PLOT: A quiet community that isn’t a big fan of change must deal with the arrival of a mysterious new bingo hall, and the malicious presence that means to lure them in with the promise of big winnings.
REVIEW: To borrow a very overused saying, money is the root of all evil. It can bring out the worst in all people and is able to tear apart communities and turn friends against one another — all under the guise of being able to promise a new, better life. The new Welcome to the Blumhouse entry, Bingo Hell, takes that all to heart with a profound lack of subtlety that it wears like a badge of honor, depicting through a bonkers lens the very nature of cash and excess as a corrupting demon that can very well be anyone’s doom.
Our story takes place in the small, seemingly rural community of Oak Springs, which like a lot of small communities is dwindling as shops close and people move away. One defiant resident, Lupita (Adriana Barraza), refuses to leave. She loves Oak Springs as if it was her child and the other elderly residents as her own family that she refuses to let go of. She loves it all so much that she views the people who decide to pack up and leave for the sake of something new as cowards and quitters, and gets so grumpy at the sight of incoming artisanal coffee shops that she’s basically Clint Eastwood on a sunny day. But the people who know her know her passion, and love her for it. With her community center bingo games, everyone can come together and show support for one another. It’s all very sweet, until very quickly it’s very, very not sweet.
Seemingly overnight, Mr. Big’s Bingo Hall opens up, bringing bingo with a strip club vibe to the small town and with the devilishly compelling Mr. Big (Richard Brake) promising winnings so big they can finally ditch this town and live the life they always wanted. As they begin playing, he stamps their hands with a big dollar sign, the very symbol of money burning itself into their skin like an unremovable curse. That allure is hard to deny, and soon residents begin playing and winning big, only to meet horrid, grotesque ends…usually while celebrating their wins with a nightmarish euphoria.
This isn’t exactly a new storytelling approach, but director Gigi Saul Guerrero (also co-writing with Shane McKenzie and Perry Blackshear) injects Bingo Hell’s with such an invigorating sense of madness that it’s easy to forgive its straightforward focus. Working with cinematographer Byron Werner and editor Andrew Wesman, the movie leans heavily into the evil, intoxicating allure of Mr. Big and his promises of splendor, moving at a breakneck pace to feel like you yourself are being swept up into his spell. And even if he didn’t have such malicious, demonic power, it would be easy to fall under Big’s spell thanks to the venomous charisma of Brake. His big smile is perfectly unsettling, and like a cult leader stands on the stage of the bingo hall promising everyone everything they never had, but only if they play.
At times it’s jarring and squeamish, and sometimes when it’s a bit much it’s not long before the focus comes back down to the veteran cast — all of whom are so damn good. Guerrero gives Barraza, Brake, Bertila Damas, Grover Coulson, Clayton Landey, and L. Scott Cooper as Lupita’s best friend Dolores plenty of room to be as bold as they need to be, and all of them seem to have a big blast with such weird material. Barraza, in particular, is a fantastic lead, juggling the big swings of the humor with the slower moments when she has to realize that her desperate need to keep residents in town is perhaps a reason why they have been so driven to play Mr. Big’s games and maybe win a ticket out of Dodge.
By the end of the immensely satisfying finale, the ultimate message isn’t incredibly complex, with lessons being learned about the importance of not holding people back for the sake of clinging to the familiar — and of course how greed is not great. But Gurrero’s film is so fun and sometimes brilliantly macabre that the experience as a whole is as twisty, repulsive, and ultimately sweet as it needs to be, all fit with an ensemble that’s excellent from top to bottom, selling the humor and attitude before the craziness even begins to ensue.