The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, finished this incredible true crime series last night. I know hours has passed since then, but it's still so fresh in my mind, still giving birth to so many random thoughts. Still thinking, feeling bad for Elisa, for her family, for Morbid, and for every single person who suffered and died in that hotel.
I always used to think and ask myself (since I discovered my new-found interest in "True crime series" or Horror shows) that why I love this bizarre genre so much. It takes so much effort to me to click a rom-com, or a movie I wished I watched that's not horror or related to True Crime. But I click such bizarre stuff in a second, and especially when I know there are the real life characters in the show or film. I still remember watching Conjuring I, it had such a big impact on me. I remember googling Bathshiba, the family who went through all that shit, and also Warren's. I think Conjuring was the movie that gave birth to my weird and crazy obsession for such genre. Movies of this genre's takes a toll on me, and I think not the horror ones, but the true crime. During lockdown, I watched so many shows, true crime docu-series, films.... and I can say not all but most of them stayed with me. Susan Powell, Ted Bundy, Angie Dodge, Madeleine, and very recently Elisa Lam. These are the names, characters, people to be precise... who will stay with me somewhere for the rest of my life.
In The vanishing at the cecil.. for me there were so many characters. As during his interview Journalist Josh Dean said that because Elisa went missing in the Cecil that's why it became such a historic story, because the Cecil is the character in itself. But for me, not just Cecil and Elisa, there were few more characters in this series. There was Morbid, who stayed in the hotel and exact a year later his life took such a tragic turn. There's skid row, I think the history of the skid row in the downtown LA is a character too. I never thought LA being such a city where I'll see people suffering so badly. The burned memory in my head of the skid row in the show is when a mentally ill lady is walking on the road and right behind her there's a tourist. Maybe it's just a normal scene for some people but for me it describes that part of LA where people suffer and left to be suffered, where a tourist and a person suffering through mental illness is walking on the same road having two different lives. The maintenance guy, who found Elisa in the tank. I think Santeigo is like one of those characters in a movie or series, that has to be there, no matter for a minute or for a whole hour. He HAS to be there, because he was the one who found her, and I think it will stay with him forever. Whenever this story will be told, there will be a mentioning of Santeigo's somewhere in between always.
People may find this funny but the mental illness of Elisa was a character too. Elisa died because of a psychotic episode due to her Bipolar. That creepy-ass video of her being in an elevator, where she's behaving weirdly was the sadistic evidence of her being a mental patient who's having hallucinations. Her blogs, her writings, where she wrote so many times and very honestly about her mental problems. We can say she took the trip to California because of that. She wanted to explore and wanted to show everyone that she is normal despite the "chemical imbalance". She can travel alone, have fun, meet new people and most importantly cane take care of her even being a mental patient. That mental illness was the major reason that took her to the Cecil and never let her came back, eventually killing her. Bipolar is such a horrible illness that ate Elisa's mind and then her whole self.
In the last few minutes, we see that the Cecil and Stay On Main are closed now and sold to a New York group. It was said by the former Manager of the hotel that they will make a low-income housing and a luxury hotel along with a bar on the roof top in the Cecil. But I really wish that whatever the Cecil will turn into, it won't become that monster again that ate so many dreams, and lives.
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