Genre: Mystery
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Writer: Roy Horne
Cast: Awkwafina, Desmond Harrington, Gregg Henry, Anna Gunn, Chin Han, Joan Chen, Danny Trejo, Courtney Eaton, Nell Tiger Free, Jamie Clayton, Richard Harmon, Freddie Prinze Jr.
Plot: Amy Price (Anna Gunn), the manager of the Cecil Hotel - a formerly extravagant downtown Los Angeles hotel that has declined alongside the Skid Row neighborhood surrounding it - receives a call at the front dest that some guests are complaining about low water pressure and that the water that does come out is foul smelling and discolored. She asks the hotel maintenance head, Santiago Lopez (Danny Trejo), to go and check it out. He goes up to the room that made the complaint. Sure enough, the water is having a difficult time coming out and what does come out has a brown hue to it. He goes up to the hotel's rooftop to inspect the water tanks, suspecting that the main tank could be empty or clogged. When he climbs up to the top of the water tanks, one of the lids are open. He shines a flashlight inside, finding the body of a naked woman floating inside. Startled, Santiago almost falls off his ladder. He rushes downstairs to report his findings to Amy, who quickly calls the police.
Veteran Detective Tim Marcia (Gregg Henry) and his younger, leather jacket-clad partner Greg Kading (Desmond Harrington) arrive on the scene. Their worst suspicions turn out to be true: the woman in the in the water tank is a missing person, Elisa Lam (Awkwafina), who they have been searching for since she was reported missing 18 days prior.
Elisa Lam gives her parents, David (Chin Han) and Yinna (Joan Chen), a hug good bye at the Vancouver International Airport. They're clearly worried about her going traveling by herself, but Elisa assures them that she'll call them every day to check in. She walks through the terminal with a smile on her face. From the Los Angeles International Airport, Elisa takes a cab to the hotel she will be staying at while in Los Angeles - the Cecil Hotel. She's so taken by the bright sunshine and the hotel's art deco architecture that she is oblivious to the chaos of the streets surrounding the Cecil Hotel - the violence, the crime, the drug deals in broad daylight, the rampant homelessness. Elisa checks in at the front desk and is told that she will be staying in a shared, hostel-style room with two other young female travelers. She takes the elevator up to the fifth floor and enters the room where she meets her roommates: Destinee (Courtney Eaton) and Sarah (Nell Tiger Free). They're both on their way out to explore but greet her nicely. Elisa unpacks her things. An alarm goes off on Elisa's watch. She gets out her medications, but puts them back in her bag rather than take them.
Elisa sits on a park bench in the sun. She calls her parents and tells them that her flight went well. They want to know the name of her hotel, which she tells them. David writes it down on a notepad by the phone. She tells them that she is excited to explore the city and expresses an interest in going to the beach. Yinna tells Elisa to stay safe.
The water tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel is completely drained. Workers then cut open the tank to allow the coroner team to remove the body from the tank and take it to the lab.
Elisa wanders around the city throughout the day, but she slowly becomes distressed and decides to go back to her room as the sun sets. When she returns to her room at the Cecil Hotel, her roommates are talking about their day. The sound of their voices become grating to Elisa, and she begins pacing back and forth in the small room between the two bunk beds. Destinee and Sav ask her if she's okay, but she holds her hands over her ears and begins humming to drown out their voices.
Early in the morning, Destinee and Sav find several notes on their beds reading "GO HOME" and "GO AWAY". They look over and Elisa is sound asleep in her bunk. They whisper about how creepy the notes are before deciding to get a little more sleep. As soon as they close their eyes again, Elisa's eyes open.
Marcia and Kading report to the lab where the medical examiner, Jason Tovar (Freddie Prinze Jr.), informs the detectives that Elisa's body shows no signs of any sort of struggle. The detectives ask Tovar if she could have been on some sort of psychedelic drug that led to her winding up in the water tank somehow. Tovar tells them it is possible, but he won't know any of that until the toxicology tests come back. He does tell them that a rape kit came back negative, so rape or assault can both be crossed off the list of possibilities.
Marcia and Kading go to the Cecil and try to figure out how Elisa could have gotten up to the roof top anyways. Amy Price informs them that there are only two ways up, through an alarmed door in the stairwell or by fire escape. They go up to the top floor. Kading checks out the fire escape, which is accessible by a window at the end of the hall. There is a steep and narrow ladder up to the roof, but not one anyone could carry a body up. Marcia is checking out the door to the roof. When he opens it, no alarm sounds in the area. They ask Amy about the alarm, and she tells them that the door triggers an alarm at the front desk, not at the door itself, and that she heard the alarm moments ago when they checked the door.
Elisa is walking down the Skid Row sidewalk when she starts to feel like she's being followed. She keeps walking, but keeps seeing what looks like someone's shadow following alongside her. Finally she ducks into the nearest business, a book store. Elisa feels relieved that nobody followed her into the store. The owner of the store, Katie (Jamie Clayton), asks Elisa if she needs any help finding something. Elisa feels calmed by the thousands of books in front of her and begins browsing the selection. She picks a handful of books as gifts for her family. At the counter Elisa begins to worry that she's picked out too many books to carry around the city and continue her traveling with. Katie puts the books in a bag, but the weight of the books rips the bag. Katie puts the books into a cardboard box, but Elisa doesn't think she can carry it all the way back to her hotel. Katie offers to have someone help her carry them since her hotel is just down the street. Katie calls out Jon (Richard Harmon) and asks him to carry the books for Elisa.
Elisa and Jon walk back to the Cecil Hotel. Jon asks Elisa if she knows the history of the hotel, and Elisa says she does not. Jon explains that the hotel has a super sketchy past full of suicides, mysterious deaths and was even the hideout of serial killer Richard Ramirez. Elisa says she isn't familiar with Ramirez, which astonishes Jon, who says that he figured every one has heard of The Night Stalker. Jon then describes how Ramirez would go out and murder people at night, then come back to the hotel, throw his bloody clothes away in the dumpster behind the hotel, then walk up to his room in nothing but his bloody underwear. Jon notices that Elisa is beginning to look more nervous, constantly looking around her. Jon apologizes if he has scared her at all. In an effort to make her feel better, he informs her that Ramirez is on death row so he can't hurt her. When they arrive back at the hotel, Jon hands Elisa the box of books and wishes her well on the rest of her vacation. Elisa takes the box and goes to the elevator without another word.
When Sav and Destinee return to the hotel from their day out on the town, they find that Elisa has locked their door from the inside. When they knock and ask her to let them in, Elisa demands that they say the password. When their guesses at the password fail, the two tourists go down to the front desk and explain the situation to Amy at the desk. Amy goes up to the room with Santiago. They ask Elisa to open the door, which she finally does. Amy asks Elisa to pack up her things and offers to find her another room in the hotel for the rest of her stay. In the hotel lobby, Amy has housekeeping get a single room ready for Elisa. While she waits, Elisa looks out the windows and yells that she may be crazy, but so is everyone else in L.A. Amy hurries the process along and gives Elisa a key to a single room on the 14th floor.
Detectives Marcia and Kading are given the toxicology report by Tovar, who explains to them that no elicit drugs were found in Elisa's system, however, the amount of her medications found in her system was far lower than it should have been. Kading asks what that means, and Tovar suggests that Elisa Lam had stopped taking or was undertaking her medications. Marcia asks what exactly would happen to Elisa if she stopped taking her medications. Tovar says that her behavior would become erratic, she may begin to see or hear things that aren't there. Based on the medical background given by the family, Elisa very well could have simply snapped.
Elisa leaves her new room on the 14th floor. She begins panicking. She runs to the elevator. When it opens. She begins pressing all the buttons including unbeknownst to her - the Hold Door button. She begins freaking out when the elevator doors do not close. She cautiously ducks her head out into the hallway, looking both ways, before retreating back into the elevator. She hides in the corner of the elevator so that nobody can see her from the hallway. When the elevator doors still don't close, Elisa goes back out into the hallway to have a look. Back inside the elevator, Elisa begins waving her arms around in frustration. She begins pressing more buttons on the panel in hopes that the elevator will finally start moving. She steps out again. She begins pleading with her own shadow to leave her alone. Elisa runs down the hallway, away from the elevator and toward the window at the end of the hall. The elevator doors finally close.
Elisa's parents, David and Yinna, call the police in Los Angeles to report their daughter missing as she has not called them in days. Detectives Marcia and Kading are assigned the case. There isn't much to go on. They analyze every second of Cecil Hotel security footage from the last day she was seen. They see her enter the hotel and walk to the elevators. Later in the day they see alarming footage of her from one of the elevator's security cameras. No security footage shows Elisa leaving the hotel again though. Believing she must still be inside of the hotel somewhere, search dogs are called in. Amy brings the detectives down to the storage room in the basement where Elisa's things are being stored. She explains that if things are left behind after checkout time, they are required to keep the items on site for 30 days. Marcia asks what her room looked like, and Amy says that the housekeeper said the room was messy, but not abnormally so. The detectives go through her things, finding her computer, wallet, books and other belongings, eliminating robbery as a reason for her disappearance. They grab some clothes for the search dogs to work off of. The dogs lead the officers from Elisa's door to the elevator and finally to the window at the end of the hall that leads to the fire escape. A search of the roof of the Cecil Hotel turns up nothing, although the detectives neglect to look inside of the water tanks.
David and Yinna Lam fly to Los Angeles to help with the search for their daughter. They appear distraught on television as the police show a picture of Elisa and ask for the public's assistance in locating the young woman. Despite the media clamoring for words from the Lam family, they decline to make any comment to the media.
Santiago and Amy go through unlocking every door in the hotel for Marcia and Kading to search through each and every room. Since Elisa was never seen leaving the hotel, they strongly believe she or at least her body must be in the building somewhere. They spend an entire day going through every single room, bathroom and closet in the hotel, but still find no sign of where Elisa has gone.
Elisa's parents inform the detectives that their daughter has mental problems she has to take medication for. David looks down in shame as he explains that Elisa previously had to be hospitalized when she stopped taking her medications. Yinna breaks down crying, saying over and over again that they never should have let Elisa take this trip. David comforts his wife and apologizes to the detectives for how emotional she is.
Grasping at straws, the police release the elevator footage of Elisa - the last known video of her - to the public. People are unnerved the eerie quality of the video, which the police state is due to the poor quality of the original footage and has been slightly slowed down in parts to show Elisa's face in hopes that someone would recognize how she looked that day.
Detectives Marcia and Kading are still struggling at what the cause of Elisa's death is and trying to piece the events together. They are confident that there was no foul play and no one else involved, but they are still at a loss on how Elisa ended up on the roof and in the water tank.
Elisa runs down the 14th floor hallway and out on to the fire escape. Elisa climbs up the stairs and then the ladder to the roof. Elisa looks all around for some place to hide. She climbs up to the top of the main water tank. She moves the lid aside and climbs in. Elisa, protected by the steel of the water tank, finally feels safe and takes a deep breath. She reaches up for the opening on top of the water tank, but cannot reach due to the height of the water in the tank. Elisa begins treading water to stay afloat. She takes off all of her clothes to lighten her weight, but her head slowly falls below the water line.
Elisa Lam's official cause of death is listed as accidental drowning with her bipolar disorder listed as a contributing factor.
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