The Royal Hotel

In Sydney, Australia two backpackers played by Julia Garner (Hanna) and Jessica Henwick(Liv), are out of money. Taking a temp job as barmaids in a middle-of-nowhere hotel in Australia’s outback, they’re in for a shock as upon arrival, the previous two barmaids resemble human wreckage. 

In what amounts to a relentless, sensory, sexual and indifferent assault of cultures, will the two girls survive with their personalities intact? Or will they numbingly succumb to the locals’ prodding proclivity for depravity in exchange for an easier life? Well, some luggage isn’t so easily unpacked…

Kitty Green‘s The Royal Hotel doesn’t take prisoners. Opening with a weather-battered palette that much resembles the opening flashes of Tobe Hooper’s The Chainsaw Massacre, the immediate implication is that Outback’s leather-faced locals are going to eat them for breakfast. 

Whilst Liv comes to believe she can surf the harsher currents of The Royal Hotel’s clientele, Hanna only sees danger. Seen mostly from her point of view, every word and gesture seems menacingly charged with sexual tension and this is where it chimes with Ari Astor’s Midsommer.

Pitched as a sour-faced, joyless girl Hanna becomes Midsommer‘s central figure as so notably played by Florence Pugh. More grounded and more in touch with the dangers around her, Julia Garner’s Hanna is set to explode. Again, as with Midsommer, her refusal to join with the group makes her a magnet for the worst of The Royal Hotel has to offer. In terms of its best moments, many of Australia’s finest thespians have taken residence in the film’s cast list, with Hugo Weaving excellently playing a disintegrating publican propped up by an equally impressive Ursula Yovich as his wife.

Suffice to say in what becomes a genuinely nail-biting horror thriller, The Royal Hotel has many performances that will keep you glued to your bar stool waiting for the next shoe (or leg) to drop.