VVNG- You know that feeling of satisfaction you get when you finish a puzzle? The feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment you experience as you place the final piece in its place and take a step back to admire the finished picture? Well… You won’t be feeling that way after watching this flick. With its stellar cast, intriguing premise, gorgeous look and fantastic editing, this movie should have been a masterpiece. Instead it ends up being like a puzzle with a lot of its pieces missing.
When this movie is good, it is suspenseful, chilling, disturbing, funny, and weirdly mesmerizing. Too bad that it ultimately leads nowhere. It is just 2 hours of (mostly) bad people doing bad things at a bad place. We get bits and pieces of the characters’ backstories, but not enough to fully understand or care about (most of) the individuals.
I give Bad Times at the El Royale, the “Checky™ Stamp of Disappointment!” There seems to be a trend in Hollywood nowadays where filmmakers don’t bother to include an ending in their films or they leave a lot of things up in the air and open to speculation. Well I am getting pretty tired of that. I invested my time and money in your movie, so I demand to have some closure!
One of the problems I had with this movie is that it introduces a bunch of different interesting characters and decides to focus most of its attention on the least interesting one. The storylines are not fully fleshed out, the hotel’s history sounds more interesting than the events that happen during the movie, and like I said, everything ultimately leads to nothing and we are supposed to be OK with that, because the screenwriters couldn’t think of an ending.
I say you should wait to rent this Quentin Tarantino-inspired flick or catch it on Netflix. It is definitely worth a watch, but it can wait. It’s a shame that the great acting, great cinematography, and great set design is not enough to make up for the film’s noticeably missing pieces.
What did you think of Bad Times at the El Royale? Do you agree or disagree with me? Which flick are you checking out this week? Let me know in the comments below. Have a great day at the movies and don’t forget to save me some popcorn
Official Synopsis: 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.
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