With two well-received collaborations now in the books, Kitty Green tells THR that she’s eyeing completing a “spiritual” trilogy, with actress Julia Garner, that started with 2020’s “The Assistant” and has continued this year with “The Royal Hotel.”
Paranoid is the word I’d use to describe Kitty Green’s “The Royal Hotel,” which gets released in theaters this Friday, via NEON. It’s a chamber piece, solely relegated to a single location, that results in a taut, tense and terrific film.
Inspired by true events, “The Royal Hotel” follows best friends Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick), backpackers in Australia who run out of money and decide to take a temporary live-in job behind the bar of a pub called “The Royal Hotel” in a remote Outback mining town.
Things start getting dicey when bar owner Billy (Hugo Weaving) and a host of locals start crossing the line with their jokes and behavior. Soon Hanna and Liv find themselves trapped in an unnerving situation that grows rapidly out of their control.
The core of Green’s film has to do with Hanna and Liv’s friendship, with the latter in denial as to what’s actually going on. Hannah keeps encountering red flags with the male behavior at the bar, but Liv seems to be enjoying the attention.
No fair in divulging the surprises hidden inside this film, but just know that there’s menace lurking in every frame. Green, much like she did in “The Assistant,” has firm control of our nerves. The intensity and sense of menace is always present, but never overdone.
There’s no patronizing in Green’s controlled and unnerving storytelling. She blurs the lines in what should be deemed acceptable and unacceptable behavior on the part of men at the bar. There’s a ton of paranoia, and the women are not necessarily portrayed as the victims as much as assessing the potential danger.
In a way, “The Royal Hotel” is a psychological horror film, a slowburn that doesn’t ask easy questions and sneakily subverts any simple answers. Even the flawed, over-the-top, final frame manages to ask provocative questions to its audience. I can’t recommend it highly enough. [B+]
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