The Reel Review
A couple of cash-strapped American backpackers take live-in jobs at a pub near a remote mining outpost in the Australian Outback, only to discover they are in increasing danger of sexual assault from its rowdy, alcohol-fueled male patrons. Julia Garner (Ozark) and Jessica Henwick (Glass Onion, Love and Monsters) star in this psychological thriller loosely based on the 2016 documentary Hotel Coolgardie.
Like their prior collaboration in 2019’s #metoo drama The Assistant, Garner and director Kitty Green, from a screenplay Green wrote with Oscar Redding, again mine the oppressive awfulness of misogyny and toxic masculinity, this time in Australian drinking culture. The tension is palpable, even disorienting, as Garner’s Hanna, more aware of the danger they are in, tries to watch out for Henwick’s Liv, her more reckless and carefree friend. You feel Hanna’s disappointment as subtle but chilling off-hand comments and actions make her realize that no one there will help her.
Garner, as usual, gives a nuanced, powerful performance, as does an almost unrecognizable Hugo Weaving (the Matrix films, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) as the permissive, alcoholic bar owner. The film’s only weak spots are Liv’s character, who we never really get to know, and an abrupt ending that while satisfying, betrays the otherwise realistic thriller and its slow burning tension.
REEL FACTS
• The Royal Hotel was filmed in the South Australian town of Yatina, population nine. An abandoned bar served as the movie’s hotel/pub.
• The 2016 documentary Hotel Coolgardie profiled two Finnish backpackers who briefly lived and worked as bartenders at a remote pub in the Australian Outback.
• Julia Garner, who won three Emmy awards for the television crime drama Ozark, will next star in the psychological thriller Apartment 7A.
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