Drew Goddard returns to the director’s chair with a smart and unpredictable noir thriller
Some people remeber Drew Goddard for his 2012 directorial debut, The Cabin in the Woods, but they forget that the american filmmaker is also a high-profile screenwriter. He started his career working on shows like Lost and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer with J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon, he later tested himself as an executive producer on the TV series Daredevil and The Good Place and he earned an Oscar nomination for writing The Martian.
Bad Times at the El Royale, marks his return behind the camera and it’s a sort of catalog of all the qualities Goddard has perfected through the years. Showcasing today in the Official Selection of the Rome Film Festival, the film is a noir thriller gem that you won’t forget.
In the first scene, set in 1959, a man is shot dead in his room at the El Royale Hotel after burying a bag of money under the floor. The main story begins ten years later, when the soul singer Darlene Sweet arrives at the same hotel with a priest she has just met in the parking lot: Father Daniel Flynn. At the check-in desk they meet the vacuum-cleaner salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan who is impatiently waiting for the general manager to have his room assigned. In the meantime he entartains them with the history of the once-glourius resort: it was the hotspot of Lake Tahoe and many politicians and celebrities used to spend their nights there but, once the hotel lost its gambling license, it became a cheap and old place for travelers and meddlers. When the 20-year-old sole employee of the El Royale shows up, we realize that something is still wrong, even years after the murder we saw in the prologue. We’ll have to wait for the arrival of the hippie Emily and her younger sister, Rose, to know what it is.
Bad Times at the Royale it’s a tale of duality: both the hotel and its guests have a double nature. There is a line running through the building which splits El Royale in two halves, like the two states it represents: California and Nevada, “warmth and sunshine” in one side and “hope and opportunity” on the other in the words of the young manager Miles Miller. But this is Nixon’s America, people are walking the paths of mistrust and fear due to the massacres perpetrated by Charles Manson.
Both states can act as metaphors for heaven and hell, the beginning and the end of the American Dream and El Royale serves as a sort of purgatory, a metaphysical space which can lead its guests to redemption or damnation.
Goddard’s recipe is 100% original, but it brings to mind The Hateful Eight by Quentin Tarantino and other films such as Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, seasoned with a sprinkle of Agatha Christie’s literature.
Bad Times at the Royale is an ambitious film full of concepts and ideas that could easily end in a chaos, but thanks to Goddard’s skills as a screenwriter everything falls in place: you’ll get to the core of all the backstories to finally enjoy the big picture.
Darlene and Father Flynn, played by Cynthia Erivo and Jeff Bridges, give us some compelling and profund moments, but everything looks engaging thanks to the performances of Jon Hamm (Laramie), Dakota Johnson (Emily), Lewis Pullman (Miles Miller) and Cailee Spaeny (Rose). Chris Hemsworth, who plays Billy Lee (we get to know him near the end of the film), deserves a special mention: maybe for the first time in his career, he shows the audience his darker, intriguing side.
