Netflix viewers can now watch ‘nerve-shredding’ Australian thriller based on unsettling true story

An unsettling Australian thriller is now streaming on Netflix (Picture: Everett/ Shutterstock)

An unsettling Australian psychological thriller based on a shocking true story is now streaming on Netflix.

Two years ago, the movie The Royal Hotel was released.

Inspired by the 2016 documentary Hotel Coolgardie, it starred Ozark’s Julia Garner and Game of Thrones’ Jessica Henwick as American backpackers who are faced with a massive detour after taking up jobs at a pub in an outback town.

The synopsis explained: ‘Americans Hanna and Liv are best friends backpacking in Australia. After they run out of money, Liv, looking for an adventure, convinces Hanna to take a temporary live-in job behind the bar of a pub called The Royal Hotel in a remote Outback mining town.

‘Bar owner Billy and a host of locals give the girls a riotous introduction to Down Under drinking culture but soon Hanna and Liv find themselves trapped in an unnerving situation that grows rapidly out of their control.’

Like director Kitty Green’s previous movie, The Assistant, this release also looked at the sexism in the workplace and how it can develop into exploitation or even violence.

The Royal Hotel stars Jessica Henwick and Julia Garner as two backpackers who end up in the Outback (Picture: Everett/ Shutterstock)

The movie was met with glowing reviews from critics and viewers upon its release.

‘Laughter and wails are almost interchangeable. That tension makes the film excruciating but exciting; like the characters, the viewer has to try to suss out what is a danger and what is just a good time,’ Vanity Fair wrote in review.

‘Explosive. Subverts whatever expectations you might have about a thriller,’ IndieWire explained.

‘Green continues to establish herself as an insightful chronicler of the minor yet devastating terrors of violent masculinity that many women endure everywhere they go,’ RogerEbert shared.

One review said it ‘subverts whatever expectations you might have about a thriller’ (Picture:
Everett/ Shutterstock)

‘The Royal Hotel simmers with the heat of oppressive testosterone at a pub in the Australian Outback. That is, until it boils over with cathartic female rage,’ the London Evening Standard added.

Meanwhile on Rotten Tomatoes, where the film boasts an 89% rating, user Ice B also wrote: ‘This movie was hard to watch, and hard to stop watching.’

Speaking to NME in 2023, Green spoke about the difficulties she initially faced to get the film made – with some suggesting it didn’t have enough violence.

‘We were actively trying to make a film that challenged that. And they couldn’t get their heads around it. To them, it wasn’t a movie without “that scene”. Which I assume, by the way, is a rape scene. What else are they looking for?’ she said.

Julia has previously starred in several Netflix series’ – including Ozark (Picture:
Netflix/ THA/ Shutterstock) She also played fraudster Anna Delvery in Inventing Anna (Picture: Nicole Rivelli/ Netflix)

By the end of the film Liv and Hanna take back control, with a scene that some said went ‘too far’, but which the director said she was ‘proud of’.

‘I didn’t want them to leave and just accept that behaviour and tolerate it and go, “Oh well, the system’s f***ed”. Particularly because The Assistant had a very bleak ending. The ending is an acceptance of the fact that the system’s broken.

‘And I think [with] this one, I was like, “No, let’s do something different. Let’s let these girls say “No” and stand up for themselves.’

The Royal Hotel also stars Hugo Weaving, Daniel Henshall and Toby Wallace.

The Royal Hotel is streaming on Netflix.

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