Film Summary DCXCVII (Bad Times at the El Royale)


It certainly is an accurate title. A bad time will be had at the El Royale.

Unfortunately this is one of those movies where explaining any amount of the plot woiud possibly give away one if not several the twist.
And that's the real reason you'd want to watch this.
I mean the actors do a fairly good job, but you just want to see what's going to happen next.
And how is ultimately really simple story branches out into a bunch of external events.
Half of which I don't think even get answered in the movie.
The best way to describe it might be a reverse clue.

95% of the film takes place on this strange Motel sitting right on the nevada-california border line. And oddly enough that weird little gimmick doesn't really play into the movie.
You'd think it's going to play in with how they described everything at the beginning, but ultimately doesn't come to anything.
Instead it's this weird escalation of weird people and their secret deeds It escalates really quickly.
I was expecting there to be something of a slow build-up to gradual chaos.
But the movie would much rather just get your right in with the craziness. Which I guess works out quite well.
I'd say it keeps the pacing going, but the first 30 minutes of the film fly by. The rest of the film is a gradual slow down.

A part of me almost wished it wouldn't have gone beyond the first act.
It would have just been a story of these different people staying at a motel interacting with each other with odd kooky personalities and strange little secrets being found out over time.
But ultimately what we get is this more 'intriguing' story of depravity and criminal negligence. It's still pretty good overall.
Remind me of The Hateful Eight.

You could argue that it's formulaic to some degree but that's only said by people that have watched a hundred movie similar to this before.
And yes there's a part of me that wants to talk about how the movie could be improved with variety but for the most part people just don't care about that.
They'll enjoy this film perfectly fine and who am I to judge.
I love Nero Wolfe novels and you could argue that half of those are the exact same story being read told Time after time, only with slight character differences or a change in setting.

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