It was another movie night! I recommend sitting down because this movie might make your head spin.
Overall, this was a really cool movie. I have never seen a movie that took this kind of approach. It had a really neat cold open, and the movie set off simply but just enough off to start the feeling of unease the film shot for.
In the 1970's, the El Royale, which sits half in Nevada and half in California, is seemingly abandoned. A handful of guests arrive very close together in time. They're an odd bunch with their own unique perspectives. A vacuum salesman, a single black woman, a priest, and a nameless woman with an attitude all choose rooms once the only hotel employee finally appears.
It is at this point in the film that we start seeing individual perspectives. No one is who they say that they are.
The salesman calls home, then changes personas. Through his eyes we see the priest acting interestingly, and we discover that the woman who brought her own bedding was not a prostitute but a singer. Then we see into the room of the woman with the attitude, and he becomes concerned. Not long after, we change perspectives.
Our beautiful singer tells her story in majority through flashback, before the priest enters the scene too. From there comes a couple of confessions and a surprising turn of events.
On and on it goes like this, shifting perspectives and telling a lot with a flashback, until we find ourselves, or at least those of us still alive, in the main part of the hotel with a lot of tension. A sister has joined us, a man has taken buckshot to the face, there is quite a bit of money in the room, and there is a lot of concern about what is coming.
Enter, Chris Hemsworth as Billy, the perfect cult leader. Let's be honest- no one was offended by his apparent hatred of shirts, especially closed ones. Billy is a scarily fascinating kind of crazy. He is a big fan of games, as we see multiple times, and does his job very well. In the end, there is death, fire, and no good guys.
All in all, this movie is incredibly well done. I do, however, have a couple of problems with it.
This movie confused me a bit. I followed it easily enough and all of that, but I felt like there was no one to root for. There were no real protagonists. While this made for an awesome kind of movie, it also decreased my enjoyment a bit because there was no lesson to be learned and no one to really relate to.
I also would have loved to see Dakota Johnson utilized more and have a wider range of emotions. I looked at her and could not help but see Mrs. Grey from the Fifty Shades trilogy, and, despite her actions being completely different, I did not get the feeling that she was this other character.
My boyfriend and I agreed, however, that Chris Hemsworth killed it. His accent surprised me, but Alistair said he was, "done being surprised by the versatility of actors like that." Which was pretty comical in itself, to me at least.
Bonus: there were a bunch of neat cameos, from Nick Offerman to Jim O'Heir to William B. Davis!
Overall, I think this film succeeded at telling an odd story uniquely, and it made me the right amount of uncomfortable. A lot of people seem to either love this movie or be completely baffled by it. I'm glad I saw it in theaters once, but I would not go see it again of my own accord. I probably will not buy the film unless it is on sale... Then again, maybe I'll be in the mood for shirtless Chris Hemsworth and pick it up in a moment of weakness, who knows!
