‘The Royal Hotel’ Review: Julia Garner Tends Bar to Toxic Aussie Men in Kitty Green's Tensive Psychological Thriller
R: Language throughout and sexual content/nudity
Runtime: 1 Hour and 31 Minutes
Production Companies: See-Saw Films, Screen Australia, South Australian Film Corporation, Screen NSW, HanWay Films, Cross City Films, Alma Margo
Distributor: NEON
Director: Kitty Green
Writers: Kitty Green, Oscar Redding
Cast: Julia Garner, Jessica Henwick, Toby Wallace, Hugo Weaving, Ursula Yovich, Daniel Henshall, James Frecheville
Release Date: October 6, 2023
Exclusively in Theaters
Writer/director Kitty Green made a niche for herself with the two narrative features under her belt: The Torture of Julia Garner in a Masculine Environment Cinematic Universe. With her documentarian background, Green structures her stories like nature docs. It’s the equivalent of a fish trying to survive sharks, but the fish is Garner, the sharks are men, and Green is behind the camera saying, "You're doing amazing, sweetie. Act terrified! Show me your fear face." In her debut, The Assistant, she propped Garner up at a Weinstein Company-like workplace as an assistant for a Harvey Weinstein type. How do you get worse from there? You go to the land down under. With her latest, The Royal Hotel, Green puts her Australian folk on display, dropping Garner and co-star Jessica Henwick in an Aussie pub, tending bar in a mining town, displaying Aussie men at their worst: inebriated.
American besties Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) are backpacking in Australia. When their funds run low, they go to a travel agent who advises them to take a temporary live-in job as barmaids at a pub called "The Royal Hotel" set in the middle of a remote mining town. Their hard-boiled boss, Billy (Hugo Weaving), gives them the rundown of the place and reveals to them that all the local patrons are male miners. Trying to make their getaway trip worth it off the clock, Hanna and Liv soon find themselves in over their heads as the locals become more erratic, creepy, and downright dangerous.
The Royal Hotel continues Green's magnificent tension-building showcase previously exemplified in The Assistant. Inspired by the documentary Hotel Coolgardie—which followed Scandinavian backpackers who worked at a nasty mining Perth town pub called the Denver City Hotel—The Royal Hotel is as if Kendom was as Australian as Margot Robbie but covered in filth.
Upon Hanna and Liv's arrival at the remote pub, Green’s familiar unnerving tone strikes again with the filthiness of the place long before the first horny miner pops up on the screen. It’s as if production designer Leah Popple's only instruction was "make a Saw trap in a bar." She and the set designers constructed a pub straight out of a serial killer's mind. The walls are coated in unsanitary substances, the air is full of bugs, the faucets don’t work, every square inch has multiple beer bottles scattered across, and this is just the lodging above the bar.
Chaos ensues when the men roll into the bar. Matty (Toby Wallace) is a possessive aggressor with his eye on Hanna. Teeth (James Frecheville) is a sheepish loner pining for Liv. Dolly (Daniel Henshall)—who represents that one terrifying customer who should've had a banned-for-life picture on big display but gets by because he's buddies with the owner—adds a chilling undertone reflected through Garner's subtle fearful expression. Green takes her time easing the girls into the rude yet authentic town culture, spending time with the residents long before she settles on her thriller sensibilities. When she does, she evokes an unsettling scenery as the regulars surrounding Liv and Hanna (mostly Hanna) showcase the many ways these men torture the girls. Specifically, it's psychological.
It's not all tense, though, for the first half of the movie has the girls simply vibing in the Outback, doing their jobs, and having fun. While I was momentarily impartial to the meandering pacing, Green's direction preserved my attention. She symbolizes her leads' youthfulness and freedom through energetic, dizzying handheld movement. Compared to The Assistant, the budgetary upgrades show as the cinematographer delivers gorgeous overhead wide shots of the Outback.
Julia Garner and Kitty Green are an A+ dream team. With this being their second collaboration in her niche canon, Green again shows a naturalistic display of what, sadly, a ton of service workers worldwide must endure in similar settings. As Hanna, Garner balances professionalism with an internalized discomfort in her terrified reactions. Thankfully, this time around, Green lets Garner out of the cage and dons her explosive Ozark rage, and it's pretty cathartic by the time shit goes left field.
I enjoyed Jessica Henwick's charismatic, party-girl energy in this film. She is personable with the rowdy customers, showing thick skin compared to Hanna. Henwick shares decent on-screen chemistry with Garner regarding an energetic and unbridled fire. I'm not too fond of Liv herself, for there's an inexplicable pivot in the story where she goes off on Hanna for no reason. The story doesn’t fully contextualize Liv's frustrations. She completely gaslights her BFF, throwing female solidarity out the window until narrative convenience.
It seems like Green bit off more than she could chew while pulling inspiration from Hotel Coolgardie and turning the raw Perth culture portrayal into a gritty psychological thriller. The script written by her and Oscar Redding overlooks some components of a functional narrative, which only shapes up an identity at the midpoint. Apart from the scary undertone, nothing happens outside the girls working at the bar and going on day trips that look like an Australia travel commercial. Only vague details about Hanna and Liv's background are mined and often lead you to want more: their friendship background, their backpacking journey, and the sacrifices they make that lead them to this bar. Since it builds to a startling fallout, framing their friendship basis is challenging. The line, "We came here to get away from it all," Liv often tells Hanna whenever she's on edge, is all you need to know.
Hugo Weaving's Billy, the bar owner/boss, is placed as the most enticing character who gets a ton of focus—until he doesn’t. He can wobble between a stern boss or a regular drunk who has to be looked after by his romantic partner, Carol (Ursula Yovich). Deep into the story, the film disregards him in favor of a thriller build. Also, it's Hugo Weaving. One does not simply waste a Hugo Weaving appearance like that.
Benefiting from standout performances by Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick in a well-built, tense-filled atmosphere, The Royal Hotel poses better as a solid thriller director than writer showcase for Kitty Green, who vocalizes that there's no such thing as a decent Aussie male. Except Bandit from Bluey, a literal cartoon dog.
