The Royal Hotel: The Outback is Full of Creeps at the Watering Hole

 

Isolated single-location tension-riddled dramas are enjoyable to watch from time to time, like Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight or the more recent Accused. The Royal Hotel takes this concept and adds on the social tensions of a rowdy bar scene in the middle of Australia. A crowd of tougher looking men from the local mines peruse this bar as it’s literally the only thing to do for miles around, and at the center of all that are two Canadian girls who are just trying to make some money behind the counter. You’re put into their shoes as they deal with harassment, ogling eyes and creepy individuals all while trying to hold it together. Julia Garner leads and has a charming performance that also captures a little meekness and strength at points in the story. The tension grows as certain elements of their situation worsen, with genuine fear creeping up due to realism of the situation.

This great concept is unfortunately kneecapped by a lot of frustratingly dumb decisions and questionable character writing for Jessica Henwick’s character. Henwick ignores every red flag at The Royal Hotel, putting herself in multiple dangerous situations that Garner has to pull her out of. And she has the audacity to gaslight Garner into thinking everything is okay! The two of them even follow complete strangers to a secondary location which I thought was an exceedingly stupid decision. I’m not particularly pleased with the ending either as it just takes all the tension away in favor of one final out-of-character decision from Henwick.

The Royal Hotel is one of the more irritating movies to come out this year, I can see a strong concept underneath that just needed a little more time in the oven. Strong camerawork and a cool color palette made this partially enjoyable on the production side, but the writing hurt the most. Just watch Accused instead, it’s actually got a message to it.