Bad Times at the El Royale is a thriller of a unique variety — one that takes its time — unwinding with care as it delivers an intimate and enthralling story that uses touchstones of late-’60s American political and popular culture to ground its depiction of extreme violence and cloaked corruption.
After writing and directing meta-heavy horror movie Cabin in the Woods in 2012, director Drew Goddard’s newest film Bad Times at the El Royale is a more ambitious, yet similarly inventive project that confidently walks the line between homage and originality.
Drew has established himself as a director with a penchant for the extreme — crafting movies that stretch the limits of the audience’s imagination while leaning into depictions of hyperbolic, almost satirical violence.
Unlike Cabin in the Woods — a kind of meta-horror film that aims to break the fourth wall as a way of revealing and reveling in the history and context of the genre — Bad Times at the El Royale feels more grounded; the film positions its pulpy tale of violence and immorality against significant moments from the late 1960s, bleeding the lines between fiction and reality in a way that is not dissimilar to a period drama.
As the title suggests, the movie is set at the El Royale — a remote hotel that straddles the state line between California and Nevada, giving guests the choice of which state to reside in during their stay.
The movie is well aware of the hotel’s rather kitschy premise, but rather than take itself seriously, it encourages the audience to find the humor in such a concept. Despite the hotel’s legacy, by the time the audience enters its front doors, there’s little glamour left at the El Royale. The rooms are uncleaned and empty, the lobby is vacant, there’s a staff of one, and the restaurant and bar lay dormant.
However, as seven strangers come together for a night at the El Royale, the hotel won’t stay quiet for long.
“Ambitious” doesn’t even begin to describe Bad Times at the El Royale. Clocking it at over two hours and 20 minutes, some will undoubtedly call it “exhausting,” but the film’s approach to character makes it the kind of fun Friday night movie that will surprise, scare, and exhilarate you time and time again. The movie works tirelessly to give each character a fully developed backstory as well as a complete and satisfying story arc.
But what really sets Bad Times at the El Royale from your average thriller is the way it weaves significant moments from American history into the narrative as a way of both contextualizing who these characters are and the world that they’re living in.
The three specific elements the film embeds into the text of the story are the Vietnam War, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the Manson family.
Vietnam War
The significance of the Vietnam War on all aspects of American life in the 1960s cannot be overstated. The effects of the war were lasting and profound and Bad Times at the El Royale refuses to shy away from that.
The Vietnam War had the unique quality of betrayal. The discovery that the U.S. government was aware of the ineffectiveness of their strategy in Vietnam combined with the needlessness of the war in the first place left the American people — particularly on those young soldiers that were drafted and sent overseas — feeling betrayed by their country.
This betrayal is also a central narrative component in Goddard’s movie; as these characters come together, their concealed identities and motivations beget greater betrayals against one another, leading to increasingly violent ends.
For the last remaining hotel employee and war veteran Miles (played by Lewis Pullman), the transformation of the El Royale from a seedy rundown hotel to a kind of warzone forces him to confront the very things he wants so badly to forget.
The movie uses the El Royale as a microclimate to explore the tensions — both personal and political — caused by the war. It serves to contextualize the needlessness of the violence that is so central to Goddard’s movie.
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
Without revealing too much, the movie also toys with the idea of how the assassination of President Kennedy impacted the socio-political climate of the United States at this time in history. Kennedy brought hope to many during his time as president, leading many to believe he would help usher in significant positive change to the nation.
His assassination served to calcify that legacy, elevating him a sort of mythical state that allowed his inspirational aura to carry on for decades. Bad Times at the El Royale presents a sort of alternative history that asks us to consider what might have happened if that legacy had been torn down.
Although kept in the peripheral of the narrative, Bad Times at the El Royale presupposes that everyone has secrets, even and/or especially, the President of the United States. The characters in the movie are given the opportunity to reveal Kennedy’s own secrets.
Here again, Goddard weaves a very real moment from U.S. history into his film, using fiction as a way of examining the socio-political atmosphere in the 1960s and questioning what makes a legacy and who upholds it.
Manson family
Charles Manson and his cult — who referred to themselves as a family — provide the inspiration for the central villain in Goddard’s Bad Times at the El Royale. Played by Chris Hemsworth, the character of Billy Lee is clearly intended to be a Charles Manson stand-in, leading a group of violent degenerates and corrupted young women.
One of the central plots in the film follows Emily (Dakota Johnson) trying to rescue her younger sister Ruth (Cailee Spaeny) from Billy Lee’s cult. The cult itself, just like Manson’s, is a breeding ground for manipulation and violence — all excused or endorsed under the guise of “love.”
It’s fitting that Goddard would choose to include this as a major plot line in the film as it aligns perfectly with the movie’s core themes of corruption and deceit. The Manson family was a fascinating byproduct of the cultural machinations of the 1960s; the family existed at the intersection of the political distrust, cultural resentment, free love movement, and racial tensions that defined this era of American history.
Bad Times at the El Royale is a surprisingly cognizant and nuanced depiction of those defining elements that uses them to create a fascinating, albeit hyperbolic portrait of the consequences of corruption on a personal level.
While hardly a perfect movie, the way Bad Times incorporates these real events from history into the narrative gives it a compelling edge. The inclusion of these elements helps enlighten the audience to the experiences of the characters and the world that they live in.
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