The Royal Hotel

Late at night, long after the last call, in the dark hallway to the living quarters above the pub, a stumbling drunk looks sort of like a zombie. Even a stone-cold-sober bartender would have reason to be terrified at the sight of an overserved regular from the bar lumbering slowly toward their room — especially if they previously thought they were alone. Not unreasonably, Hanna (Julia Garner) slams the door shut and locks it behind her. Liv (Jessica Henwick) is passed out on the couch, but even if they were both awake and alert, they wouldn’t stand a chance against the menacing Dolly (Daniel Henshall). Breathing heavily, heartbeat racing as the shadow of his feet appears in the space between the flimsy door and the ancient floorboards, Hanna may be thinking: Wasn’t this supposed to be a vacation?

This isn’t some survival horror game. It’s a survival job. Hanna and Liv — subjects of documentarian-turned-social-thriller-filmmaker Kitty Green’s latest feature, The Royal Hotel — are backpackers from the United States making their way through the country-continent of Australia. (Though they tell everyone they meet that they’re from Canada because it goes over easier.) When money gets tight, they pick up the first gig they can find, grind for a bit, and head out on their next excursion. This time, that gig happens to be at a rundown drinking hole in the Outback. Under the (drunken, cantankerous) supervision of owner Billy (Hugo Weaving), the women try their damndest to assimilate to the unspoken rules of the bar, its loyal patrons, and the surrounding mining town. Like novice swimmers learning to tread water by being tossed in the deep end, the two struggle to stay afloat.

It doesn’t help that the (predominantly male) pub crowd is belligerent, domineering, disrespectful, crude — all those awful adjectives one wouldn’t want to encounter, especially while on the clock. Every night, it’s an onslaught of aggression and anxiety. Every day, it’s a too-short recovery period with that foreboding countdown to the hours of operation lingering in the back of the mind. Unsurprisingly, the suffocating pressure builds between Hanna and Liv, particularly when the latter seems to adapt to the circumstances better than the former. With dysfunction and disregard in every interaction, one can tell this can’t end well for all involved. The question is how and when it’s going to hit the fan — and who, if anyone, will make it out unscathed.

Conceptually, The Royal Hotel is not unlike Kitty Green’s previous picture, The Assistant. Looking at their bare bones, both these films examine a distressing moral dilemma that threatens to topple a microcosmic patriarchal power structure. In practice, however, this sophomore effort amps up the stakes of her narrative-feature debut to great effect. Instead of tiptoeing through the minefield of sexual harassment and human resources within a microaggressive corporate culture, Green focuses on a work environment that would laugh in the face of the #MeToo movement. This move takes a basic exploration of right and wrong and effectively transforms it into a matter of life and death. Bans fall on deaf ears, beatings become bygones before the wounds even turn to scabs, and strong assertions of “no” and “stop” are treated as unintelligible gibberish.

Although the film would suffer without its roster of intimidating brutes, the success of The Royal Hotel rests squarely on the shoulders of its female cast. That’s primarily Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick, both of whom are typically reliable, but the supporting players do some considerable heavy lifting as well. Carol (Ursula Yovich) — the cook and Billy’s de facto right-hand woman — shows what years of toil at the wretched place can do to a person. Fun-loving fellow vacationers and former barkeepers Jules (Alex Malone) and Cassie (Kate Cheel) show that not even acquiescence can protect them from the harm of these sauced chauvinists. As it encroaches on horror-movie territory in its last act, forget the guys — it’s these final girls one hopes to see check out in one piece. (A healthy dose of catharsis wouldn’t hurt, either.)