Hannah (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) are backpacking in Australia. When they run out of money they go to an employment agency that specializes in finding gigs for travellers. They are sent to a remote mining town where they are employed as bartenders at a dirty, rundown pub/hotel.
It is run by a drunken bastard of a man who has clearly seen better days (a glorious Hugo Weaving), and it is patronized by a motley crew of miners who are as rowdy as they are misogynistic. They constantly harass with come-ons and sexist jokes.
Writer/director Kitty Green (along with co-writer Oscar Redding) fills The Royal Hotel with an unending sense of dread. From the moment Hannah and Liv arrive in town there is a feeling that something terrible is going to happen to them.
But this isn’t a movie filled with knife-wilding maniacs or skeezy rapists, or cannibals. It is more realistic than that. The men, for the most part, seem like decent blokes – hard-working, blue-collar, rough-around-the-edges blokes for sure, but not necessarily evil men.
But that’s the thing, that’s the point the film is trying to make. A couple of young women, out-of-towers, like these girls are, will inevitably face a litany of potential dangers in a place like this. And there is no way for them to tell who is essentially harmless, and who might cause them real horror.
Hannah is the one who recognizes the potential danger they face every night, while Liv seems more oblivious. She’s willing to accept the overt sexism as a cultural difference. It is up to Hannah then, to constantly steer Liv away from danger.
One of the locals, Matty (Toby Wallace) takes a shine to Hannah. He seems nice so the girls allow him to take them to a watering hole for a swim. They have a good time and get a little drunk. That night he puts a few moves on Matty. She rebuffs. Gently at first, but he persists. She tells him straight up “no” but he pushes back. Eventually, she has to get tough and yell at him. But at that moment it isn’t clear if he will leave.
Another customer, Dolly (Daniel Henshall) is seen lingering upstairs in the hall near their room. On another night he gets aggressively rude with Matty. But he’s sweet to Liv, especially when she’s drunk. On at least a couple of times, he steers her towards his car when she’s completely loaded.
It is a slow burn of a film. There isn’t a lot of incident. Not a lot happens. For most of the film’s run time, I felt myself waiting for something to happen. Something horrible. That’s not a knock on the film at all, I found it rather exhilarating. So many horror films go running straight to the jump scares and the violence, that it was rather pleasing to watch a film so willing to take its time.
I hesitated to make this my Friday Night Horror film because, well, to be honest, the horror never really comes. It doesn’t end in a bloodbath. Not to spoil things but it does end with a bit of violence, but not in the traditional horror movie sense. There are some tonal shifts moving the film between horror, thriller, and something like a workplace-from-hell drama that the film doesn’t quite pull off. But mostly it really worked for me.
themidnightcafe.org 