You can see the problem: Griffin’s great breakthrough was developing a practical method to bleach hemoglobin, but melanin stumped him entirely. If not for the happy accident that Griffin was, himself, “almost an albino … with a pink and white face and red eyes,” he might never have discovered invisibility, might never have terrorized the English countryside, and might never even have gotten himself beaten to death by enraged villagers. Even for the lucky albinos who were good candidates for invisibility procedures, the Griffin Invisibility Operation had downsides: Food took some time to become invisible after being eaten, the subtle differences between “being invisible” and “running around completely nude in inclement weather” took time for patients to appreciate, plus also everyone who underwent the procedure became a full-blown homicidal maniac in a matter of days. But they became invisible homicidal maniacs, which was a great leap forward for medical science.
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to imagine a more tedious, tiresome, more lifeless attempt at a neo-noir thriller than writer-director Michael Cristofer’s The Night Clerk.
A one-time Pulitzer Prize-winner (The Shadow Box) and working character actor (Mr. Robot), Cristofer hasn’t written and directed a feature-length film in almost two decades (Original Sin) and it shows. The rust really, really shows (and that’s assuming the existence of basic filmmaking competency twenty years ago).
From a drab, painfully predictable script that would be thrown out of a first-year screenwriting class, to floundering, soporific performances, to an inert, static visual style, there’s little, if anything to recommend The Night Clerk beyond a couple of on-the-rise performers (Tye Sheridan, Ana De Armas) and slumming, paycheck-nabbing actors (Oscar winner Helen Hunt, John Leguizamo).
Sheridan’s character, Bart Bromley, a twenty-something, hotel night clerk, suffers from acute social awkwardness, one of the many symptoms or conditions typical of someone with Asperger Syndrome. Sheridan plays Bart as a broad collection of tics, gestures, and other related mannerisms, averting his eyes when interacting with anyone around him, walking stiffly or clumsily with his arms fixed to his sides, and talking in tangents whenever anyone asks him a simple question or engages in social niceties. He’s like Dustin Hoffman’s character Rain Man except he has a peculiarly dubious obsession with voyeurism, not, Cristofer repeatedly points out, because of some oddball perversion or deviancy, but because Bart uses surveillance footage taken from hidden cameras planted in selected hotel rooms to mimic human behaviors and interactions.