1969, a grungy hotel on the border between Nevada and California that loves neon lights, and which welcomes a whole series of guests with dark secrets via a network of secret tunnels. The combination is exceptionally unfortunate and all hell breaks loose. A film by a director who has seen Pulp Fiction ten times too often? That was long ago.
Director Drew Goddard is not simply an epigone of Quentin Tarantino – he was the brain behind the well-received horror film The Cabin in the Woods – but he gruellingly attempts to make the pulp more than just pulp.
He permits himself to use numerous abrupt flashbacks and exhausts himself for a maze of a plot that twists around more often than Eden Hazard does on a football pitch. The added value of all this work is unclear, and it certainly does not justify the extremely long running time.
Bad Times at the El Royale will only give you good times at El Cinema if you are not expecting more than high-budget pulp, masses of deaths, stylized bloodshed, appropriate and inappropriate humour, colourful characters, and actors who dare to go over the top. Sometimes to great effect, sometimes not.
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