Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a mystery,
crime film from 2020, titled The Night Clerk. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
In the basement of her mother's house, Bart watches footage gotten from cameras that he
hid in the rooms of the hotel he works at. He has Asperger's syndrome, so by watching human
interactions and imitating their speech and mannerisms he thinks he can work on his poor
social skills. There are also cameras around the house that his mom Ethel uses to talk to him and
let him know when dinner is ready. Bart never goes upstairs to eat with her, though - he waits
for Ethel to leave his plate on the stairs, then he takes it to his own table while Ethel
eats alone. While Bart may have Asperger's, he's still very smart and highly functional,
he can drive and keep up with his job with no issues. His position in the hotel is the night
shift clerk, and his boss Ron doesn't even stay around to keep an eye on him. He's understanding
of Bart's quirks and trusts him to know what he's doing. Tonight, things are pretty quiet,
so Bart doesn't expect new guests to come in until Karen shows up in the middle of the night.
After giving her a room, he takes out his tablet to watch the feed from the hidden camera and is
surprised to see Karen is letting a man inside the room through the window. Bart is so distracted by
this that he doesn't hear his coworker Jack come in, who immediately notices the movie Bart is
watching suspiciously looks like one of the hotel rooms. After quickly closing the tablet case,
Bart realizes his shift is over and leaves without making up a lie about what Jack took notice of.
Bart stops at the store to get some ice cream before going home, where he enjoys his new snack
while watching the hotel cameras. Karen is arguing with the mysterious man because she feels like
he doesn't care about her since they only meet in secret. Suddenly, the man begins attacking Karen,
and her bag falls to the floor, revealing a gun she's kept there. Not knowing what to do, Bart
calls Jack, but he doesn't dare to confess his spying, so he hangs up without saying a word and
runs to his car. As Bart drives at an exceeding speed and enters the hotel through a side door,
Jack goes out through the front gate to have a smoke. That's when he hears a shot from inside,
so he rushes back in and finds Karen dead on the floor while Bart nervously sits on the bed.
Jack tells Bart not to touch anything while he calls the police, but after he's gone,
Bart disobeys and puts his fingers on the blood just to know what it feels like. Then, he begins
taking out all the hidden cameras in the room, but in his hurry, he doesn't notice he drops one
of the SD cards. When the cops arrive, Detective Espada begins asking all sorts of questions. Ron
defends Bart, saying he's a little weird but still a good, responsible boy that wouldn't hurt a fly.
Afterward, Espada interrogates Bart, who quickly makes up a story about why he came back:
he says he left work, stopped for ice cream, and it wasn't until he got home that he realized that
he had forgotten his wallet on top of the vending machine. That's why when he came back to the
hotel, he used the side door: because it's closer to the vending machines. However, Espada stays
suspicious of him because of the blood on his hand and the fact that if the wallet story was true,
then Bart couldn't have bought the ice cream. Later at the police station, Karen's husband
Detective Nick Perretti comes to identify the body, he also confirms Karen carried a gun for
protection, but he doesn't understand what she was doing in a hotel in the middle of the night.
Ethel comes to the station as well and makes a scene, angry because the cops didn't treat a boy
with special needs right. She takes Bart with her, and asks Espada to stay away from them.
When they get home, Ethel asks Bart if there's anything he needs to tell her, but he doesn't say
a word, just bends over so his mother can kiss the top of his head for comfort. That night,
Espada spends his time researching Asperger's syndrome while Bart rewatches Karen's footage,
noticing that the killer has a bird tattoo on his arm. The next day, Ron explains to Bart that he
doesn't want to fire him, but it wouldn't be right to keep him there either, so he'll be transferred
to a new location. It's the same layout, same shift, and same routine, so Bart easily accepts.
During his first night at the new location, Bart meets Andrea, a regular guest at the hotel who
immediately notices he's new. Andrea doesn't seem to be bothered by Bart's awkwardness and tries to
chat with him, but of course Bart's answers don't offer much. When he returns home after the end of
his shift, Bart connects the hidden camera on his tie to the computer and watches his conversation
with Andrea to practice better answers, starting to develop a crush on her. The following day,
Bart looks through various magazines and tears off the pages that interest him before leaving
to do some shopping, unaware that Espada has been watching the house. At the store, Bart
bumps into Andrea, who once again doesn't mind his presence and keeps him company while chitchatting.
Andrea confesses her brother also had Asperger's but wasn't this functional,
he couldn't hold a job or anything. He was institutionalized for a long time, and then
he died. Andrea congratulates Bart for all his practice in human interaction, saying he's doing
pretty well, but after the subject of death is brought up, Bart feels uncomfortable so he leaves
without buying anything. When he returns home and rewatches Karen's footage, he realizes one of his
SD cards is missing - that very same SD card is now being found by the police at the hotel.
Espada takes the card to the station and shows the footage to Nick, but they can't really be sure of
the identity of the people on the screen because it only shows their feet. Nick wants Bart arrested
since he's sure he put up the hidden cameras, but Espada explains he doesn't have enough proof it
was him. Besides, spying doesn't equal murder. Afterward, Espada interrogates Jack, who tells
him about Bart's tablet and the weird video he saw the other day. Meanwhile, Bart starts his shift by
noticing someone drops Andrea at the hotel and she kisses that person before coming inside.
When she comes by reception, Bart tells her that he did some work on her room's AC so she
may notice some things may've been moved. Andrea accepts this without question, but the truth is,
Bart didn't fix anything - he just took the chance to hide his cameras again. In the room,
Andrea drinks too much and can't sleep. She's about to light a cigarette but stops herself
and goes back to the reception to ask Bart for a match, using the excuse to start more small talk.
Afterward, she goes to do swimming at the pool, and tells Bart he's free to keep her company.
At first, Andrea thinks she'll be alone, but Bart shows up a few minutes later with a towel for her.
After she's out of the pool, Andrea invites Bart to sit with her to chat, and Bart takes
the chance to ask about the mysterious man she kissed in the parking lot. Andrea doesn't want
to talk about it, so Bart explains how he knows he's socially awkward and perceived as stupid.
However, Andrea disagrees and assures him he isn't stupid, so this encourages Bart to quickly kiss
her. As soon as he realizes what he's done, he begins freaking out and apologizing, but
Andrea tells him it's fine because she understands loneliness makes people do things. After Andrea
kisses him again, Bart puts his head on her lap, and while petting his hair, she proceeds to tell
him about her lover: he's a married man that she's been secretly seeing for a long time.
Recently, things have gotten complicated, and she isn't sure what she's doing anymore. Bart
tells her he'd like to be her guard, and Andrea accepts before returning to her room to sleep.
Once she's gone, Bart allows himself to smile with glee. The next day,
Bart goes downtown with his magazine clips to get a makeover that will make him look like a model.
Interacting with the different clerks is quite hard for him and he finds himself in constant
misunderstandings, but at the end of the day, he's got what he needs: a new haircut, a nice suit,
some perfume, and even a new car. Afterward, he drives to the hotel to invite Andrea out,
but when he looks through the window, he sees she's getting busy with her boyfriend, who turns
out to be the murderer with the bird tattoo. Heartbroken and unsure if he can trust Andrea
anymore, Bart returns home, only to discover the police have come to take away all his equipment.
Ethel couldn't stop them because they have a search warrant, and this time, Espada doesn't
allow her to get in the way of his interrogation either. He asks Bart about the contents of his
computers because his team found them all empty, so Bart admits he wiped it all out and he doesn't
have any kind of backup. Espada doesn't believe him and swears he's hiding something, people just
give him a pass because of his condition. He also explains they've found Bart's fingertips all over
the room yet the gun isn't anywhere. Bart finally snaps and begins constructing a scenario of how he
could've gone to the room and killed Karen, but he didn't, and the cops didn't find the gun in
his room either, so Espada has nothing. After the police are gone, Bart opens a hidden compartment
in his room where he's been hiding his backups. He connects his external drive to a videogame console
to watch the hotel footage and gets depressed when he sees Andrea getting busy with the murderer.
From then on, Bart stops going to work, and Ron covers his shifts with Jack, but he still calls
often to check on Bart. He is also not eating much, so Ethel gets too worried about her
son to keep respecting his no trespassing rule anymore and comes down to have a talk with him.
She understands how hard life can be and tells him about the time his father died, how hard it
was for her to wake up every morning and keep on living while accepting her husband was gone.
But the world was still out there waiting for her, and now, Ethel reminds Bart that the world
is waiting for him too. Bart doesn't answer but her words make him think a lot about it,
so some moments after Ethel leaves, Bart picks up his plate and joins her at the table. After many
years, mother and son finally share a meal again. Meanwhile, Andrea is meeting with her lover the
murderer, who turns out to be Nick. He tells her that if she really cares for him, she'll do this
favor, and Andrea accepts. The following day, Andrea shows up at Bart's house. Ethel receives
her and is unsure of her presence when Andrea says she's a friend of Bart's from the hotel,
but decides to give her a chance. When Bart comes out to see her, he stays behind the
gate to talk to her, and is obviously not happy to see her even when she says she's missed him.
Bart explains he has a broken heart, so Andrea apologizes, saying he's a very special person and
she's glad to have met him. After she promises not to bother him anymore, Andrea leaves,
unaware that Espada is still secretly watching the house and has seen the entire interaction.
When he returns to his house, the detective begins researching Andrea's profile. Many hours later,
Bart is watching Andrea in her room, because his camera in the other hotel is still up.
It seems she's trying to break up with Nick and he gets violent again, hitting her, so Andrea takes
out a gun to get him off her and locks herself up in the bathroom. Like it happened the first time,
Bart freaks out and rushes to drive to the hotel to stop Nick from hurting Andrea more.
Nick grabs Bart by the neck, but when the boy starts screaming, Nick lets him go and runs away
through the window before someone could find him. Afterward, he frees a bleeding Andrea and shows
her the hidden camera that could help her prove Nick is a criminal. Andrea begins crying when
she realizes Bart has been spying on her, but Bart swears there's something more important she needs
to see and brings her to his home. Now Andrea gets to watch the footage of Karen's death, confirming
it was Nick that killed her and not Bart. Still in tears, Andrea doesn't know what to do, so Bart
tells her he would be willing to finally go to the police with his drive if she comes with him.
He also wants her to fix his heart, and Andrea says she can't. However, when she goes to lie
down on his bed to rest, she puts a hand under the pillow and uses the other to bring Bart closer,
so they both fall asleep cuddling. When Bart wakes up, he finds Andrea wearing clean clothes
and waiting with a suitcase so they can run away together. Bart finds himself being able
to easily look at, speak to and touch Andrea, so the two of them begin to kiss. At that moment,
Bart wakes up for real and realizes it was just a dream. At the same time Espada enters
Andrea's room, finding her bloodstained towel and the hidden camera, Bart realizes Andrea is
gone and she's taken his external drive with her because she's been working with Nick all along.
She only got close to Bart to steal the evidence of his lover's crime - she had also put her hand
under the pillow to leave Karen's gun there. Bart grabs the gun and watches some of his recordings
of Andrea while deciding what to do, coming to a very extreme conclusion. Upstairs, Ethel hears a
gunshot and calls the police, so Espada arrives with a few officers and breaks into Bart's room.
They find the footage of Karen's murder playing on the computer screens, and an envelope with
all the SD cards plus a letter from Bart apologizing for not giving up his secret before.
But Bart is nowhere to be seen. Andrea meets with Nick to give him the drive and escape together.
However, the police soon catch up with them, using the newfound evidence to arrest them both.
Meanwhile, Bart is at the mall, watching people and trying to imitate their mannerisms.