Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

Dom said:

I'm thinking my issue with it might be that it started off as a sort of mystery where you can tell all these various interesting characters are converging on the same place at the same time, and you're trying to figure out how they're all connected to the first scene. But then

Spoiler

Hamm's character gets killed

and it just devolves into chaos composed of various elements. More focus on the hidden camera stuff in place of some of the singer and the sisters would have made it mesh a bit better I think.

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I think that I can almost completely echo your criticism. It had the pieces to become something but the execution was incompetent. From the get-go it was in the vein of a Tarantino or a Carpenter film but once it settled into being a movie, after your spoiler, it didn't know what to do with the expectations that it had built up and it just kind of devolved into a disappointment then sadly limped to the finish line. Just too many influences all taking place in the same room with a tinge of Rashomon tossed in to add credence to the fact that the filmmaker has indeed watched important films, or film I guess. Setting, style, actors, this all should have led to something interesting and new. It could have competently devolved into chaos but it structured itself too well; it could have sold itself on structuring itself too well but it then turned into chaos that didn't pay off. Trying to check off a lot of classic boxes and being afraid to be its own thing was this movie's downfall. A fairly forgettable thing in the end