Bad Times at the El Royale Reviews

In my opinion, even though ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ has become a cult-classic, I thought it was only a decent watch at best but since I kept hearing some interesting things about this new directing effort from Drew Goddard, I was still eager to check it out. Well, I have to admit that the damned thing definitely had potential. Indeed, while ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ was some kind of meta comment about the horror genre, this time, Goddard was obviously inspired by Tarantino’s work but he could have used some worse inspiration though. Indeed, the hotel himself was a great creation, even if Goddard seems to have stopped (or did he get stuck?) halfway through developing this intriguing location. It was the same issue with the characters. Indeed, even though there was plenty of running time (almost 150 mins), while 2 of them were provided a full background (Father Daniel Flynn A.K.A Dock O'Kelly and Darlene Sweet), all the other characters ended up being only half-developed giving a rather half-baked feeling. It’s not that they should have spent more time on each character though. For example, for Billy Lee, I would have given only the beach scene and then, I would have brought him back only at the hotel, on his own, towards the end. As a result, it would have made the character more intriguing and more menacing. Still, I have to admit that the mood and the unpredictability of the plot were quite enjoyable and, as long as you keep wondering what the hell will happen next, the damned thing was actually quite entertaining. Eventually, for me, the tipping point was when they suddenly turned Miles Miller, easily the least interesting character, into a veteran sniper from the Vietnam war. Seriously, this twist was just lame and it seemed pretty obvious that, at that point, Goddard’s card castle started to fall down under its own weight and it was apparently the only thing he could find to tie everything up (in a similar fashion, it is rather disappointing that Tarantino’s movies often end up with some massive shoot-out scenes). Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I have to admit that it was still a decent watch and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.