The Night Clerk

tags: drama, Netflix streaming, psychological thriller

I've seen a total of four Tye Sheridan's movies starting when he was a very young boy: Mud (with Matthew McConaughey, Joe (with Nicholas Cage), Dark Places, and Ready Player One. I liked him in all 4 movies. 

He is also very good in this movie playing Bart, a 23 year old with Asperger's. He works the night shift in a hotel where he installed cameras in one of the rooms, not to be a peeping Tom but to practice how to respond and speak to people, imitating what the guest says then practices answering them. He set up the camera to have a live feed to his bedroom. He is already home after his shift and sees the lady who just checked in starts fighting with a man. The guy hits the woman so Bart drives back to the hotel to help. Outside the door of the room, he hears a gun go off and he is frozen to the spot. The other hotel employee finds him calmly sitting on the bed saying the lady looks dead. He becomes the main suspect.

Spoilers

Before the police arrives, he removes out all the SD cards from the cameras but accidentally leaves one on the carpet. When the police finds it, one of the police investigators suggests not to charge him yet as he might have additional evidence. Here I already suspect this investigator because the dead woman is his wife.

Bart is transferred to another nearby hotel and a beautiful woman, Andrea, checks in for a whole week. Bart is smitten with the girl who seems to be slightly flirting with him and tells him she had a brother who also suffered from Asperger's and died a few years ago. She even let him kiss her. He buys a new car, a new wardrobe, and styles his hair. His interaction with the car agent, the men's section store clerk, and the hairdresser is the only funny part in the whole movie. I like it. 

Watching the live feed of Andrea's room, he discovers the same guy he saw in the murdered woman's room is Andrea's boyfriend. Again, he sees the man hit Andrea and again he drives to the hotel to help her. The man, the police investigator Nick, flees the room as soon as Bart gets there. Andrea puts a gun in her purse and also leaves agitated when Bart showed her the hidden cameras which he leaves in the room.

Bart quits working, reviews the recordings, and stays in his room. Andrea comes to visit Bart in his house. He tells her he is heartbroken. Bart shows her his external hard drive with all the hotel recordings, and Andrea stays the night sleeping on his bed with Bart's arm around her. Bart wakes up the next morning and she's gone.Also gone is the external hard drive and her gun is on the bed either as a planted evidence or for Bart to off himself. He fires it once and his mother summons the police. He is gone before the police gets there. They find the SD cards, the gun, and a note to the police saying he is not the murderer/s they are looking for. Nick and Andrea are stopped by the police on the road. Bart is in the mall to practice talking with real people instead of a video of a hotel guest. Still awkward but he is trying to be a normal person.

What I like about the movie is the young man, although socially awkward, is highly intelligent and he knows he is being set up by the couple as soon as he sees Nick, identified by his arm tattoo. He puts 2 and 2 together and comes up with his own set up. He had to quit working in order to lure Andrea to his home where he is safely able to execute his plan. And true to his calculations, Andrea does exactly as he wanted. He had his sort of revenge and helped the police catch the killer/s. Nick and Andrea's mistake is they underestimated the boy with Asperger's.