Directed By Kitty Green

Starring – Julia Garner, Jessica Henwick, Hugo Weaving

The Plot – Canadians Hanna (Garner) and Liv (Henwick) are best friends backpacking in Australia. After they run out of money, Liv, looking for an adventure, convinces Hanna to take a temporary live-in job behind the bar of a pub called ‘The Royal Hotel’ in a remote Outback mining town. Bar owner Billy (Weaving) and a host of locals give the girls a riotous introduction to Down Under drinking culture but soon Hannah and Liv find themselves trapped in an unnerving situation that grows rapidly out of their control.

Rated R for adult language throughout and sexual content involving nudity

THE ROYAL HOTEL – Official Trailer – YouTube

POSITIVES

The Australian outback is a character of its own to Green, who not only breeds authenticity in conveying this bar as a seedy, slimy tank for toxic masculinity, but also the overwhelming vulnerability factor in the sheer immensity and isolation factor of the continent, which our girls interact with for some darkly unforgiving circumstances. As a visual storyteller, Green assembles many wide establishing shots of the landscapes, but beyond this, a tensely triggering claustrophobia of interior shots, which emphasize the danger in everything from the overwhelming odds of male patrons, to the overlooked ignorance of its many regulars writing off the actions of the former as justifiable. Because of such, Green is clearly a master of articulating uncomfortable engagements, with the air of ambiguity in silence piercing an unpredictability to what could possibly be conjured, but beyond that a beacon for women’s rights, which she effortlessly utilizes without the movie falling into preachy or meandering depths that have condemned other films of the same moral dissection. Green also makes the most of her cast, with Garner and Henwick dominating respective gut-punching evolutions, but for entirely different reasons. As to where they both begin the film as these weakly frail tourists (Their words, not mine), Garner grows into this adrenaline-fueled badass who commands the screen against some unsettling odds, channeling an air of her longtime “Ozark” character, Ruth, but in the best kind of ways. Henwick’s path takes her down a more challenging road, in that she’s seduced by the Outback’s ways, feeding into the idea that men here get pretty much whatever they want, by losing herself in the kind of alcohol and debauchery that never mix well. The girls are supported by some pretty wild regular customers that supplant an air of lived-in believability to the established setting, which when mixed with endless free-flowing alcohol brings out the worst in them in ways that an audience can’t even begin to imagine. Lastly, I previously commended Green’s embrace of quietly piercing sequences, but the other side of that are some boisterously authentic club scenes that are manufactured brilliantly in the context of character volumes interacting with overwhelming music volume. This does of course make some of the dialogue a bit intentionally obscured during these instances, but I’ve always been someone who appreciates when a film will sacrifice a scene or two for the integrity of the environment, where Green thrives in soundproof spades.

NEGATIVES

With an 86 minute run time, “The Royal Hotel” has no choice but to make the most of its minutes, but plunders this quality a bit with a plodding first half that takes a bit too long to effectively manufacture the outline or impact of its predominant plot. I’ve always been fine with slowburn films, but that doesn’t feel like what we have here, as the script in reality goes flying by with a barrage of scenes, that, while testing of its dual female leads, does secure them a bit in ways that I truly feel didn’t make the most of the corresponding plot listed above, which makes them seem helpless against any adversity that comes their way, when the truth really couldn’t be further. I can understand Green not wanting to dirty her hands by adding another movie that tortures women, but it borders convenience a bit when they’re able to elude some pretty devastating circumstances, especially Weaving’s arc, which comes to an abrupt ending as a means to emphasize that when the cat’s away, the mice will play. Beyond this hinderance, the script embraces humor a bit more than I would expect or appreciate, feeling counterproductive to the ratched tension that Green garners so efficiently. It’s easy to appreciate a few pocketed moments of levity as a cooling period to the next big conflict, but I feel it gets a bit carried away with itself during the film’s third act, with a supporting character who quite literally comes out of nowhere. Because the film is marketed as a thriller, its comedic influence doesn’t quite reflect this intention, and with instances of dude dialogue and abrupt judgments skewering the natural essence of Kitty’s storytelling, it never quite reaches that level of overblown pay-off worthy of calling itself a thriller, with a last second image that was a bit over the top.

OVERALL
“The Royal Hotel” isn’t quite the edge-of-your-seat thriller that was advertised, but it is a fiercely acted, ferociously directed force of female resiliency against toxic masculinity, and one that earns every bit of its profound points without feeling preachy or redundant. From the origins as a documentary, also by Green, the film inscribes an unsettling immersion into the isolation factor and vulnerabilities of two females fighting to stay afloat in the Australian outback, where hormones and alcohol combine as a coldly chilling and condemning concoction.

My Grade: 7/10 or B-