BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE (2018) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Drew Goddard
Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson,
Jon Hamm, Chris Hemsworth, Lewis Pullman,
Cailee Spaeny, Nick Offerman, Shea Whigham
A handful of strangers check into a curiously empty hotel that literally straddles the Nevada/California state line. They've all got stories, but are any of them who they say they are, and will anybody live long enough to check out in the morning? That last question could go either way in a crooked, new-noir nightmare that, like the hotel of the title, doesn't really exist anywhere except in its own dreamworld universe. You can't tell what will happen there, ever, except that it'll be nothing you expect. "What is this? Some sort of pervert hotel?" a character asks, and it is, but that's just a side effect. The El Royale is really about its guests. The bugs and concealed cameras and two-way mirrors aren't the half of it.
