In 2019, writer-director Kitty Green teamed up with “Ozark” star Julia Garner for the searing and unsettling “The Assistant,” a workplace psychological drama about a newly hired employee at a Tribeca film production company that is oozing with male toxicity and run by a monstrous and unseen studio boss clearly modeled after Harvey Weinstein. Four years later, Green and Garner have paired for the equally disturbing “The Royal Hotel,” which is set primarily in a seedy Australian hotel/bar in the middle of nowhere. If this place isn’t hell, it’s a stopover you’d make along the way.
Green and co-writer Oscar Redding based the script of “The Royal Hotel” on the 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.
The fictionalized version opens with a masterfully shot scene of misdirection. Traveling BFFs Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick), two Americans who tell everyone they’re from Canada, are partying in a dark and raucous nightclub that turns out to be on the lower deck of a cruise ship in Sydney in the middle of a sunny day. (The contrast between dark and claustrophobic and isolating places of drink and the endless skies of Australia, both day and night, are highlighted throughout the film.) They’ve just run out of cash — Liv assures Hanna, “It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine,” which becomes a kind of mantra of hers — and in order to stay in the country they’ve got to keep working. So they eagerly accept bartending jobs in the South Australian Outback at a ramshackle joint called “The Royal Hotel,” which is anything but regal.
The dusty tavern occupies the first floor, while the living quarters are upstairs. A chalkboard sign reads “Fresh Meat” to announce the arrival of Hanna and Liv, who will be replacing an outgoing British party duo (Alex Malone and Kate Cheel) who seemed to have leaned into the hardcore drinking and rabble-rousing at the bar, judging by their wild behavior on their final night.
The owner-operator of the bar is a gruff and hard-drinking lout named Billy (played by an almost unrecognizable and quite effective Hugo Weaving), whose long-suffering partner Carol (Ursula Yovich) is also the cook and is forever telling Billy to pay his overdue bills and stop behaving like an idiot. Still, Billy’s practically a gentleman compared to most of the regulars at the bar — a 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.
The deeper into the night we go, the more foreboding the atmosphere. It’s a poisonous, possibly dangerous environment, and Hanna wants to leave almost immediately, while the more easygoing (and party-inclined) Liv tells Hanna they’ve got to just go with it, that these men aren’t actually dangerous, they’re just “lonely,” as she describes one particularly offensive and hot-tempered creep. It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine …
With Billy sticking his paws into the tip jar and snarling at Hanna that it would help if she would smile, Liv and Hanna have different ways of dealing with the men, who range from relatively harmless drunks to aggressive drunks to deeply frightening and possibly violent drunks. Liv tries to make the best of things and makes some bad choices — while Hanna just wants to get out as soon as they make enough money to escape this hellhole.
Matty (Toby Wallace) seems like a nice enough guy who takes the women to a gorgeous natural pool under a waterfall, while a hulking fellow everyone calls Teeth (James Frecheville) seems to have a gentle side. Then there’s Torsten (Herbert Nordrum), a Norwegian who had a brief hookup with Hanna back on that ship and drives the six hours to this tiny town, bringing with him a sunny disposition and a desire to party. All three of these men seem they might be decent sorts, but let’s just say all have their issues when it comes to not getting their way with women.
Worst of all is Dolly (Daniel Henshall), a mean drunk with a terrifying temper who grows increasingly angry as the days go by, to the point where Hanna finds herself locking doors and holding her breath and holding an ax to defend herself. Not that “The Royal Hotel” becomes some kind of Final Girl(s) Down Under horror film; it’s more subtle than that, even though the ending might be a little too pat and obvious for some viewers.
Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick turn in layered, nuanced performances, while the male actors playing varying degrees of scumbag are suitably and effectively nauseating and intimidating. “The Royal Hotel” is a little like the Hotel California in that you can check out any time you’d like, but on some level, you can never really leave.
