The Royal Hotel (2023) Review!!

Synopsis – Backpackers Hanna and Liv take a job in a remote Australian pub for some extra cash and are confronted with a bunch of unruly locals and a situation that grows rapidly out of their control.

My Take – It’s time to head back to the harsh terrains of the Australian outback in this sophomore feature from writer-director Kitty Green, who re-teams with ‘Ozark’ star Julia Garner, following the unsettling The Assistant (2019), for an equally disturbing premise about the inescapable nature of male gaze and sets it primarily in a seedy hotel cum bar in the middle of nowhere.

Staged as a subtle horror flick, director Green and co-writer Oscar Redding‘s script is inspired the disturbing 2016 documentary ‘Hotel Coolgardie,’ which told the story of two young Finnish backpackers who took jobs in an Australian mining-town pub, with harrowing consequences.

And filled with some anxiety-filled moments, the film aims to explore how women respond to an uncomfortable male-centered environment and how it can test their own friendship, particularly with the constant threat of violence hanging over them. Resulting in an interesting slow-burn psychological character study thriller with strong direction and strong performances from the cast members.

Yes, the film is not for everyone particularly due to its slow-burn pacing and unearned ending, yet director Green‘s ability to capture the tension and visually flashy grimness of narrative makes it worth a trip to the desert locale where time stopped long ago.

The story follows Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick), two young Canadian women touring Australia, when they realize that they have run out of money in Sydney. With the assistance of a work-travel program, they’re able to score a temporary job, albeit one of the less-desired ones given their late application: a bar in a rural mining area, where they’re set to replace a pair of young English women passing through.

A long bus ride and a car ride later, they’re being shown the ropes of the Royal Hotel, a supremely run-down locale, where they are assigned to be bartenders and janitors, briefly shown the ropes by the gruff and hard-drinking owner Billy (Hugo Weaving). While they are somewhat protected by Billy’s long-suffering partner Carol (Ursula Yovich), who is also the cook, the two young ladies are left to navigate the male sexual politics of the bar’s clientele pretty much on their own.

As the hardcore group of miners and other townsfolk who pack the joint nearly every night, slamming back drinks, breaking glasses, getting into scrapes and alternately berating and hitting on Hanna and Liv. Things go from uncomfortable to dangerous pretty quickly.

Filmed almost entirely in shadowy, smoky, claustrophobic confines, the film uses the surrounding sun-bleached, baked sand expanses as a harsh reminder of a desolate predicament. The film plays out a bit like a horror film, with growing dread and an increasing sense of disquiet. Although most of the time violence is waiting in the wings, the film cautiously keeps the girls from bolting by the fact that they are not being violated physically if not psychologically.

Yet, we fear for these two women. Our guide in the film becomes Hanna, who immediately senses the bad vibes around her and wants to leave, but Liv wants to stay, earn money, have fun, drink and not go back yet. The fact that we know little about the ladies’ backgrounds saves us from despair over their dicey life and encourages our guesses about their destiny.

Here, director Kitty Green cleverly sculpts suspense through the wide-eyed point of view of the wary travelers. There are no clues as to what the mysterious, working-class miners are all about, except that they like to gather at night for drink, and to cause mayhem in a jovial manner that borders on chest-beating explosive. They, collectively, are the perfect mystery monster.

The rude and brash epithets thrown at the girls would have sent them home immediately except that they need the money to live and be true to their pact to abandon all and backpack themselves into excitement. At the drop of a hat, simple bar conversations become imbued with razor-wire tension, perfectly embodying the notion that in women’s lives, there’s a thin line between a road trip film and a horror film.

It increasingly makes Hanna its sole protagonist, severing her point of view from that of Liv’s in a manner that both causes friction between the two friends and isolates them from one another during vulnerable moments, especially as Liv gets increasingly caught up in the allure of a liberating foreign adventure.

However, I must say that the final act disappointed me. Its conclusion doesn’t feel entirely befitting of the nuance and substance it captures prior. It’s not terrible, yet it doesn’t make the expected impact after such a buildup, and lacks the boldness to go further.

Performance wise, Julia Garner does most of the heavy-lifting and turns in a layered, nuanced turn. Jessica Henwick is just a step behind being particularly stronger in certain sequences. The two share good chemistry, and provide realistic emotions and engagement with their characters.

Hugo Weaving is quite effective as always, while Ursula Yovich is pretty masterful. In other roles, Daniel Henshall, Toby Wallace, James Frecheville play varying degrees of scumbag, suitably and effectively nauseating and intimidating. On the whole, ‘The Royal Hotel’ is a gripping slow-burn thriller that’s effective in what it sets out to do.