Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Bingo Hell’ on Amazon Prime, Which Shows You Why You Don’t Want to Get Between This Old Lady and Her Bingo Balls

BIngo Hell is among the pair of Welcome to the Blumhouse horror movies Amazon Prime debuts this week — and is it me, or is this stuff Blumhouse might’ve earmarked for its Hulu anthology series Into the Dark? (Which has yet to be renewed for a third season; I kind of miss how hit-or-miss it was.) I bring this up because BIngo Hell is helmed by Gigi Saul Guerrero, who helmed that series’ strongest feature, Culture Shock; her latest is a horror-comedy about aging folk dealing with their impending obsolescence in the face of their town being gentrified. All they have is their bingo hall, and when it’s taken over by sinister forces, then hell must be paid.

BINGO HELL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Lupita (Adriana Barraza) snuffs her cigar on a lucrative written offer from developers who want to buy her house. Her town of Oak Springs is going to hell thanks to those vultures, who are turning the place into a string of vape shops, microbreweries and fancy coffeehouses. Traversing a crosswalk, she bodychecks a young woman’s half-caff frappa-whatever right out of her grip. “F—ing hipsters,” she snarls. THIS IS WAR.

At least Lupita still has the bingo hall — or so she thinks. Before we met her we met Mario (David Jensen), who had just cashed in on the hall and went home to celebrate and ended up dying under strange, mysterious, ooey-gooey-gross circumstances. The body has yet to be found when Lupita takes the stage for what she doesn’t yet realize is the last time, calling off bingo numbers for a couple dozen beloved locals. She loves this shit, a long-held social tradition for her and her fellow aging friends: close compadre Dolores (L. Scott Caldwell), hairdresser Yolanda (Bertila Damas), mechanic Clarence (Grover Coulson) and handyman Morris (Clayton Landey). You’ll note, perhaps, that Morris is the only one in the group who is not of color.

Should we also note that Lupita finds on the street a $100 bill coated with slime? That a big long vintage car that looks like a vampire’s ride seems to be rolling around town? Maybe. The next day, the fences, telephone poles, walls, the whole damn town is plastered with flyers for Mr. Big’s Bingo. They promise huge prizes. Lupita summons her friends to join her in mean-mugging the new establishment, which has changed significantly overnight. It looks like a neon-hell casino: digital screens, a zillion lights, all manner of a/v noise pollution. Fronting the din is Mr. Big (Richard Brake), whose sinister tones and Joker smile with teeth out to here are easier to ignore when he’s handing out $10k bingo bonanzas. This might be the perfect time to mention that the intractable Lupita has a retractable baton, and she knows how to use it.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Bingo Hell would fit in nicely with Into the Dark episodes that show great potential in their premises, but never bring them to fruition: A Nasty Piece of Work, I’m Just F—ing With You, Tentacles. It also radiates some VFW vibes in its depiction of Boomer old-timers against millennial hipsters.

Performance Worth Watching: Barraza is fun to watch: Simmering with resentment and pent-up rage, but still maintaining our sympathy.

Memorable Dialogue: Lupita and the gang go to check out the new bingo thing, assuming the person running it is white:

Morris: Hey hey hey — we don’t know he’s white.

Lupita, Clarence, Yolanda and Dolores: HE’S WHITE.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Bingo Hell has a lot going for it — excellent cast chemistry, a fiery lead in Barraza, a consistent tone and Guerrero’s creative visual sense. But the writing is flimsy, and all its assets never seem to point in the same direction, like the film is a truck that just can’t summon enough traction to get out of a rut. Guerrero establishes the endeavor as a cartoonish comedy underscored with a sense of unease and seasoned with some effective grossout gore — blood splatters, peeled flesh, neon snotwads, etc. Yet it suffers from pacing issues, with a second act that lingers needlessly on a garish set piece that establishes Mr. Big as a ghoulish shyster who should be bigger than life, but ultimately feels like an overstated metaphor.

Lupita once led her friends in a fight for their town — some tossed-off stuff about gangs and drugs, revealed in an underdeveloped subplot involving an addict-turned-counselor and Dolores’ wayward teen grandson — which one assumes wasn’t out-and-out warfare, regardless of the impressive way she handles that baton. Now her peers question why they followed her lead and ended up kowtowing to landlords and having very little to call their own; why shouldn’t they sell out to the developers, represented by the grinning Mr. Big and his Faustian games? Beware the lure of easy money, Bingo Hell asserts, through its muddle of B-movie thrills and gummy satire. Tell me something I don’t know, sherlock.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Bingo Hell has a few inspired moments, but never comes together. It also commits a cardinal sin in having its feisty lead declare “No more games!” like Nic Cage in a schlocker-shocker, then failing to deliver a memorable payoff.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Bingo Hell on Amazon Prime