The Royal Hotel

Jessica Henwick and Julia Garner

Kitty Green's The Royal Hotel reunites Ms. Green with Julia Garner, the star of Green's previous feature, The Assistant. Ms. Garner is once again employed by a creepily sinister patriarchy, this time in the Australian outback rather than Manhattan. Ms. Garner is joined by Jessica Henwick and they play 'Canadian" vacationers who are stranded in Sydney at the end of a cruise without cash. They somewhat improbably take a job working in a pub hours from civilization. The owner (Hugo Weaving) is a shifty drunk and the clientele consists of miners with varying degrees of pathology. These are the worst possible louts for our heroines to put up with and the misogyny is pronounced. The look of the film is a dusty brown, all the sets are flea bitten. There are even dead snakes in jars festooning the bar.

As with The Assistant, the film is done with great taste and care, but I am more ambivalent about the results. The cast is very good and Green succeeds in conveying the seedy and exploitive nature of the bar. Her exterior sequences are not as effective. Compare how Rose Glass uses the same kind of desert settings to amplify her themes in Love Lies Bleeding. Except for a brief glance at the Southern Hemisphere night sky, the outdoor locations in The Royal Hotel add little. 

The Royal Hotel has very little momentum and is too predictable. We know that our heroic duo will ultimately vanquish their male oppressors as soon as they are greeted with genital epithets. Thus, terror is never ratcheted up and there is little of the mortification or sense of the uncanny that are needed for the film's horrific elements. Worth seeing for the fine performances alone, The Royal Hotel feels like Ms. Green is treading water thematically.