The movie is made of four separate stories that take place in run- down Los Angeles hotel on New Year's Eve. The common protagonist is Ted (played by Tim Roth), recently employed bellhop that has to deal with four different and bizarre situation. In the first segment ("The Missing Ingredient", directed by Allison Anders) he has to help coven of witches in bizarre ritual. In the second segment ("The Wrong Man", directed by Alexandre Rockwell) he gets involved in sadomasochistic game between woman and her lover. In the third segment ("The Misbehavers") he gets tipped by Latino gangster (played by Antonio Banderas) to baby-sit his two children. In the fourth segment ("Man From Hollywood", directed by Quentin Tarantino) he witnesses bizarre bet involving Zippo lighters and parts of someone's anatomy.

FOUR ROOMS features impressive casting (Banderas, Marisa Tomei, Jennifer Beals, Tamlyn Tomita, Bruce Willis, Paul Calderon) and two of its directors are quite talented. Yet the result is quite disappointing, partly because their story-telling talents don't work well within 20-minute constraints of short segments nor their segments work in the context of the film as a whole. To make things worse, only one of those segments ("The Misbehavers") is entertaining, while the last (and the most attractive for snobbish audience) is nothing more than one overlong joke. Two previous segments are simply unwatchable, and even Tim Roth, otherwise dependable actor, disappoints with overacting. If not for Robert Rodriguez' part, FOUR ROOMS would have been complete waste of time, but even in this state it is hardly successful advertisement of American independent cinema.