Film Review: Bad Times at the El Royale
A dynamite thriller with a stacked cast and a smart script, "Bad Times at the El Royale" delivers a ferociously good time
Bad Times at the El Royale (★★★★) might be dragging around an extra article in its title, but it’s packing just the right amount of everything else. Heat, mystery, drama, history, music, comedy, and a mile-wide streak of Nixon-era paranoia all meet inside the Royale, a gloomy but glamorous no-tell motel just outside of Reno on the Nevada-California state line.
“We’re a bi-state establishment,” boasts the bellman Miles (Lewis Pullman) to the disparate cast of characters who all show up one misbegotten, rainy night.
They’re a vividly-drawn bunch, each distinct in their own way as they assemble like players in an Agatha Christie novel, or avatars for a very grown-up game of Clue. Writer-director Drew Goddard (Cabin in the Woods) strikes up a scintillating game from the start, with a sprightly ’50s-set opening scene of a man alone in his room at the Royale burying something beneath the floorboards.
Ten years later, and Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), a single, black woman rolls up to the establishment, like Marion Crane pulling into her doomed spot at the Bates Motel. Despite the luxe design and decor at the Royale, a strong sense lingers that something wicked awaits Darlene and the other guests who join her. Father Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a friendly but ragged priest, looks like he might be hiding something. Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm), a gregarious salesman from Biloxi, seems like he’s hiding something. And no-bullshit looker Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson) definitely is hiding something.
Whether these characters pose a greater danger to each other than what the powers that be at the Royale have in store for them forms the mystery, and underscores the fun. Although, it’s not all fun and games. Death and horror are at home there, too.
Goddard so deftly twists this star-laden popcorn thriller into a shrewd backdoor chronicle of nearly every terror of the ’60s — from the Vietnam War to the Manson murders, and Psycho to COINTELPRO — that it’s possible not to see the turn coming. The characters at the Royale aren’t just pawns in a game, but symbols of an American society driven towards the abyss.
As Flynn, Darlene and company discover, the Royale might be a hell there’s no turning back from, and their fear is acutely recognizable. It’s the same fear that gripped America in the turbulent ’60s, and that animates so much of today’s conflict and resistance. Can we make it back from here? And yet, Goddard keeps that subtext hidden beneath, but not far beneath, the shiny surface of movie stars and period production design, and a bouncy soundtrack of ’60s R&B plattered up by the Royale’s Wurlitzer.
Those songs, including the Isley Brothers’ “This Old Heart of Mine” and the Four Tops’ “Bernadette,” aren’t deployed merely as period signposts, but play integral parts in the plot and pacing. Bad Times is well-crafted, driven by a time-shifting narrative that adds Tarantino-esque flavor to the mix. The high-wire act wobbles a bit in the homestretch, and loses some of its pep, but then it brings in the big guns to take the whole show home in grand, blazing style.
By big guns, in this case, Goddard brings in his Cabin in the Woods leading man Chris Hemsworth as charismatic cult leader Billy Lee. Strolling shirtless through a field of goldenrod, trailed by his followers, Billy Lee is a potent example of just how alluring pure evil can be. A scene in which he pits two of his eager female followers in a knock-down, drag-out fight for the privilege of sharing a bed with him speaks volumes. The movie hits on a mood that’s eerily timely.
In most other regards, Bad Times is just plain eerie, as well as droll and highly suspenseful. And Goddard isn’t precious about killing off any of these characters. They come and go in unpredictable fashion.
They all make an impression, though Erivo, a Tony winner for her performance in the acclaimed 2016 Broadway revival of The Color Purple, will be a revelation to many. Her Darlene is delicate yet strong, and sings her way through a singularly tense sequence involving Father Flynn and a shotgun. Bridges is endlessly resourceful as the squirrelly Flynn, and carries much of the comedy in his deadpan delivery. Nick Offerman makes a brief, entertaining appearance, and Hamm hams it up with purpose as the suspiciously loquacious Southerner Sullivan.
The entire cast captures the atmosphere of black humor and dread, but perhaps no character or performance personifies it as well as Pullman in the role of Miles. Innocent in appearance but harboring a grim past and several secrets, he knows something about the abyss and how dangerous it can be to step too close to the edge. He warns the Father more than once that the Royale is no place for a good man, but again and again, his warnings aren’t heeded. Maybe there are no good guys or ladies at the Royale, but it’s definitely a good time.
Bad Times at the El Royale is rated R, and opens in theaters everywhere on Friday, October 12. Visit fandango.com.
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