Bad Times At the El Royale (2018) – Film Review
I love a good suspense-thriller. It takes a good amount of effort and expertise to get me intrigued—and keep me that way, edging with excitement to learn what happens next. Director Drew Goddard, whose career is as colorful as this new film, is one of few who could pull this premise off successfully. With writing projects as varied as Netflix’s Daredevil, The Cabin in the Woods, and The Martian under his belt, he knows how to keep his audience riveted.
In his first “big” directorial role, he doesn’t disappoint, either.
Bad Times At the El Royale (which, to spare my poor fingers, I’m just going to shorten to “El Royale”) is what I’d call a “menagerie of the meticulous”—a new term I’ve coined just because of this film. It’s like a feature-length ASMR video; always something you’re waiting for to happen, but it doesn’t always give that desired relief. A lot of the times, it just keeps us bristly, on our toes. And I liked it. It’s like Clue and Pulp Fiction had a baby; you’ve got the “seven strangers with something to hide” motif, and the disjointed way in which the story is told is brilliant—edgy, yet not so nuanced as to be alien to a true cinephile. There’s the main arc—what all is happening at the hotel right now—and each of the characters’ backstory segments, separated and titled by their room number.
While a lot is left unexplained, I’m not faulting El Royale for that; too often today, audiences want everything spoon-fed to them, but cinema is under no obligation to its viewership to explain anything. One does not go to a modern art gallery and ask to have detailed descriptions of the pieces they stare at: It’s about the experience, the very personal and singular take-away you have from the time spent. The macguffin is the perfect trope to whip out, here, as it’s all that incarnate—something the characters care about, but we don’t, necessarily. Just a trope with which to weave a story, or stories, together.
With a boatload of coincidence and a streak of really, really bad luck worthy of a gypsy curse, our characters are caught up in the interplay of each other’s fates, as all their “bad times” converge here. There’s no, one, central protagonist, so to speak, but Jeff Bridges (R.I.P.D., The Big Lebowski) and Cynthia Erivo (whom has a helluva voice on her, and will also star in this year’s upcoming Widows) “lead” the cast as, really, the only two redeemable folks in the whole bunch. Everyone else is, pardon my French, kind of a shithead, or isn’t involved long enough in the story to allow me to care about them. All great characters, for sure, in their ability to conceal stuff from us and from each other for as long as they do, and they’re all set to develop nicely…but whether or not they make it to that point is for you to witness, yourself. There’s another seemingly-minor character thrown in, too, that I really felt for by the end, but, for spoiler purposes, I won’t reveal who that is. Just have ya tissues ready, is all I’ll say about that.
Yes, El Royale is as gripping and intense as it is moving and character-driven. The unsure tone of the 1960s-70s transition period—fraught with political turmoil not unlike recent years—makes the perfect backdrop for this twisted little slice o’ life narrative. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong company—that’s pretty much what it boils down to. The soundtrack sets the mood, too, being darkly-jazzy and upbeat, despite what goes on on-screen. Long-takes and smooth direction on Goddard’s part—and plenty of ad-libbing from the players, I’d imagine (especially on Bridges’s part) make for an all-around satisfying time. We’re always tingling with that anticipation that something is going to happen, scene-to-scene, which just makes the times that that actually follows through into something allthemore delicious.
A contained setting, stellar cast of performers, a score by one of the best composers alive today, Michael Giacchino (again, with a career as varied as my film collection, but an Oscar winner for his work on Disney-Pixar’s Up), and a uniqueness in its presentation that blows any mainstream production’s flashy spectacle out of the water, El Royale is a real blast. It’s different, in that it doesn’t need to adhere to the conventions of modern cinema to be entertaining. It stands up on its own merits—the work of a great cast and crew—and has become a personal favorite of 2018.
Final ‘Risk Assessment: *****/.
Next review: First Man
