Scope and freedom seem to be the biggest issues with many good directors/writers.
I didn't dislike this but it is my least favorite of his films. When you break it down, there's a Caveat-scoped film in here that is set into a larger box that has an extra layer of emotional character development and characters that seem to conflate rather than assist.
It has the most extraneous characters of any of his films, and that doesn't help it feel more intentional and concise. The bellboy is there for arc and the elevator, the old man is there to exposit folklore, and so we know "that's the guy with the key", the handyman guy is there to be the vehicle for Chekov's gun when in his other two movies we'd have assumed or combined those roles as minor attributes of major characters. Main character, woman in danger, kind person who betrays, wise vagrant all seem to fit into his proven, workable types, and this has a whole B cast that further clutters things up.
The character arc works but it changes what this is too much for me to call it a success and it's hand held a bit too much as opposed to his other films, where he has a lot of faith in the audience to draw connections before he confirms them. The core horror still follows that path, but the emotional wrapper is really overt and telegraphed explicitly in the dialogue.
"Why would you write that? That's horrible" -> because I'm a terrible person -> I've forgiven myself and I know that I'm not terrible -> I don't write that anymore.
The forest, the hotel, the room, the dumbwaiter, and the basement are good enough to hang this plot on, and I think that it would have been stronger if it relied on that simplicity rather than the extra parts tacked on.
