Movie Review: "Bad Times at the El Royale" Is Like "Pulp Fiction" With Cheese

It may be lazy to compare any talky ensemble crime flick with Quentin Tarantino, but Bad Times begs for it.

In the 1969-set Bad Times at the El Royale, seven strangers converge at a dingy hotel that literally sits on the border of California and Nevada. (Guests may choose in which state they’d prefer a room, though Cali costs more). By the closing credits, their relationships and criminal intentions are revealed. Things turn violent earlier than that, however. It’s the kind of movie where multiple people need to be told they still have shards of glass sticking out of their head.

Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Jon Hamm, Dakota Johnson, Cailee Spaeny and Chris Hemsworth play the guests, and Lewis Pullman, son of Bill, is the sole employee. Nick Offerman even appears as an earlier patron. The El Royale is basically a Character Actor Octagon: Many oddballs enter. Few leave.

I won’t spoil who does what to whom or why. Writer-director Drew Goddard—a television vet who was shepherded by J.J. Abrams and wrote Cloverfield—is a proponent of the "mystery box", so the ideal Bad Times at the El Royale experience involves going in blind and letting it unfold. There are numerous brilliant cliffhangers, each interrupted by chapter title cards, with the story usually resetting from a different time, location or perspective. Pulp Fiction (and, in fact, Quentin Tarantino generally) is the clearest influence.

But Goddard is also following the template of other cinematic costume parties where everyone is a suspect, like Clue, The Thing and another Tarantino talkfest, The Hateful Eight. As it progresses and becomes more self-aware, it seems to almost explicitly call out QT's oeuvre. Unfortunately, Bad Times ends up outside of itself, not knowing which side of the border it should sit: parody or allegory. The result is a too-earnest, not-clever-enough slice of Tarantino-lite.

The director’s first film, The Cabin in the Woods, was a critique of teen horror with a devilish twist, yet it was both satisfying as a thriller and as a commentary on thrillers. El Royale doesn’t manage that same feat. Whatever it’s trying to say is far muddier, and it’s guilty of the same criticisms it lobs at its genre (i.e. largely male casts, long speeches, having only two speeds: fast forward and pause). Goddard seems merely interested in making movies about themselves. Here, it takes him 140 minutes to do it.

Mercifully, we have the cast. Erivo, a Broadway star already halfway to an EGOT, marks her feature debut as a struggling singer who belts countless Motown songs in her room with the accompaniment of an increasingly threatening metronome. It’s those sequences that stand out, demonstrating her immense skill, as well as Goddard’s impressive knack for drawing out tension.

Bridges, as a priest of dubious repute, gives the picture more gravitas than it deserves, while Hamm, as a fast-talking vacuum salesman with a Louisiana drawl, is having fun—I’ll say it—hamming it up. Hemsworth has the showiest role, and not just because his shirt remains either off or open throughout. His character is a charismatic blowhard who appears to have walked off the set of Saturday Night Live’s "Californians" sketch. He’s good value, but like the rest of the cast, is underserved by the dialogue, which is never as funny, pithy, insightful or spiky as you’d hope.

There are nonetheless pleasures to be found at the El Royale, from the delicious cast to the satisfyingly on-the-nose soundtrack. And it looks great, with the titular hotel apparently sharing an interior decorator with the cursed establishment from Barton Fink.

Just don’t try to get too far ahead of it. This isn’t nearly as innovative as Cabin. In that, an ungodly truth was discovered beneath the floorboards. Here, there’s not that much under the surface. And if you can’t see the ending coming, I have a little-visited hotel/crime scene on the California-Nevada border I’d like to sell you.

3/5

In Australian cinemas now. Rated MA15+ for strong violence.

Header Image: 20th Century Fox