'Bad Times At The El Royale' Is A Twisty, Neon-Lit Neo-Noir
In writer/director Drew Goddard's film, several strangers converge at a casino-motel filled with dark passageways and two-way mirrors — a lot like the film's satisfyingly pulpy, B-movie plot.
With the surprisingly inviting neo-noir Bad Times at the El Royale, writer/director Drew Goddard panders to jaded moviegoers' secular disillusionment for the sake of making a larger (though ultimately vague and tidy) point about Americans' struggle for meaning in a post-'60s world. And it always is a struggle: Bad Times at the follows several strangers as they, in a sequence of -y vignettes and flashbacks, recall how and why they've fled to the El Royale, a posh but now-abandoned casino-cum-motel that straddles the Nevada/California border.
