THE NIGHT CLERK /CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: MICHAEL CRISTOFER / STARRING: TYE SHERIDAN, ANA DE ARMAS, HELEN HUNT / RELEASE DATE: APRIL 6TH
The Night Clerk is a film built on the brilliant central performance of Tye Sheridan (Ready Player One), who plays Bart Bromley, an autistic hotel worker who studies people so he can be less socially awkward. The film opens up many interesting possibilities but never really explores any of them fully, leaving us with a compelling idea that never comes to life.
We are introduced to Bart with a great aerial shot of him driving to work, his car snaking in and out of a suburban grid he lives with his caring but worried Mum, played by Helen Hunt and works the night shift in a local hotel. We quickly learn that Bart has rigged some of the rooms with cameras, spying on the guests, so he can learn their mannerisms and work on his own conversation skills, which as we find out from his interaction with the guests, are lacking, often just spouting a monologue of facts at them. Things soon get more complicated when a guest is murdered in one of the rooms, and when Bart runs in to help, he becomes the main suspect in the eyes of John Leguizamo’s detective Espada. Even though his video of the crime could clear him, he is understandably reluctant to reveal his voyeuristic tendencies. When he is transferred to a smaller hotel, he falls for seductive but troubled Andrea (de Armas, becoming Hollywood’s go-to seductress, melting the screen with her eyes as always).
The initial synopsis of the film implies an unsettling tone, a mystery unfolding in a dark hotel, a cross between 2007’s Vacancy and Hitchock’s Rear Window – but this is not what we get, there is no tension, nor a satisfying mystery to uncover, we find out the murderer fairly quickly and due to the small cast, there is no-one else it could have been. The relationship between Bart and Andrea is also promising, she describes her own experience with a brother with autism and they seem to share a bond, however this doesn’t really go anywhere in the end, we are not sure if she ever really cared for him, or is using him for her own gain. Helen Hunt is also a little wasted, we learn that her husband died, but we only get a glimpse of her character and relationship with her son, except for eating dinner over video link.
As aforementioned, Tye Sheridan is the real star of the show, displaying Bart as eccentric but not a freak, just someone trying to interact with the world, this is highlighted in a dream he has, in which he converses ‘normally’ with Andrea, in a touching moment, showing how Bart would like to be viewed. The Night Clerk is skillfully edited and presented, with some nice time-lapse montages, it just isn’t quite sure what kind of film it wants to be, and feels like a missed opportunity in tense psychological horror. Sheridan and de Armas are clearly ones to watch though.
