Drew Goddard has had his hands in a lot of great stuff, which he mostly doesn't get credit for. He was a writer for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Alias and Lost. You probably didn't know that. He made the leap to the big-screen by co-writing and directing The Cabin in the Woods, which might be the best horror film released this decade. It's also a movie that most people attribute to Joss Whedon, who co-wrote and produced it. Goddard was the first showrunner for Netflix's Daredevil and wrote the script for Ridley Scott's fantastic The Martian. Pretty much all of these entertainments are worth you time. Some of that had to be thanks to Goddard, right?
Which brings us to Bad Times at the El Royale, a film that is 100 percent Goddard's. As the writer-director-producer on the flick, I can only imagine that he considers it his bid to stand alone, to create a work that's fully his. The end result is a movie that's … well, it's not quite as great as a lot of the other stuff he's been involved with. But it's still a fairly entertaining Hitchcock/Tarantino mash-up that answers the question "How much noir is too much noir?" by laughing devilishly and then shotgunning a man in the face.
Bad Times at the El Royale is set as the '60s fade into the '70s at a once extravagant hotel/casino that lost its luster shortly after losing its gambling license. Now it's a neon-lit ghost-town (and a set designer's dream), short on guests and with only one employee — a clerk named Miles (Lewis Pullman) who'd rather get high in the back than work the front desk. As the movie starts, four strangers show up at nearly the same time asking for a room for the night. There's Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a priest who seems more interested in what's buried under the hotel floorboards than spreading the word of God. Laramie Sullivan (Jon Hamm) is a vaccum-cleaner salesman whose eager-to-please personality feels like a bit of an act. Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson) writes "F*CK YOU" on the guest list, the first tip-off that she's not in the best of the best of moods. The second is the reveal that she has kidnapped a teenaged girl. The final guest is Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), a 60s-girl-group-style singer who just wants to perform and not have to put up with other people's bullshit. Not easy for a woman of color in that era.
These four instantly distrust each other, and that distrust turns into nefarious plotting and then direct violence once Goddard starts to unravel the El Royale's mysteries. There's a secret hallway that allows anyone with access to spy on or film the various rooms' occupants. And though there's hidden cash to be found for those who know to look for it, the hotel's real prize might be a dusty film reel that Miles has held onto for years. Almost no one is whom they first appear to be. Shaky alliances are formed, and by the film's end, everyone's primary goal evolves to just getting out of the hotel alive. For a while, all of this is great fun. Bridges and Hamm are their reliably entertaining selves, although surprisingly it's Erivo who runs away with the movie. She benefits by playing the character who's easiest to root for, but there's no doubting the unrelenting fierceness she brings to the part. (Girl can also sing like nobody's business.) There's no reason this can't be a star-making turn for her.
Goddard slowly reveals everyone's true backstory by dividing the film up into chapters (each one focusing on a specific character) and zipping backward and forward through time. To his credit, this feels less like a gimmick or a Tarantino riff and more like the best way to tell this particular story. Things only start to drag when the film hits its final act. That's when Goddard introduces Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth) a bare-chested cult leader with a surfer-guy vibe who's come to reclaim something he feels was taken from him. And you know he's not taking no for an answer because he brought gun-carrying henchmen with him. This is when the movie starts to lose me a bit, as bringing in a brand new character to essentially resolve the storylines for everyone we've been following for nearly two hours — or at least to pressure them into a resolution — feels like a cheat. Also not helping is the fact that Hemsworth just isn't very good here. He's all abs and no personality. I hate to pick sides in the Great Chris War of the 2010s, but my guess is Chris Pine would have been a much better choice for the part. This miscalculation leads to a movie that's already pretty long feeling too long.
Still, hey, this is a original genre picture made by a guy who knows what he's doing, and as such there are enough delights to be had to make Bad Times at the El Royale worth a recommendation. There's more than one moment that will elicit either a gasp or a cheer (or maybe both) from most audiences. It never reaches the heights of the films it obviously holds as influences, but in a market that's overcrowded with superhero movies and is about to turn itself over to the annual deluge of Oscar-friendly prestige dramas, Bad Times stands out like a flashing neon light. Might as well check in for a night.
