Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

Bad Times at the El Royale: Directed by Drew Goddard. With Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm. Early 1970s. Four strangers check in at the El Royale Hotel. The hotel is deserted, staffed by a single desk clerk. Some of the new guests’ reasons for being there are less than innocent and some are not who they appear to be.

“An overlong, pretentious homage to Agatha Christie (Ten Little Indians) Steven King (The Shining) and the TV film Helter Skelter, u0026quot;Bad Times at the El Royalu0026quot; is a generally tedious, disappointing, and ultimately gory portrayal of u0026quot;unlikable people acting badly,u0026quot; my personal worst form of cinema.nIndividual performances by Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, and Jon Hammx are brilliant, and some production values are excellent, but many of the quick cuts between past, present, future, and contemporaneous events are ill-conceived and anachronisms abound. Why are 1960s songs on a Juke box played on 78rpm records? Why is an impoverished singer driving a mint-condition classic 1951 Studebaker in the 1970s?nEvidently filmed in British Columbia, u0026quot;Bad Timesu0026quot; so far detached from objective reality as to be allegorical, if not incredible – requiring far too much suspension of disbelief and tolerance of gore to be enjoyable.”