Bart Bromley is a highly intelligent night clerk on the autism spectrum. When a woman is murdered during his shift, Bart becomes the prime suspect. As the police investigation closes in, Bart makes a personal connection with a beautiful guest named Andrea, but soon realizes he must stop the real killer before Andrea becomes the next victim.
Tye Sheridan stars as Bart, a young man with Asperger’s Syndrome, who works as a hotel night clerk. He is caught up in a murder investigation after a woman dies in one of their hotel rooms. What he doesn’t tell anyone is that he is spying on the hotel guests with hidden cameras and he is the only one who knows what really happened to this woman.
Though “The Night Clerk” has a couple of stars with Sheridan, Ana de Armas, John Leguizamo, and Helen Hunt, the film itself never grabbed me. I found it to be tedious, mostly because the murder is not executed well, and the victim is not given any real importance to the story. She only has one interaction with Bart before we see her die.
As the lead detective, Leguizamo was very clichéd. He automatically suspects Bart since he is a weird kid, and though he is right in thinking so in this case, the whole investigation is not really dealt with any urgency or importance. Similarly, Helen Hunt really didn’t have much to do, she plays Bart’s protective mother. But since Bart spends most of his time at the hotel or in his basement room, they don’t have much interaction in the film, so the relationship there isn’t fully developed for the audience.
The main plot shows that Bart spies on people so that he can better practice his social interaction so that it doesn’t come across quite as awkward. Sheridan did play a convincing job of someone with Asperger’s but everyone knows that spying is creepy and a huge invasion of privacy. And it is never really explained why he resorts to spying when there are plenty of alternatives when it comes to practicing social interactions.
Lastly, there is de Armas who plays Andrea, a hotel guest who quickly befriends Bart. Her role here isn’t as meaty as “Blade Runner 2049” or “Knives Out” but I still found her to be charming in this film. She’s the one who is the most understanding of Bart’s condition. But she may have had a motive for befriending Bart, which took away from the best part of the film – their chemistry and interactions. Though I thought their friendship at the beginning worked a lot better than their eventual romance (if you can call it that).
It is clear that director Michael Cristofer was influenced by Alfred Hitchcock for this film. Not only is there a strangely behaved night clerk who somewhat resembles Norman Bates, but he is also a voyeur much like James Stewart in “Rear Window.” But as said before the noir aspect of the murder could have been handled in a more compelling way and the film is seriously lacking in suspense.
Overall, “The Night Clerk” is boring and forgettable. While Sheridan and de Armas delivered good performances, the story never got me invested. I felt no real attachment to Bart, so I didn’t care how the plot played out for him. But I am glad that the film was able to shed more light on Asperger’s and what it is like living with the condition.
Now available On-Demand, on Digital and on DVD April 7th
