All These Hotels

I have now seen three new movies this year about people trapped in hotels. I swear I'm not doing this on purpose. But I've said how much I like such stories. Is the film industry pandering to me personally or is setting a whole movie on sound stages just cheaper? Probably the latter, huh? The latest I've watched is Do Not Enter. A group of young urban explorers infiltrate an abandoned resort hotel. The screenplay is intensely stupid, the performances are weak, the production design looks cheap. But I couldn't stop watching.

The cast is very pretty, particularly Adeline Rudolph as Diane. Her boyfriend, Rick, is played by Jake Manley and the other female member of the group is Cora, played by Francesca Reale. She explains at one point that her job in the group is keys--somehow she's able to find ways to open doors. I liked how the movie continued to come back to that. Any time there was a need for a door to be opened, everyone looked at Cora.

Trouble comes from two fronts in their exploration of the abandoned Paragon Hotel: there's a rival group of urban explorers who are more ruthless and there is some kind of skinny white demon. He's creepy looking enough. The actor, Javier Botet, was born with physical abnormalities he puts to use making the monster off-putting.

The rival group is there for the cash, millions of dollars of which is hidden somewhere in the hotel. It turns out to be just piled up in the office. So whatever company owned this hotel just couldn't be bothered to take the piles of cash and this urban explorer group is the first to find it. On top of this, the desire to pick up cash evidently abandoned is portrayed as immoral. But that's still not the dumbest thing in the script.

At one point, the leader of the ruthless rival group just tosses Rick off a balcony and we can see he falls at least seven storeys down a hole that somehow exists on every floor through the centre of the hotel. Cora points out that Rick had their only map, so the two groups head down to find Rick. They call his name. They expect him to be alive. And he is. No, there's no explanation. He just fell seven storeys and everyone acts like it was almost nothing.

Actually there's a worse moment when a guy named Frank (Laurence O'Fuarain), a reporter accompanying the group, falls down a service shaft. It's so clear there's nowhere for him to land but the film cuts to him lying on some nondescript grey surface, somewhere, of course uninjured. It cuts away and we're left to imagine for ourselves where he was and how he survived. Yet again, I felt like the screenwriters were drawing on their experience playing video games. The characters in the movie seem to act on the assumption that they have health bars and power ups.

But I kept watching this. Meanwhile, I'm having trouble finishing the new Masters of the Universe movie. Maybe it's because, as bad as it is, it still feels like a genuine attempt by a young filmmaker to entertain while Masters of the Universe feels completely committee produced.

Do Not Enter is available on Amazon Prime.

Sonnet 2003

With random points assigned, the book was taught
No lesson learned reversed the pigment brain
So sandwich meat and rye was dearly bought
Entire lunches clogged the evening train
Collect in here, the cards we use for weight
We'll never see the night without a dog
So many patrons paid to set the bait
And made a tiled path across the bog
Revenging ghosts were hid beneath a hat
The big sombrero boiled up with sauce
It chanced a bandit brought a smiling cat
The natives talked and made the mouser boss
So solve your problems fast with ample brims
A spider has a lot of useful limbs