Canadian backpackers Hanna and Liv take a job in a remote Australian pub for some extra cash and are confronted with a bunch of unruly locals and a situation that grows rapidly out of their control.

Stories of danger in the Australian Outback must be in vogue at the moment, with Kitty Green’s ‘The Royal Hotel’ coming hot on the heels of Netflix’s latest murder documentary ‘Last Stop Larrimah’. This is a thriller about two Canadian backpackers who take on a job working in a pub in a remote Outback town near a mining community to earn some additional cash to continue their travels, only to discover the job is not quite worth the money they could make. Following on from her first feature film ‘The Assistant’, which was a chilly office-based thriller about sexual harassment in the workplace, this is also a thriller about sexual harassment, but one that is a lot more overt in its depiction of sexual harassment and a little pulpier in terms of the action. It stars Julia Garner (who was also the lead in ‘The Assistant’) and Jessica Henwick as Hanna and Liv, alongside a range of familiar Australian faces in menacing roles as the locals.

Almost as soon as they arrive at their temporary home they learn pretty quickly that this is going to be the opposite of the idyllic backpacker life, and that’s before they get to work on their first night at the bar. ‘The Royal Hotel’ is an old rundown bar that is now maintained by Billy (Hugo Weaving), the uncouth, perennially drunk owner who it appears has made a habit of hiring young female backpackers to appeal to the predominantly male, and very boisterous clientele. Hanna and Liv are subjected to sexual remarks, ‘jokes’ and outright harassment, with even the seemingly nicer members of the community only being so in as far as it may get them what they want. I’m sure there are nice parts of the Australian Outback but the movie industry hasn’t done it any favours, and while this may not be quite as grotesque as Ted Kotcheff’s ‘Wake in Fright’ (strong stomach required!) it certainly has its moments.

It is clearly a place where the locals are very much stuck in a different time period and Hanna is immediately on edge, particularly when she discovers one of the men wandering near their rooms at night after the pub has closed. Things escalate from here and become more fraught, particularly as Hanna and Liv start to drift apart over their feelings about the situation they find themselves in, with Liv being more amenable to getting drunk with the locals, unable to see the likely consequences that Hanna can. Green maintains this undercurrent of danger well and in a well-paced 90-minute runtime ‘The Royal Hotel’ had my attention from start to finish. A very solid second feature from Kitty Green.

Rating: 4/5

Directed By: Kitty Green

Starring: Julia Garner, Jessica Henwick, Hugo Weaving, Daniel Henshall, James Frecheville, Herbert Nordrum, Toby Wallace and Ursula Yovich

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt18363072/