‘The Night Clerk’ review: Implausible thriller stokes autism stereotypes

A young autistic man (Tye Sheridan) witnesses a murder at his hotel job in this indie noir from director/writer Michael Cristofer (whom you may know as CEO Phillip Price in “Mr. Robot”). The twist? He sees it because he’s installed cameras in the guests’ rooms so he can observe “normal” human behavior, which makes him less than an innocent bystander.

Sheridan’s character, Bart, works the night shift, and has taken to studying the people who check in, in order to observe and learn from their conversations and the way they navigate social situations and even just being alone in their rooms. After his shifts, he replays the footage, parroting segments of dialogue. But his glaring ethical transgression is eclipsed when he sees a female guest killed by a visitor to her room — and then meets another young woman (Ana de Armas) who’s in a relationship with the killer.

The plot turns on an implausible level of coincidence and a bunch of perplexing decisions by characters, though Sheridan’s dedicated performance keeps you watching (de Armas, by contrast, seems to exist mostly to fuel Bart’s dream of being able to interact with women). John Leguizamo rather phones in a role as a disheveled cop investigating the case, and Helen Hunt is Bart’s understandably worried mother, with little to do other than be worried.

I suspect the time is coming when the autistic community is going to demand a stop to showy performances of the condition. “The Night Clerk” doesn’t approach the head-slapping melodrama of, say, “Rain Man,” but still evokes an occasional wince, in spite of Sheridan’s efforts at portraying the nuances of Asperger’s syndrome — and the screenplay’s showcasing the range of how people respond to interactions with his character. Using autism as a plot device walks a fine line between empathetic and exploitative, and “The Night Clerk” is wobbly in that respect.