A weak and anticlimactic ending sadly deflates this movie from Australian director Kitty Green, who gave us the gripping #MeToo drama The Assistant from 2019. It’s a shame, as The Royal Hotel had been developing as a very tense and well acted psychological thriller and outback noir, but the ultimate scares somehow go missing along with any satisfying plot resolutions.
As co-writer with Oscar Redding, Green takes her inspiration from Hotel Coolgardie, a tough and disturbing documentary about a chaotically rough pub in remote Western Australia which periodically hires female backpackers to work behind the bar. But the young women who do the job soon realise that this isn’t a wacky place like the one in Crocodile Dundee, but the home of nasty and sinister sexism with threat behind the banter.
