Sometimes your younger girlfriend convinces you to purchase a haunted hotel where, thirty years before, a bunch of people were brutally murdered as part of some classic 1990s blood sacrifice ritual that would have the satanic panic crowd frothing at the mouth. And sometimes she convinces you it’s a great business idea, actually, to reopen the roadside motel as a curio museum and immersive experience for the true crime obsessives. And hey, how about whipping up some viral marketing campaigns by inviting a bunch of influencers and low-level celebrities in the true crime space to an exclusive opening weekend event where you lowkey torment them for social media content?
At least, this is what occurs leading up to the events of the new straightforwardly titled Shudder original slash series Hell Motel. Brynn Godenir and Michelle Nolden play Ruby and Portia, two opposites-attract-style queer women (Ruby wears blue lipstick and all black witchy clothes, leans goth with a passion for the macabre; Portia is an older blonde mommi in cream turtlenecks and sensible slacks) who are partners in life and in business, co-owners of the titular motel from hell. We don’t know much about their backstories other than the fact that Ruby wanted to buy the motel and Portia did not, thought she’s eventually convinced by Ruby and their realtor (delightfully played by Canadian drag queen Icesis Couture). When history starts repeating itself and a masked killer called Baphomet brutalizes the special guests invited to the hotel for its grand opening, it becomes clear Portia kind of had a point.
My friends and I recently posited a theory that some shows are “fever shows” — not shows that feel like a fever dream but rather shows that would perhaps be best enjoyed with a fever, which somehow feels distinct from a show best enjoyed high. Hell Motel is a perfect example of a fever show. It’d be best watched when feeling slightly outside of reality and your corporeal form.
Slasher tropes are fulfilled satisfyingly, and Hell Motel sprinkles in some specificity that keeps it from being pure pastiche, but the script is often ludicrous, and the women are written bizarrely. Hell Motel also falls into the strange trap of some lower-budget horror fare where it wants to be both horny and Puritanical about sex all at once. The show itself is often suggestive and takes stabs at incorporating the erotic but ultimately feels weirdly sexless. Perhaps the most convincing erotic element of the show is the killer couple who are horny for satan. Good for them, keeping the romance alive through ritualistic blood sacrifice. (Sadly, this is not the lesbian couple.)
One of the special guests to the hotel is a woman who has made a name for herself by sleeping with serial killers. She’s portrayed as damaged, dangerous, delusional, a man eater and a slut. Some flashbacks are intended to flesh her out but don’t really add much more to the show’s flat portrayal of her. Sexuality in Hell Motel feels dampened. It’s like the show wants to be horny but also is too scared of over-sexualizing the characters.
I don’t need too much depth to the characters in a slasher, but it’s like Hell Motel mistakes thick exposition for character depth. I don’t need their backstories so much as I need them to have clear and discernible motivations. We get some of that in the series’ second episode, one of its strongest, as it leans into the disturbing idea that anyone immersed in true crime has the potential to become violent. When Hell Motel wanders into commentary on true crime culture in general, it’s at its most cogent and compelling. But it often feels just like that: aimless wandering down the dim corridors of a hotel, neglecting to pry the doors most calling to be opened.
