While on vacation in Sydney, Liv (Jessica Henwick) and Hanna (Julia Garner) run out of funds and need to get a quick and temporary job placement.  There are openings at The Royal Hotel, a dusty dive bar far removed from the city that quenches the thirst of the rugged miners who work nearby and few else.  It is not ideal for the two young women, especially as the clientele becomes bolder in their advances when Billy (Hugo Weaving), the owner, is no longer there to keep them in line. 

Kitty Green directs her taught, mostly single-location thriller, The Royal Hotel, for Neon from a script she co-wrote with Oscar Redding.  The film premiered at Telluride where it picked up some positive buzz before trickling through its limited theatrical release.   

At 91 minutes, Green wastes little time with exposition and introduction as Liv and Hanna find themselves almost immediately thrown into this testosterone-filled bar.  Their somewhat menacing introduction to Billy whose local vernacular is but the first of many uncomfortable and unpleasant conversations to be had that evening quickly gives way to the abrasive curtness of the men at the bar looking for a quick drink, and then to one man who seems at all sociable at the table, the baby faced Matty (Toby Wallace), whose, err, charm goes unwelcomed by the girls as he spends the evening peddling in insinuating, frat boy humor.  In the daylight, however, Matty warms himself to the girls, notably Hanna, and seems to be a bit of a bridge between them and the locals.  What The Royal Hotel does so well is that no one is ever super stationary in their motivations and Matty is no exception.  His nice guy façade is shattered after a late night of partying with Hanna and Liv when Hanna rejects his advances.   

Though Green’s film is very careful not to show any explicit acts of sex, or more specifically acts of sexual violence, the narrative walks right up to the line but never crosses it.  As such, there is an overwhelming sense of dread over the entire film and a feeling of danger as no one can ever truly be trusted.  The only people who do not seem to evolve are the ones who just become more rotten, namely Dolly (Daniel Henshall) who becomes nothing short of an emotional terrorist towards Hanna.  There is also Teeth (James Frecheville) who operates in a similar realm to Matty in that he is dressed with good intentions, but there is always an ulterior motive influencing his actions.  The Royal Hotel would not work as a film had Liv and Hanna been totally alienated and without support, and placing so many of these characters in a perpetual shade of grey morals makes it an engaging picture to watch as it is not just two against the world.  We fall victim to Matty and Teeth, and even Torsten (Herbert Nordrum), Hanna’s dance partner at the club when the film opens, when he reappears and ushers in the third act. 

The Royal Hotel, despite its trappings, is not quite pulpy, nor is it grindhouse or outright exploitative.  The R rating is well-earned, though, even if there is very little blood.  It is a work of physiological warfare and Green has a way of incrementally ratcheting up the tension in such a manner that we do not become immediately turned off by the discomfort and when we realize just how dire the situation is, we are too engaged in the story to turn away.  Michael Latham’s camera is always at the perfect distance to keep us in the middle of the action but far enough away so that we are too far removed from Liv and Hanna to reach out and help them; a filmic representation, in a way, of the bystander effect.  Returning to Latham, and on a purely visual level, his lighting does a great job at setting the mood of another night at the dusty dive, but impressively, even during the nocturnal exteriors, we maintain uncompromised access to what is going on.  Again, this can be hinting towards the “open secrets” that are often talked about in the wake of assault allegations levied against people in power; a theme that Green explores more directly in her narrative debut The Assistant (2019). 

While The Royal Hotel is a great work in tension and atmosphere, the plot is rather thin.  It is almost like a bottle episode in a later season of a long-running TV show in how quickly these characters are dropped into a situation, antics ensue, and then they are back on their merry way.  That is discrediting the wear and tear that Liv and Hanna experience, but The Royal Hotel very much feels like a story that starts where it begins.  This is because Green, instead of working towards an emotional and character-driven conclusion, instead was working towards a cinematic image, and once achieved in the penultimate sequence, there is nowhere else for the film or these characters to go.  They have served their purpose. 

Timely and harrowing as it is, that it lacks that final punch in the narrative really holds The Royal Hotel back from being a psychological thriller that fulfills all of the promises that it sets up. That sentiment, unfortunately, speaks to our culture’s bloodlust when it comes to cinema, and that Green sticks to her guns and does not allow her narrative to devolve into carnage will possibly be the key to its staying power. Green is both competent and confident behind the camera and committed to lending her unique voice to tell interesting and engaging stories.