Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Bad Times at the El Royale Blu-ray Movie Review

Hotel California (and Nevada).

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 3, 2019

Grand Hotel was one of the first, if not the first, big ensemble films in Hollywood history, with that vaunted “all star cast”, perhaps before that term had even been properly invented (or least used very often). Grand Hotel documented the comings and goings of a coterie of folks who were either guests or employees of the titular lodging facility, with a number of secrets being revealed along the way, and an unfolding series of interrelationships also being offered. Grand Hotel was a huge smash in its day and ended up winning that year’s Best Picture Academy Award (almost amazingly, the film holds the distinction of being the only Best Picture winner not to receive any other nominations in any other categories). Bad Times at the El Royale might cheekily be described as a post-modernist deconstruction of Grand Hotel, albeit with a rather prevalent noir undertone that is nowhere to be found in the 1932 opus. Much as the legendary Cedric Gibbons researched opulent European hotels to create a sumptuous production design for Grand Hotel, Bad Times at the El Royale benefits from a really appealing “look” courtesy of production designer Martin Whist, who offers what might be called a mid-century modern orgasm of sleek lines blended with a certain stylistic overkill in things like fabrics on upholstery and wallpapers. (A making of featurette included on the Blu-ray as a supplement shows that the team behind the picture basically “built” an entire hotel to facilitate the shoot.) But of course a film can’t rely solely on its sets and costumes, and it’s in a wending, interlinked story that Bad Times at the El Royale really achieves some considerable energy.

The film begins with a brief vignette that evidently takes place sometimes in the mid to late fifties, as a man arrives at the hotel, checks into a room and then begins moving all the furniture in order to pull up the carpeting and expose the floorboards. He then begins prying those up, finally depositing a satchel which one obviously assumes contains some cache of cash or other valuables under the floor, at which point he puts everything back where it was. A brief interstitial segment (which is actually kind of confusing) shows the guy going outside for a moment to perhaps “cleanse” himself in the rain, after which he lets one of his supposed cohorts into the room, a guy who summarily shoots him dead. It’s a fascinating opening segment, made all the more so by writer-director Drew Goddard’s choice to shoot virtually the whole thing with a ton of “unused” space in front of the action, as if we’re watching a play taking place on a proscenium stage. And in fact a lot of Bad Times at the El Royale is almost blatantly theatrical in terms of both story elements and its presentational style. This may not be a film for everyone (I'm sure there will be some who feel it's a blatant Tarantino wannabe), but I have to say for me personally it delivered some of the most viscerally exciting material I’ve watched recently.

It’s almost impossible to talk about the plot dynamics of Bad Times at the El Royale without at least hinting at spoilers, but I’ll do my darndest not to give anything major away. The bulk of the film segues forward about ten years to around 1969, an era which finds the El Royale, a motel kind of whimsically straddling the state line between California and Nevada (replete with a “boundary marker” running right down the middle of the place), in dire straits due to having lost its casino license sometime earlier. It’s largely, maybe totally, abandoned, as evidenced by the fact that the first guests who arrive can’t even find anyone to check them in. The first guest the audience meets is struggling R&B singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo, who did all of her singing in the film — and there’s a lot of it — live during the shoot). Darlene exits her car and sees a befuddled priest named Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges) seemingly lost in some kind of mental fog, just standing in the parking lot. The two enter the motel together, where they meet gladhanding vacuum salesman Seymour Laramie Sullivan (Jon Hamm), a good old southern boy who talks both too loudly and too much. Seymour has been there for some time, trying to find some kind of employee to check him in, and he makes it clear that while he’ll let the other guests check in before him, he has already staked his claim on the Honeymoon Suite, evidently the only room available on the “California” side of the hotel.

Soon enough a “hippie” named Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson) also shows up in a rush of muscle car dust, at about the same time that Darlene, who seems unwilling to just wait around, has finally roused hotel employee Miles (Lewis Pullman) from what must have been a very deep sleep in his office. Everyone ultimately is checked in to their various rooms, which is when Bad Times at the El Royale starts doling out a series of vignettes (each pegged with an “intertitle” describing either a focal room or character name) that documents that several of these characters have rather interesting secrets, and in at least a couple of cases, alter egos. Of course the opening vignette plays into everything in what is probably the film’s most predictable aspect, but there are a number of surprises scattered throughout this film, including an almost Hamlet-esque body count, that frankly kept me, an inveterate “twist guesser”, in a frequent state of shock.

Two other main characters are ultimately introduced, Emily's little sister Rose (Cailee Spaeny) and Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth), a kind of Charles Manson-esque character whom Emily and (especially) Rose have gotten mixed up with, but kind of interestingly, at least with regard to these three characters, "they are who they are", which cannot be said for some of the other folks in the story. Some of the reveals are admittedly predictable, but once bodies start accruing, the film attains an almost delirious momentum as a number of secrets, including about the motel itself, are brought forward. The film may falter intermittently, especially as it attempts to revisit already seen vignettes from slightly different perspectives, and perhaps especially in a climax that is perhaps too hyperbolic for its own good, but this "passion project" of Goddard's is surprisingly brisk considering its arguable overlength, and it is filled to the brim with absolutely memorable performances.

Note: My colleague Brian Orndorf was considerably less pleased with the film than I was. You can read Brian's thoughts here.

Bad Times at the El Royale Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bad Times at the El Royale is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Shot on film and finished at a 4K DI, this is another fantastic looking disc from Fox, one that reproduces the film's rather interesting palette beautifully, while also maintaining a healthy and natural looking grain field (with one possible exception). The film's almost picayune attention to production design really pops nicely throughout this presentation, with textures on fabrics and props looking precise and palpable. The making of featurette gets into some of the challenges of lighting master shots, since the hotel was constructed with a low ceiling in the lobby, but overall shadow detail is very good, if arguably a little lacking in some scenes involving a hidden corridor. The one place where grain looked just a tad on the "swarmy" side to me was a beach scene which introduces Billy Lee, but it's a very short moment in an otherwise great looking transfer.

Bad Times at the El Royale Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

I'm giving myself just a bit of "wiggle room" by scoring the excellent sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track on the 1080p Blu-ray at 4.5, since the 4K UHD version of the film offers an even more spacious and impressive sounding Dolby Atmos track, but for those who don't get the 4K version or don't have the ability to decode Atmos yet, there should be no real complaints about the audio on this release. As is mentioned in the making of featurette, the film was pitched with a ton of source cues already in place, with a "take it or leave it" approach (i.e., if the studio wasn't willing to license the tunes Goddard wanted for the film, Goddard wasn't willing to proceed), and the music really suffuses the audio presentation with extremely appealing surround activity. There are bursts of violence in the film which offer jolts of sonic activity in terms of things like gunfire, but even in quieter moments, as in several scenes in the immense lobby of the hotel, there's appealing directionality and nicely placed ambient environmental effects.

Bad Times at the El Royale Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Making Bad Times at the El Royale (1080p; 28:35) is an above average featurette with an emphasis on production design and cinematography.


• Gallery (1080p; 3:13) offers either a Manual Advance or Auto Advance option. The timing is for the Auto Advance option.


• Teaser Trailer (1080p; 2:05)


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:03)

Bad Times at the El Royale Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Could Bad Times at the El Royale have been tightened and provided clearer exposition with regard to at least a couple of its characters' stories? Absolutely. I for one am still unclear who was killed in a couple of flashbacks involving both Rose and Miles, the brief allusion to Darlene's recording career is just left hanging, and a whole subplot of the secret canister of film struck me as completely needless. By the time Rose is literally swinging from the chandeliers during the film's chaotic climax, I can see how some viewers will be rolling their eyes at the excess of it all. But despite these ostensible missteps, I personally found Bad Times at the El Royale a lot of fun, and it is one of the few films in my recent memory which actually managed to surprise me with regard to at least a couple of "sudden deaths". Again, this is probably not a film for everyone, but for fans of this cast and writer-director, Bad Times at the El Royale comes Recommended.