Fantastic Fest review: Bad Times at the El Royale is a dark crime caper with a stellar cast

Bad Times at the El Royale has a premise straight out of a classic film noir. A handful of strangers find themselves together in a secluded location, in this case the El Royale, a formerly bustling resort hotel that has since fallen into neglect, which literally straddles the Nevada and California border. Everyone has their own secret motivations for being there, and the joy of the film is watching just how the seemingly disparate puzzle pieces will eventually fit together.

Director Drew Goddard is no stranger to this sort of puzzle-box construction, having employed something similar on his beloved debut Cabin in the Woods, a horror-comedy film based on a classic genre trope that eventually turned out to be something far more outlandish. With Bad Times at the El Royale, Goddard isn’t so much interested in subverting the tropes of film noir as he is in celebrating what made those tropes so thrilling in the first place.

As the film opens, a handful of strangers are waiting in the lobby of the El Royale, a huge hotel that was once in high-demand during the rat-pack era, but by the film’s setting in 1969 has fallen into disuse. There is the charming, if very insistent salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm), the grizzly priest Father Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a background soul singer named Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), and a standoffish hippie named Emily (Dakota Johnson), travelling with her younger sister (Cailee Spaeny). They’re greeted (albeit slowly) at the El Royale by the timid concierge Miles (Lewis Pullman), and work about getting settled into the mostly deserted sprawling estate, each discreetly working to hatch their own devious plans, which include unearthing a bag of stolen money, and facilitating a top-secret government espionage program.

Goddard throws a lot of story elements at the wall here, and the editing does a great job of switching between the perspectives of the various characters, often showing the same scenes from more than one character’s point of view. The film is broken into parts by old-fashioned title cards, letting the audience keep track of which storyline we’re following while offering up another homage to classic Hollywood film noir in the process.

With the film’s outbreaks of violence and large ensemble cast, comparisons to Quentin Tarantino are unavoidable, but Bad Times at the El Royale never feels like Tarantino-lite. While Tarantino’s films are bursting at the seams with dialogue, Goddard prefers a much quieter approach. There are long stretches of languid moments in the film, which lets us focus on the stellar performances from the entire cast. While Hamm and Bridges are dependable entities, the real surprises here are the stellar performances from relative newcomers Cynthia Erivo and Lewis Pullman, who are tasked with carrying the film’s emotional core.

The film’s pace gives us time to really get acquainted with each of these characters and the predicaments that have brought them together, so that when things eventually begin going south we’re fully invested in each of the characters, not an easy task to manage with such a sprawling cast. That cast manages to grow even longer in the film’s final, uneven act, when a Charles Manson-like hippie named Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth) joins the crew, along with a pair of henchmen.

Meant to serve as a heavy-hitter baddie, the arrival of Billy Lee throws the tone of the film out of whack, as he comically runs through the hotel with his long blonde hair and open shirt while confronting the motley crew of mysterious guests. Hemsworth definitely seems to be having a blast as the violent cult leader, but Goddard has put in so much work in the first acts to cement the relationships in the film that throwing another obstacle in their path in the film’s final act only serves to muddle the already elaborate storyline.

With that minor plotting issue aside, Bad Times at the El Royale is a marvel to look at, with Goddard luxuriating in the 60’s decor of the massive hotel. The film’s era-appropriate soul soundtrack is also a blast, and Erivo’s solo performance of a classic soul number in her hotel room is one of the standout moments of the film, a prime example of the sort of extended character scenes we rarely seen in Hollywood productions any longer.

Bad Times at the El Royale is much darker than the promotional materials would lead you to believe, and isn’t a vintage version of Oceans 11 by any means. That may put off some potential viewers, but those looking for an intricately-made crime caper with a top-notch cast should book a room at the El Royale right away.

Bad Times at the El Royale is in theatres on October 12.