This slow-burning thriller starts off strong but ultimately snuffs itself out.
Australian mining towns are a fascinating setting - largely male, isolated communities where there is little to do but work hard and drink hard. We've visited them in Aussie cinema with the fantastic Wake in Fright and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. More recently, we've had Hotel Coolgardie, a documentary following two young Finnish women as they take bar work in such a town, becoming exposed to the locals' racist and sexist language, where it's hard to decipher what's intended as a serious threat.
And now comes The Royal Hotel, loosely based on the documentary mentioned above. It follows Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick), two 20-something Canadian women backpacking across Australia. They have run out of cash and find themselves tending bar in The Royal, a hotel in an isolated mining town.
The patrons are largely boisterous, drunken men who are not shy about shouting out whatever sexist comment comes to mind. The scene is immediately off-putting to Hanna, especially when it comes to their apathetic boss, Billy (Hugo Weaving), and his casual use of extremely offensive language. Liv, on the other hand, is a freer spirit and tries to embrace the culture shock. Hanna agrees to stay on, but the verbal taunts and unwanted attention continue, providing the audience with some extremely uncomfortable situations. Most of them involve one particularly toxic and sinister customer, Dolly (Daniel Henshall).
The main problem is that the film feels like it's very slowly building up to a climax in which we see the true colours of this town. Instead, we see the true colours of a handful of patrons. They are undoubtedly villainous, but, unfortunately, the lack of scale in the drama means the tensions and threat very quickly dissipate, leading to a baffling final sequence.
Our protagonists make some strange decisions and their final actions are such an extreme reaction to the situation that it feels like it's been taken from a much bigger, bombastic thriller. It seems to be intended as a giant 'F you' - not just to the handful of antagonists, but to the whole town and an entire way of life, giving it an unpleasant hint of cultural elitism.
There are excellent performances all round with some standout scenes of genuine discomfort, but The Royal Hotel ultimately falls flat due to an anticlimactic, spotty third act full of questionable decisions.
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