance. There is Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo) a “Wall
of Sound” backup singer in town for a gig in Reno. There is a surly
woman (Dakota Johnson) who won’t give her name. And finally there
is the Royale’s one and only employee Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman)
a meek lad who doesn’t seem to be particularly good at anything.
No-one is as they seem and some reveals as to who they actually are
always good, and sometimes great (particularly the first and last
reveals). By the end, it seems the Drew Goddard has decided to lump
all the outrages of 1968 into one day/night at this one hotel. We
have government conspiracies, Manson-like cultists, Vietnam trauma,
and mafia schemes. Darlene Sweet is the most exact reference,
obviously referring to the real life Darlene Love of Six Feet to
Stardom replete with an obvious
Phil Spector-like creepy
manager. Her story is the
most straight-forward in that she is actually who she says she is.
Her character more than pulls her weight though by providing the
music’s soundtrack, great acapella versions of “Wall of Sound”
doo-wop music. If you love that sound like I do there will be long
stretches of this movie you will find particularly enjoyable.
Chris Hemsworth shows up without a
shirt half-way through though I won’t be able to tell you why. Jeff
Bridges’ performance is
great too though the scene he
is particularly memorable in I can’t give away either. Several
people die. A couple of other people get rich. Everyone in the
audience has fun.
Drew Goddard has only one other
writer/director credit to his name Cabin in the Woods (He
is a prolific producer and writer though of TV shows like Lost).
I have not seen that one but I heard, and now believe, that it is was
made by a man who knows his stock characters inside and out. More
than anything, that is what “Bad Times at the El Royale” is. It
is a genre piece from a certain period of time with recognizable
characters. Drew Goddard mixes it all up and makes it interesting
again. Weirdly it is an original script, though the material really
could not be more adapted.
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