So… these people – the priest, the singer, the saleman, the hippie – one of them is something to do with the gang and is back for the loot, we surmise, but what are the others doing there? We know this because Goddard showed us in a fancily stylised pre-credits sequence. Somewhere in the hotel/motel languishes a pile of loot, dumped under the floor years before in a bank job gone wrong. A priest called Father Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a singer called Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), a courtly Southern vacuum-cleaner salesman called Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm) and a slightly distracted hippie called Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson). Except on this fateful day in 1969 when four people turn up. This well appointed place used to be something of a draw but then lost its gambling licence and so no one comes any more. The El Royale is in a betweenspace, al allegorical limbo, with heaven as California on one side and hell as Nevada on the other (or the other way round). Literally – the state border runs right through the centre of it, as a thick red line.

Like the location at a hotel/motel set right on the border between Nevada and California. Are we funning yet appears to be the idea. If it was a dessert it’d be a trifile, or definitely something with sprinkles.

Instead writer/director Drew Goddard wants us to admire the spectacle, and gasp as he piles dialogue on top of plot on top of wayward characters and vainglorious allegory, switching timelines, digressing, flashing back, hopping from one “lead” protagonist to another as he goes – oh no, he’s dead – and generally having a fun old time in a big, kitsch, faintly ridiculous but very enjoyable movie.

The “who’s zooming who” thriller of the 1990s rides again in 2018’s Bad Times at the El Royale, one of those epics where, by the end, almost everyone is dead and the building is in flames yet barely a spark of emotion has been generated.

Bad times at casino el royale