The Royal Hotel - Review

Rating: 4 out of 5

Loosely based on a 2017 documentary [Hotel Coolgardie], about two young female backpackers who find themselves working in an Outback pub filled with misogynistic clientele, writer-director Kitty Green's The Royal Hotel is a taut social thriller that toys with horror elements, while having plenty to say about sexism and chauvinism in the modern era.

Julia Garner (of Ozark fame) and Jessica Henwick are the two tourists, Hanna and Liv, from Canada, who are forced to take a job at a remote Outback pub (the Royal Hotel of the title) once they have run out of money during their travels. But once there, Hanna quickly becomes reluctant to stay, given the sexually assertive nature of the pub's largely male contingent - as well as the gruffness of her boss (Hugo Weaving), who immediately gets off on the wrong foot by calling her a c**t.

However, both girls decide to stick it out for a couple of weeks, at Liv's request, and make the most of a terrible situation, only to find the behaviour of the men - who drink heavily while trying to get laid - becomes more and more threatening.

Writer-director Green has previously caught people's attention with her earlier film, The Assistant, which also found Garner in one of the lead roles, as an assistant who is forced to clean-up for a predator-style boss in the Harvey Weinstein mould. So, she is clearly attuned to the precarious nature of being a young, attractive woman in landscapes populated by alpha-style males.

Here, she ramps things up a notch, leaning into horror tropes as well - you spend a great deal of the movie half expecting the girls to be lured into some perilous Outback location, where they might be assaulted and even killed. But this is no Wolf Creek.

Rather, it's a potboiler, in which the tension is continually raised with each scene, and the intentions of the various men who populate the bar deliberately muddled. How much, for instance, does alcohol cloud judgement? How much is embedded in Outback culture? How much is Hanna reading into things? Or is she right to fear for her safety? And to feel offended?

The answer to most of the latter questions is, of course, yes. But Green also muddies the water by having Liv feel nowhere near as violated or threatened, rather allowing her to make most of the film's bad decisions on the tourists' behalf.

And while most of the male characters are ultimately horrible, they still are painted in shades of grey, as opposed to obviously bad. Toby Wallace's handsome Matty, for example, treats the girls to a day to remember at a local waterfall and swimming area, before getting himself into trouble and over-stepping the mark during an excruciating drunken encounter with Hanna after hours.

Daniel Henshall's Dollie, meanwhile, is an abominable human being - a dark presence who wears the look of a man capable of anything; who drunkenly berates Hanna and two more bar members during one tension-filled bar-based encounter, and who 'saves' the girls from a snake sometime later. 

It's a film loaded with horrifying possibility, one that feeds off horror, as well as real life stories of backpackers disappearing, to keep you gripped for the duration of its equally taut, but highly provocative, running time.

But in doing so, it's also more than capable of sparking some lively debate afterwards, centred around the ideas of toxic masculinity, promiscuity and cultural attitudes, as well as feminism. It does so in an intelligent manner, not spoon-feeding any answers, while also maintaining some nice thriller-style plot beats (particularly once it enters the final straight).

It also benefits from two terrific leading ladies: with Garner, in particular, building on the scene-stealing work she did in Ozark, to emerge as a formidable leading lady: equal parts vulnerable, savvy and fiercely loyal and protective.

It may not be an easy watch - but The Royal Hotel is a ferociously compelling one. And it has something worthwhile and extremely relevant to say. It's a cautionary tale of note.