Bad Times at the El Royale

Where to start with a film so elu­sive but gen­er­ous, so ref­er­en­tial but sin­gu­lar, so famil­iar but mys­te­ri­ous as Drew Goddard’s fol­low-up to beloved hor­ror-com­e­dy The Cab­in in the Woods? The title evokes 1950s west­erns like Gun­fight at the OK Cor­ral, and the film is drenched in pulpy ref­er­ences – but it is not pure­ly a pas­tiche. Bad Times at the El Royale has its own strange and mul­ti-faceted iden­ti­ty as a mys­tery, a treat, and a ves­sel for hell­ish­ly chewy per­for­mances by some of our bright­est and best.

The open­ing scene is made of mon­tage cuts of Nick Offer­man tak­ing apart a hotel room and then putting it back togeth­er to the sun­ny pop strains of ​‘26 Miles (San­ta Catali­na)’ by The Four Preps. The sound is so infec­tious­ly upbeat that it’s a shock when Offer­man, hav­ing beau­ti­ful­ly reassem­bled the room, is sud­den­ly gunned down.

It’s ​‘10 years lat­er’ announce curlicued inter­ti­tles. Father Daniel Fly­nn (Jeff Bridges) and Dar­lene Sweet (Cyn­thia Eri­vo) meet in the park­ing lot of the El Royale. ​“How’s Cal­i­for­nia?” he asks. ​“How’s Neva­da?” she asks. The El Royale runs across both states as indi­cat­ed by a thick red line that acts as a bor­der. Once inside we find out that rooms in Neva­da cost a dol­lar less, and only Cal­i­for­nia has a liquor licence. Reveal­ing all this is the ner­vous lob­by boy, Miles (Lewis Pull­man), who per­forms every job.

Bust­ing into the lob­by come more A‑listers with extra­or­di­nary names. There’s Jon Hamm as cheesy South­ern hus­tler Laramie Sey­mour Sul­li­van. In slinks Dako­ta John­son as tense hip­pie Emi­ly Sum­mer­spring. The air is preg­nant with infer­ence and every­one is guard­ed but not about the same thing. All the while the eye is stim­u­lat­ed by the lov­ing­ly recre­at­ed vin­tage pro­duc­tion design shot with beguil­ing grace by Sea­mus McGarvey.

God­dard enables his col­lab­o­ra­tors to show what they can do. On one lev­el this film scans like a suc­ces­sion of vir­tu­oso solo per­for­mances, except that in McGarvey’s case he is the con­duc­tor whose rhyth­mic cam­er­a­work keeps every­thing flow­ing. He achieves flu­en­cy while slot­ting in all man­ner of tech­niques: sug­ges­tive close-ups, god’s eye view shots, long cir­cling takes that explore the hotel space – a space we nev­er leave except in flashback.

Every­one has a secret past and vio­lence occurs with­out sign­post­ing or warn­ing. The Cab­in in the Woods bet its hand on a spec­tac­u­lar twist, where­as Bad Times at the El Royale is more like a roulette wheel, less invest­ed in where things go than in the thrill of watch­ing colour­ful char­ac­ters spin­ning and know­ing that some have to lose.

There is a scene in which Dar­lene Sweet sings ​‘This Old Heart of Mine’ in time to a tick­ing metronome. She is look­ing into a mir­ror, not know­ing that it is dou­ble glass and that Laramie is watch­ing her in a dank hall­way on the oth­er side. Her voice is pow­er­ful, beau­ti­ful, evoca­tive. As she sings ​“I love you-ou-ou” there is a chilly rum­ble on the sound design beneath her words. This is how things work at the El Royale: each sur­face, each floor, each wall con­ceals some­thing rot­ten or valu­able or both. God­dard has cre­at­ed a loca­tion full of tricks – just like a film set.

But this is more than an exer­cise in clever-clever cre­ative trick­ery. The strange rela­tion­ship that grows between Father John Fly­nn and Dar­lene Sweet is a mov­ing sign of life in a hotel that, as Miles puts it ​“is no place for a priest” and becomes a true hell­hole once shirt­less Chris Hemsworth shows up as Charles Man­son-like cult leader Bil­ly Lee. Dar­lene is a singer whose flash­back folds in a cameo by Xavier Dolan (!) as a bul­ly­ing record exec­u­tive who sneers that she will end up in Reno. Reno is where Dar­lene is head­ed the very next day in the present timeline.

Yet – regard­less of what suc­cess or finan­cial rewards have elud­ed her – Darlene’s musi­cal soul is where the film lives. ​“You’ve real­ly not heard of The Isley Broth­ers? Then we’ve got some work to do,” she tells Fly­nn before tak­ing con­trol of the juke­box. The Supremes, The Four Tops and Glo­ria Gaynor are on the playlist as the film off­sets its moral bleak­ness by lean­ing into bangers which flow into the dark places like the sweet­est trea­cle. Dar­lene is played by British the­atre actor and singer, Cyn­thia Eri­vo, who is on a fast-track to star­dom with roles in Steve McQueen’s Wid­ows, and there­after films by Char­lie Kauf­man, John Rid­ley and Kasi Lemmons.

“Singing’s singing” says Dar­lene with a smile, cut­ting through the maudlin mood induced by remem­ber­ing Dolan’s prophe­cy. The film backs her, both in the ador­ing way it frames her char­ac­ter and by accord­ing with her phi­los­o­phy in its own genet­ics. Bad Times at the El Royale is Bad Times at the Royale, which is to say movie art is movie art.