Mark Reviews Movies: THE NIGHT CLERK

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 20, 2020

Writer/director Michael Cristofer twists the concept of voyeurism in The Night Clerk. The biggest twist is that there's nothing sexual or titillating about the voyeuristic tendencies of Bart Bromley (Tye Sheridan), a night clerk (natch) at a local hotel. In certain rooms, he has set up hidden cameras, and he can and does access the footage while sitting at his desk at work or lounging around in his mother's basement.

The initial flood of images from these rooms is fairly ordinary—people going about their routines, a mother talking to her kids, a woman talking on the phone. Bart stares intently, but he doesn't leer. He's not excited by the sights on his screens. He's simply studying them—especially the people, just living their dull, regular lives one night at a time.

He mimics certain gestures and speech, making sure to copy the intonation of the words exactly. There's something different about Bart. It's obvious, not only from this particular behavior, but also from quiet demeanor, his awkwardness in talking to people, and his tendency to go on and on about a certain line of thought, even when it's clear that the listener wasn't interested in the subject when the conversation started.

The answer to all of this is that Bart has Asperger syndrome, which lies on the autism spectrum. He can and does function, obviously, given his front-facing job (even if it is during the slower part of a hotel's routine) and his capacity to live on his own. He may live with his mother, played by Helen Hunt, but that mostly seems to be a decision on her end. Bart's father died, and based on everything that happens to Bart over the course of the movie, it's clear that she's protective of her son. Whether or not he could make it on his own isn't a certainty, but circumstances have made it so that Bart won't be finding out any time soon.

There are two ways of looking at this character and his presentation in the movie. The first is to see it as a sympathetic portrayal, which notes that Bart is different and engages in some socially unacceptable (not to mention illegal) behavior, but that also ensures we understand what his motives are—and, more importantly, what they aren't. Bart wants to become more "normal," whatever that actually means, or, barring that, to be able to present himself in such a way.

The second way is to see the movie as encouraging a stigma or exploiting Bart's condition for the movie's own brand of excitement. Bart is different, and this, the argument would go, is how weird he is. There's a fine line, and one thing's for sure: Cristofer's quick transformation of this story—about lonely, socially awkward man with developmental issues—into a thriller doesn't help the filmmaker find the balance in the portrayal of his central character.

The plot has Bart, going home after being relieved from his shift, watching a murder as it unfolds in real-time on his monitors. He rushes back to the hotel, takes a side door into the building, and arrives inside the room to discover the body of a woman—severely beaten and shot in the head. Before the police arrive, Bart nabs all of the hidden cameras he can, but in the frantic haste to cover his tracks, he leaves one behind.

A bit later, Bart has been transferred to a different hotel. There, he meets Andrea (Ana de Armas), a regular guest, apparently, who's checking in for a week. At the last minute, Bart assigns her a different room—one in which he has installed cameras. The two talk as her stay continues, and it's obvious that his feelings toward this target of his voyeurism are different. He likes her, and Andrea gives off the impression that she likes him.

There's a lot to unpack about this shift in Bart's attitude toward people-watching, although that's definitely not on Cristofer's mind. At a certain point, the screenplay ends its more sympathetic presentation of Bart and turns him into a mere pawn within the plot. There's a murder to solve, and there's a murderer on the loose. Is Andrea involved? Does she know the killer, and if she does, does she know he's a killer? Will Bart's voyeurism—the reason he evades the questions of a persistent but compassionate detective (played by John Leguizamo) and doesn't give up vital, case-solving evidence in a murder investigation—be discovered, or worse, will he become a suspect because of it?

Basically, the movie stops caring about Bart and ceases to help us understand his behavior. The character simply starts doing things—to cover his tracks or to protect Andrea—that only make sense within the logic of a shaky thriller—one that has an endgame in mind but that seems to be figuring out how to get there as it goes. The Night Clerk is sympathetic, yes, in that it doesn't treat Bart as some kind of incomprehensible "other." Does it exploit the character and his condition for some cheap thrills? Does that really need to be answered?

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