Michael Cristofer’s film The Night Clerk (2020), a Netflix original, takes more than a few cues from the films of Brian De Palma. The Night Clerk employs both Hitchcockian and neo-noir cinematographic techniques to explore themes of voyeurism and moral accountability. However Cristofer’s film never gets beyond simply using these devices as gimmicks.
The Night Clerk is about a young hotel clerk named Bart (Tye Sheridan) who, in addition to living with Asperger’s syndrome, is a voyeur who bugs the rooms at the hotel with multiple hidden cameras. One night Bart witnesses a gruesome murder and ends up Detective Espada’s (John Leguizamo) prime suspect. Bart transfers to a different hotel in the same chain as the investigation drags on. It is here that he meets and befriends Andrea Rivera (Ana de Armas). Some troubling clues arise and Bart begins to suspect that Andrea is in danger of being the killer’s next victim.
The Night Clerk takes Jeff’s (James Stewart) broken leg in Rear Window (1954) and exchanges it for Asperger’s. The broken leg was just a narrative device in Hitchcock’s film and in Cristofer’s picture it serves the same purpose. Even though Sheridan gives one of the best performances of his career his character’s defining trait still plays as a gimmick designed to up the stakes of the suspense and solicit sympathy from the audience.
The technological updates that Cristofer makes to the Rear Window premise recall De Palma’s career long investigation into Hitchcock’s methods and style. The problem is that The Night Clerk doesn’t make any advances on De Palma’s strategies as a filmmaker. The Night Clerk merely adopts what these other directors have done and applies it to a mystery whose lack of complexity doesn’t support such a narrative framework.
The shortcomings of Cristofer’s screenplay cannot be helped by his outstanding cast (which also includes the ever outstanding Helen Hunt). Sheridan is convincing and sympathetic in his performance without ever seeming pitiful which is a welcome relief. But it is Ana de Armas who steals the show. Her scenes with Sheridan are so full of genuine compassion and vulnerability that for a few brief moments the inevitable twist ending seems unimaginable. Ana de Armas has such a unique and powerful on screen presence yet she has yet to be cast in a leading role worthy of her talents or innate charisma.
