Out of everything the filmmaker J.J. Abrams has ever done, few concepts provoke as much discussion as his “mystery box”. Abrams first spoke about the mystery box during a 2007 TED Talk, describing it as his core approach to storytelling: setting up a central enigma in a story that may never be solved, but continues to generate “infinite possibility and that sense of potential”.

On its own, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a mystery box-based movie or TV show: if anything, it encourages the audience to take a more active role in decoding the material’s secrets. But the method has also been rightfully criticized for failing to bring a satisfactory conclusion to projects; it’s not enough to scatter a bunch of breadcrumbs and neglect to place something worth finding at the end of the trail. Seasons of Lost, installments of Cloverfield, chunks of Westworld – these and other projects in Abrams’ portfolio have occasionally struggled with unnecessary obfuscation and weak payoffs.

Drew Goddard, one of Abrams’ frequent collaborators, also seems to enjoy the mystery box structure. While Goddard spends most of his time as a screenwriter and a producer, his previous feature as a director, The Cabin in the Woods, is perhaps one of the most satisfying and successful uses of a mystery box. It blends horror tropes, knowledgeable parody, and the courage to follow the implications of the film’s big reveal to its most logical and brutal conclusion. The movie is simply a lot of fun, and it knows it.

Goddard brings vestiges of this approach to his newest film, Bad Times at the El Royale. He even carries over the theme of the characters being constantly watched by unknown forces. But though Goddard captures some strong performances in the process, Bad Times doesn’t have the subversion, shocks or flat-out hilarity of the filmmaker’s previous film. Instead, we get an overlong exercise in brilliant setup, with no follow-through.

And the setup is pretty eye-catching: the movie takes place in 1968 at the titular hotel near Lake Tahoe, sitting astride the California-Nevada border. To emphasize this, the hotel features a massive line running through it, situating each half of the lobby and each of half the rooms on either side of the state line. One character informs us that this design made it a hot spot to visit years ago, but eventually the hotel ran out of clientele who liked to joke about how the weather is doing in the neighbouring state, just across the room.

This faded destination brings together an unlikely gathering of characters, all pretending to be people they’re not. First up is Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges) who doesn’t seem very comfortable in his clerical outfit for someone who’s supposed to have been a priest for decades. Then they’re a garrulous vacuum salesman named Laramie (Jon Hamm), a surly hippie named Emily (Dakota Johnson) and a woman who’s perhaps the most honest of the group, a singer named Darlene (Cynthia Erivo).

As their first night in the hotel wears on, the location begins to feel ever stranger. Laramie discovers surveillance bugs in his room, followed by a creepy passageway running behind the rooms, allowing someone to film guests through two-way mirrors. On the TV, news of a brutal murder in the area is broadcast. One character begins ripping up the floor in his room. And then a cult leader (Chris Hemsworth) comes to visit, sending events spiralling out of control.

These moments all make for a great trailer (which is exactly what the filmmakers did). Unfortunately, there’s just not a lot else going on. Unlike Cabin in the Woods, Goddard doesn’t deconstruct the genre as much, preferring to let much of the film play like a straightforward thriller. There’s no wacky explanation behind the surveillance in the rooms, or a big reveal of who the mysterious “management” is.

Billy Lee, Hemsworth’s cult leader, also isn’t very eccentric or chilling – no matter how much fun as Hemsworth seems to be having – so there’s little in the way of true menace in his scenes. To deliver on the promises made in the first two acts, we need to see Billy Lee commit or manipulate others into some terrifying behaviour, especially if we’re meant to see something of the Manson Family in Billy Lee’s group. Instead, Billy Lee merely waves a gun around and plays interrogator.

Bad Times does contain some stirring work from the main cast, which almost feels out of place in a movie that seems to be oriented more towards genre entertainment. Bridges is always a joy to see onscreen, but his scenes with Erivo and in flashbacks reveal that his character has bigger worries than merely surviving the night. And his character, Father Flynn, actually undergoes one of the more complete arcs in the story: in a film that centres on people hopping over borders and taking on fake names, Flynn finds that he can do the most good by keeping up his disguise a little longer than he planned.

Sadly, the honesty of the performances can’t hide how the film simply lacks the bite of Cabin in the Woods, a fact made worse by Bad Times’ 2 hour and 20 minute runtime; something tells me 1 hour and 45 minutes would be more appropriate. The film is possibly most useful as an example of where the mystery box can lead filmmakers astray; it’s fine to keep audiences in the dark, but every so often you need to turn a light on in the distance, to keep them walking in the right direction.

Bad Times at the El Royale gets two stars out of four.

Stray thoughts

• Goddard wisely keeps the identity of the famous guy in the blackmail film a secret – not all mysteries need to be solved.

• It would have been nice for Billy Lee’s cult to have some sort of ideology, other than a wishy-washy “freedom from authority” thing.

• I kinda hoped Miles the concierge would turn out to be a serial killer, but they go with a more boring idea instead.