The El Royale is run-down hotel that sits on the border between California and Nevada. It soon becomes a seedy battleground when seven strangers -- a cleric, a soul singer, a traveling salesman, two sisters, the manager and the mysterious Billy Lee -- converge on a fateful night for one last shot at redemption before everything goes wrong.
Bad Times at the El Royale is a really interesting film not only because of the way in which it's laid out, but also the format and style of film that it sides within. The film tells the story of an old hotel and seven strangers stories and secrets. Admittedly, it starts off a little slow and confusing, but what I really like about this film is the character that it shows, it is really clear that the creators of this film had ambition and really pushed the boundaries. However, as we know, sometimes pushing the boundaries can be dangerous and can lead to having a negative effect. The question is, does the film support it's 5 star rating for the hotel? Or is it more of a bed and breakfast? Here are my thoughts.
I'll get straight to the point, I love this film! It starts off really nicely which also sets the tone and story for the rest of the film, it establishes not only the time and location really nicely but it also builds tension and establishes a sense of mystery which is strongly held throughout the film. Right from the beginning, we were on edge and curious about everything that happened - simply because of how the film started and continued from this. We were thrown straight into the deep end with this film, by seeing a character checking into a room silently, digging up floorboards and then dropping dead, it really established the types of moods that we could expect from the film. But it also raised questions from the audience "why did he do that?", "Who is he?" which got us involved and curious from the start. But don't get me wrong, the scenes were fairly straightforward, but the moods and extras made them insanely good and really interactive. I also really liked how effective this film was at building up confusing and questions from the audience, many of the events at the beginning were confusing and not explained which allowed us to really get a sense of life at the El Royale. But throughout the film these questions were answered and made us feel very involved with them. The level of tension and mystery in this film was really high, but these emotions were put across to the audience really nicely, there weren't explicit actions that made us feel on edge but instead subconsciously, for example strange poses by characters or weird things that they said all had a really effective impact on getting these characters across to us. These characters were awesome, yet really mysterious and strange. The characters really helped to evoke an emotional response from the audience and were central into getting us involved and replicating the emotions that the characters felt. I found myself feeling exactly the same as the characters did during certain scenes, sweating during the roulette scene, nervous during the mirror scenes and confused during the lost key scenes. The way that the characters engaged with us as an audience was great, they were really entertaining and their relationships were strong. But what I really liked about the characters was how they changed and adapted throughout the film. Characters who were rude and secretive at the beginning seemed to change throughout the film and built friendships with other guests, but there was just no clear interpretation that could have been made of the characters because when we felt that we knew them, they switched and changed. This made for some fantastic and intriguing character models and like I said, it made them amazing to watch and really engaging. I loved how every character had a secret and the audience were really involved in the discoveries of these secrets from other characters, slow music and great camera angles made every single scene intense and exciting and we really felt as if we were involved within the plot in this aspect.
When I say this film was different, I mean it. An awesome example of this was how the film panned through different rooms throughout the film, so we would get roughly 20 minutes on each character to show their individual story, why they were staying at the El Royale and what their secrets were. Seeing the story from different perspectives was so engaging and was great for the film in the sense that it allowed the audience to have a 'God's eye' to see everything that was happening with the characters before other guests knew them and then seeing them find the secrets of other guests out was just en-thrilling and really exciting. It was also a format and take on a film that I haven't seen before, but it was awesome and really helped to add some depth to the characters because we could really see who they were, their background and just generally a lot more about them as a person. This made it seem really realistic and down to Earth, and even though the characters were complex and mysterious, there seemed to be a genuine connection between us and the characters in the film because of these scees. But then even towards the end of the film, we are still learning important facts about the characters that made you think "ohhhh so that's why he said that" which again, made the characters seem really intriguing and exciting, there wasn't a time in this film where I thought some of the acting was bad or boring. As usual though, this film wasn't just full of mystery, it also had an element of sadness in it too. I think that these latter scenes were really nicely done to incorporate sadness into them, because through the film we sympathised with more and more characters and then towards the ending we really felt a genuine connection with them because they got us involved in the film, so when one of them died or was telling a sad story then it really pulled across the emotions from the audience well. Although, I think that the ratio was done very nicely, it wasn't overdone and most of the emotion was put onto the audience for us to decide how we wanted to react based off of our relationships with the characters. It wasn't just sadness though, there was definitely an element of shock in this film. It was full of exciting and crazy changes and twists that kept the plot flowing nicely and kept us interested and excited about the film really because we had one idea of what was happening and suddenly everything changed and we were wrong! But the strange thing about this film is how instead of a main plot, it tells us the stories of how everyone in the different rooms got to be there and this just made the whole film really intense and exciting.
Character dialogue is crucial in an action/thriller film though and thankfully, this film got it right. The dialogue was engaging, fun, realistic and most importantly, it made the characters interesting because of how they spoke to each other. The things that they said really helped to create an ecosystem of how the characters lived and by using this great dialogue, it helped to make every character interesting. It felt realistic though which is equally important, all of the characters dialogue was expectable and didn't seem irrational or strange at all, they all seemed like real people - albeit a few years ago. I also loved how dialogue was used to create a mysterious character of Billy-Lee, he was referred to as "him" or "that" throughout the film and it really helped to engage with the audience because we were constantly questioning who he was and what he had done to be seen as so reckless, the film conveyed emotions like this really well and they were super effective. It was also full of immersive scenes that had us on the edge of our seats, such as the ending where they played roulette to see who would die. This scene honestly had me sweating as much as Miles was, it was so tense and really well conveyed to us. I also felt a real sadness and connection to Miles when he died at the end, especially after finding out he was a solider during World War 2 and the amount of people he killed was actually enemy soldiers. Lewis Pullman (actor of Miles) was amazing in this film, the acting all round was superb but Lewis's acting was just great here and in my opinion really stood out from the crowd. He was just one of many excellent parts to this film that made it awesome, and then the film was tied up nicely but showing some of the characters meeting in a bar afterwards which finished it off well.
As you can probably tell, I liked this film! However, there are always issues with films and this film certainly had a few that I found. First of all, the main problem that I had with this film was the level of mystery and confusion. When it worked, it was amazing, but it didn't always work here. Some of the introductions were really confusing and not properly explained at all, which had a really negative impact on the film because key areas weren't properly described because the films creators were trying to be too mysterious with the film. This wasn't the only example though, most of the characters were also too mysterious and confusing to understand so we as an audience could't get a proper grip as to who they were and the types of people that they were, because everyone was so secretive and kept changing depending on their secrets. In theory it sounds exciting but here, it wasn't that helpful because we simply had to guess at the motives for some characters actions because we didn't know them well enough. I was also slightly unsure as to why there wasn't any normal people staying there either, there seemed to be a massive hotel that no one used (still in pristine condition?) and everyone there was strange. It made for good watching but it definitely made the film confusing.
There were also some concepts that I found difficult to accept, such as the large scale, extremely well equipped hotel that had no guests staying in it with one worker who did everything. Sure, it added empathy to Miles, but the concept is just too extreme to accept and made it difficult to really understand why this was the case. My question though is, is this a story that needs to be told or a self-conscious and, at nearly two-and-a-half hours, laboured exercise? What’s missing from 'Bad Times at the El Royale' is a sense of urgency, the addition of this right from the very beginning would've made it just that bit more exciting to watch because for me, the first half an hour was fairly confusing and a little uncertain.
Overall, I would rate this film an 8.5, this is because the characters in the film were amazing, they were really exciting and managed to bond with the audience really positively. I also really think that the different perspectives of room numbers was awesome as it offered a new perspective to the film and just generally overall it was a really mysterious and intense film which offered a lot for over 2 hours worth of film. It did have its issues though, some parts were underly represented and others were overly which made some elements really confusing and difficult to latch on to, but if you could keep up then this is definitely a film you should see. I would definitely recommend this film for all, regardless of what types of film you like because of how immersive it was and how well it gets involved with the audience, however please don't leave early. Give it a chance and you won't be disappointed.
Thank you for reading my review, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did watching the film and writing this review. I hope you have a lovely day! :)
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