Review: Bad Times at the El Royale Is Afraid to Be Truly Wicked

Two years ago, almost to the day, I excitedly trekked to the Upper West Side for a screening of Billy Lynns Long Halftime Walk, the most recent film by Ang Lee. I was looking forward to it not because I particularly love war movies or am such a die-hard Lee fan. Really, the main reason I was eager to see the movie was because its trailer was just so good, alluring and poignant without really giving up the game of what the movie was about. What wonder awaited me! Then I saw the actual film and, well, sometimes a great trailer is the best a movie is ever gonna get.

I feel similarly about Bad Times at the El Royale, opening October 12. Once again its an October movie from a writer-director I like (Drew Goddard, of Cabin in the Woods fame, in this case), but, perhaps more important, has a really effective trailer. Those two and a half minutes are entirely different in tone from Billy Lynns sizzle reel, but they worked the same job on me. Amidst all the awards clutter of the season, Bad Times at the El Royale, a dark little genre picture with probably no Oscar futures, was at the top of my must-see list.

So maybe its my fault that Goddards film underwhelmed as much as it did. I really wanted it to be one thing, and when I discovered it wasnt that thing, about halfway through, it was too late to re-align my expectations. Perhaps Ill watch it again sometime, on a rainy spring Saturday at home, and then Ill see all the errors of my initial assessment. (Hey, it happens.) That, or another go-around will only deepen my sense that whats wrong with the film is perversely what makes its trailer so good: it works better as a kicky scenario, a cool hypothetical, than as a fleshed-out, two-hour-and-20-minute film.

In making a very post–Pulp Fiction movie in 2018, Goddard can rely on some nostalgia, a hunger for when twisty crime movies like this were de rigueur. But he also has to combat a certain been-there, seen-that-ism—no matter how many pleasing retro references he crams in, Goddard has to show us something new, too. He starts things off well, at least. The film takes us to the fictional El Royale hotel, a formerly swinging, now faded, 60s spot that straddles the border between California and Nevada, a red line running right down the middle of the hotel. That liminality comes to bear in a big, clunky thematic way toward the end of the film, but in the beginning its just a nifty little detail, like so much else in the scene Goddard sets.

Taking direct cues from Agatha Christie, Goddard assembles a group of strangers at this slightly haunted (not in the literal sense) hotel, on a rainy night in 1969, and sends them warily bouncing off of one another, each slippery with a secret theyre powerless to keep. Jon Hamm plays a Southern-drawlin traveling vacuum salesman who is probably not really a vacuum salesman. Jeff Bridges is a shifty priest whose motives, shrouded as theyre supposed to be, are pretty clear from the get-go. Dakota Johnsons misanthropic hippie is obviously up to something. And Cynthia Erivos struggling-to-get-by nightclub singer is . . . well, actually, shes just a nightclub singer.

Having introduced his dramatis personae, Goddard goes about diligently, swiftly unmasking his characters so the bodies can start dropping. Following one truly ingenious sequence, in which a character slowly discovers the sordid realities of the hotel, Bad Times starts to contract, shrinking into a more linear and less interesting story than what all its initial possibility suggested it could be. As true character motivations are revealed, the movie flattens itself into a dull, and easily answered, moral and religious inquest—gradually eschewing all complexity, painstakingly clarifying its gray areas. I had hoped Goddard would be less adamant about exonerating his characters, but he cant seem to keep anyone bad for too long.

Well, until a slinking Chris Hemsworth enters the picture—playing a villain whos so nakedly evil (I mean, hes wearing a shirt, but its unbuttoned) that it irrevocably knocks the film out of balance. Turns out the bad times being referred to in the title arent, like, arch, wicked bad times. Theyre genuinely bad times. Goddards film operates with a dire earnestness that saps the fun right out of the lobby. And it ultimately insists on a core righteousness, as if its afraid to be glib and nasty through to the bitter end. In doing so, the movie makes its violence that much grimmer, creating an ethical responsibility for itself that it then doesnt fulfill.

Theres a thin strand of sociopolitical discourse running through the film, particularly when it comes to Erivos character, Darlene. But Darlene is so sketchily drawn (we get about one flashback per character, hers being the flimsiest) that it plays as a discomfiting meta injustice. Darlene sings, beautifully, several times, and one sequence uses Erivos mighty vocal power to really clever, suspenseful effect. Otherwise, though, the singing is more an agent of style than of substance, which positions the lone black woman in the film as the plaintive score to a host of more thoroughly rendered white characters misdeeds. Those are some tricky optics to calibrate, and Bad Times doesnt maneuver them well.

A confident composure and some engaging performances rescue Bad Times from outright failure; Hemsworth is particularly fun in sex-devil mode. I remain as curious as ever to see what Goddard does next. But this film, for all its canny presentation, is a mishmash of compelling narrative premises clumsily fused together. It manages to be both overwrought and under-developed, disappointing less for what it is than for what it could have been.

Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Richard LawsonRichard Lawson is the chief critic for Vanity Fair, reviewing film, television, and theatre. He lives in New York City.