Hotel Poseidon (2021) begins with an almost-mute man listening to some strangely motivational speech-making from the room next door; hard to imagine why someone would be quite this optimistic, given the dilapidated environs, but then this is a strange film and Hotel Poseidon itself is an odd, decrepit place, the sort of place Possum‘s Philip might go on holiday. The listener is a bloke called Dave (Tom Vermeir), who turns out to be the hotelier. He gets himself up and ready to face his day, but bear in mind that Dave is a man who listens to a head cleaning cassette on his Walkman in order to relax (ask your parents).
Dave is a reluctant participant in the hospitality industry, to put it mildly. He’s not overly keen on guests at all, but later that day, a young woman called Nora (Anneke Sluiters) manages to talk her way in; she’s somewhat put off by the spectacle of Dave’s deceased Aunt Lucy in the corner of one of the rooms, a fact that Dave hadn’t noticed and is perturbed by, as he relies on Lucy’s pension to keep the place going. Anyway, despite the surprise, Nora hangs around. Then there’s Dave’s associate with big plans for the place, promising live music, an elaborate buffet – basically, a range of things that Dave would rather not do. An assortment of overblown characters steadily encroach upon his time and personal space, leaving him perplexed and desperate to get away – but where on earth to go?
Evident care has been taken over the way this film looks and feels; this kind of rot and decay is difficult to achieve at scale, but here every inch of the hotel and its denizens is in keeping with that ‘past its best’ vibe. The camera makes the most of it as well, with lots of long takes and deliberation over the finer details. Of course, this means an array of analogue tech, which is something which virtually all indie films of late seem to favour, and you can be hard pressed to find a film which doesn’t have a big telly or a Bakelite phone somewhere. Here, at least, it makes some sense as the whole hotel is a garish time capsule, last updated in around 1988, if that. The sound design is an important component here, too, lending a steady, heavy and ominous presence throughout.
Hotel Poseidon is avowedly ‘experimental’; in practice, this often means that films will do similar things, things which are easily recognisable here. Step forward stilted dialogue, limited narrative progression and a heavy focus on visuals, rather than a story as such. In effect, Hotel Poseidon is more of a sensory experience than it is in any conventional ways a narrative. Right down to the characters themselves, wearing gaudy face paints, the film maintains its surreal atmosphere and style throughout. Tom Vermeir’s turn as Dave, with all the growing confusion and panic he feels as he loses control of his quiet, ordered existence, is nicely done and in places I was put in mind of Mother! (2017), with that similar inclusion of home invasion and the horror of other people. There’s something of Eraserhead (1977) too, again in terms of a man being swept along by demented events beyond his control.
I’m sure many will read Dave’s plight in a metaphorical sense, too, seeing Dave as a kind of feckless Everyman, events simply overtaking him when he would much prefer a quiet life. For this reviewer however, all the practiced weirdness did begin to wear rather thin; this is a film which looks and sounds great, but personally there isn’t quite enough substance here to sustain interest across the film’s running time. Your enjoyment of Hotel Poseidon will depend entirely on how willing you are to balance this kind of existential viewing experience against more conventional on-screen components, such as plot. If you favour the former, then there is much here to love.
Hotel Poseidon will feature as part of the 25th Fantasia Film Festival.