Written and Directed by Michael Cristofer
Starring Ana de Armas, Tye Sheridan, Helen Hunt and John Leguizamo 
Running Time: 1 hour and 30 minutes  
MPAA Rating: R for language, some sexual references, brief nudity and violent images

by Rosalie Kicks, Old Sport 

“I am socially awkward.” 

I love hotels. It doesn’t matter the locale, whether it is Manhattan or in the sticks of Pennsylvania, spending a night in a hotel makes me feel like I am on an exotic adventure. 

Writer/director Micahael Cristofer’s (the Evil Corp CEO from Mr. Robot) The Night Clerk is a murder mystery of sorts that has now given me the potential for future paranoia the next time I find myself alone in a hotel room. Night desk clerk, Bart Bromley (Tye Sheridan) suffers from aspergers, which causes hardship and difficulty for him when it comes to social interactions and situations. Individuals struggling with this disorder have the tendency to hone in on particulars of a conversation and become obsessively interested in specifics. Bart has the desire to be able to communicate like everyone else. To assist him with his mission, he has rigged cameras throughout the hotel in order to study the mannerisms, actions and language patterns of guests. 

Bart conducts much of his spying from his bunker command center in his mother Ethel’s (Helen Hunt) basement. Ethel is a caring mom with a tad of a Mother Bates disposition- leaving her “fragile” boy to dwell in the cellar by leaving his dinner on the steps so that he does not miss his “program”. What Bart never expected to witness during one of his lessons in human interaction was murder. In an attempt to stop the crime, he rushes to the scene, only to find himself in the middle of a homicide, a love triangle and unavoidably becomes detective Espada’s (John Leguizamo) number one suspect. 

This is a flick that unequivocally puts truth to the phrase, “there’s a reason it streams”. It is not a terrible film, but it is also not great. The ninety minute runtime did not leave me feeling like it was a complete waste of time, but this was also due to not needing to leave my house. If I left the comfort of my sweatpants (a new found love!), my pup and had winter air touch my flesh in order to view this movie, we would be having a completely different conversation right now. The Night Clerk would also not see much benefit from a theatrical experience as there is not much to write home about in terms of cinematography. With that said, the filmmaker does a lot with what most likely was a minimal budget and managed to create a perfectly fine crime drama. 

I did find it interesting to see Ana de Armas pop up as a guest at the hotel. Within The Night Clerk, her character Andrea is charming and unsurprisingly catches the eye of Bart. The character has a  kind and welcoming demeanor that alleviates Bart’s impulse to clam up. I felt their friendship added some depth to the plot, especially in learning of Andrea’s experience with an aspergian sibling. I would have loved to have seen Bart team up with Andrea to solve the crime, as I think they would have made for a rather interesting pair of gumshoes. With Ana’s recent success in Knives Out and her portrayal in the new James Bond flick, No Time to Die, she seems to be on the rise within Hollywood and someone to keep an eye out for. I am very much looking forward to her performance in the upcoming film Blonde (in which she will play Marilyn Monroe) set to be released later this year. 

Overall, what interested me in this flick, besides the hotel setting (Did I tell you about my hotel script? Ask me about it!), is that it told the story of someone suffering from a social disability. With the murder mystery plot, my hopes were inflated and my wish is that it would have delved more into Bart’s psychosis. I was pining for a caper and instead ended up with a quasi-love story with some murder thrown in on the side.

Watch The Night Clerk on demand and in select theaters Friday.