Bad Times at the El Royale Review — The drama simmers, but doesn’t quite break into a rocking and rolling boil.

At first, this film’s potential seems so great you might be tempted to make a date immediately and buy tickets. Bad Times at the El Royale has:

• A powerful cast, including Jeff Bridges, Jon Hamm, Chris Hemsworth, Nick Offerman, Dakota Johnson and newcomer Cynthia Erivo, whom you’ll see more of in the upcoming Widows, and who absolutely steels the show from this fine collection of compelling characters.
• A talented and wildly inventive writer/director, Drew Goddard, whose credits include TV series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alias, Lost and The Good Place, as well as films like Cloverfield, The Cabin in the Woods, World War Z and The Martian.
• Production Designer Martin Wist, who has created a snazzy old hotel that is both stylish and seedy at the same time.

The plot shows promise as well. A motley crew of characters gradually assembles at an all but deserted inn just outside Lake Tahoe. This inn straddles the state line between California and Nevada in such a way that you can chose a room in either state. As a priest, a vacuum cleaner salesman and a lounge singer walk into a bar…soon to joined by others more sinister, it gradually becomes apparent that each can also choose redemption or damnation. However, the outcomes of these choices are not always predictable.

Sounds intriguingly new, noir and nuanced, doesn’t it? And in the hands of a Tarantino or a Lynch it might be. But Goddard has mixed together the most darkly delicious and savory ingredients, then baked them up into a concoction that tastes a little bland and falls a little flat.

Perhaps more creative camera work would have helped. Angles, shadows and images coulda shoulda had so much more impact. An inferno should make viewers feel like they’ve descended into the very depths of hell, but the one in this film feels more like the meager depths of network TV, with its sputtering, strategically placed flames.

It’s a film that skates on the surface of brilliance, but doesn’t quite take the plunge into its bracing depths.

Rated R

2 Hours 20 Minutes

If this Bad Times at the El Royale review inspires you to check it out, get times and tickets at Fandango.com.

Bad Times at the El Royale Review — The film has such deliciously dark potential, but doesn’t quite realize it.