Seven strangers gather in a rundown hotel near Lake Tahoe, on the border between Nevada and California, one night in 1969.

There’s the unlucky priest (Bridges), the vacuum cleaner salesman (Hamm), the sultry singer (Cynthia Erivo), the two criminal sisters (Johnson and Cailee Spaeny) and the charismatic cult leader (Hemsworth). They all have secrets – even the young concierge (Lewis Pullman) – and they will each get their chance at redemption on this fateful night, before everything goes to hell.

This noir-esque tribute to ‘60s crime thrillers comes from writer-director Drew Goddard, whose debut picture as director (Cabin in the Woods) was one of the best, and funniest, horror movies ever made. Set during the turbulent end of the decade – against the background of Altamont, the Manson family and Zodiac killings, as the summer of love turned rotten – Bad Times at the El Royale promises to be an intense, thrilling, and wild ride, as surprises will be unwrapped and we find out who, if anyone, survives the night. 

In 1987, deep in the jungles of Central America, a team of commandos led by Arnold Schwarzenegger came face-to-mandibles with one of the most iconic aliens in cinema: the Predator. The Predator was an unstoppable alien hunter and has been back to terrorise humanity many times in the 30 years since his debut. And now in the present day, a young boy accidentally activates a beacon, signalling the return of the galaxy’s greatest hunters to Earth. Our only hope is a rag tag crew of misfit soldiers and one very angry science teacher.

The Predator is a labour of love. Director Shane Black played one of the Predator’s first victims, having encountered it in the role of Hawkins, the bawdy jokester of the 1987 original. Returning to the franchise as a director and writer, he brings his trademark wit to make this a slightly more self-aware adventure to what could have been a stony, humourless affair (I’m looking at you, Predators).

The plot has no surprises, but Black and his team have managed to capture the tongue-in-cheek, gung-ho jingoism of the original and inject some sorely needed charm. Four out of five trophy skulls!