The Royal Hotel: The Australian Psychological Thriller That Turns a Dream Backpacking Trip Into a Terrifying Nightmare — And Leaves You Questioning Every Smile

Film Review | Psychological Thriller | Starring Julia Garner, Jessica Henwick and Hugo Weaving

Two young women. One isolated Australian pub. A room full of strangers who seem friendly enough. And a growing sense that something is terribly, terribly wrong.

That is the deceptively simple premise behind The Royal Hotel, a deeply unsettling psychological thriller that transforms an ordinary backpacking adventure into an exhausting battle of nerves.

Starring Julia Garner, Jessica Henwick and Hugo Weaving, the 2023 film doesn’t rely on masked killers, supernatural monsters or elaborate mysteries to frighten its audience. Instead, it explores something arguably more disturbing: the vulnerability of finding yourself isolated, surrounded by people whose intentions you cannot understand, and increasingly uncertain whether your instincts are protecting you or making you paranoid.

Directed by Kitty Green, the filmmaker behind the critically acclaimed The Assistant, this Australian thriller is a masterclass in sustained discomfort.

And while its premise might sound familiar, the real power of The Royal Hotel lies in the frightening possibility that its most uncomfortable moments could happen in ordinary life.

A Dream Australian Adventure Takes a Sinister Turn

For American backpackers Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick), Australia initially promises everything they could want from an overseas adventure: freedom, excitement, new friendships and a welcome escape from everyday responsibilities.

The two young women are travelling through the country when their financial situation forces them to reconsider their plans.

With money running low, they accept temporary work at a remote pub in the Australian Outback.

It sounds straightforward enough.

Serve drinks, earn some cash, meet a few locals and continue travelling.

But the moment they arrive at the Royal Hotel, the atmosphere begins to change.

The pub is not a glamorous destination filled with adventurous tourists. It is a dusty, isolated drinking establishment frequented by miners and local men, many of whom seem more interested in the arrival of two young American women than anything else.

The building itself feels worn down, almost forgotten.

The surrounding landscape stretches endlessly into the distance.

And the nearest familiar comforts of civilisation suddenly seem impossibly far away.

The establishment’s owner, Billy, played by Hugo Weaving, is a volatile figure whose drinking and unpredictable behaviour only add to the uneasy atmosphere.

At first, the situation appears merely unpleasant.

There are crude jokes, uncomfortable stares and conversations that become increasingly invasive.

But as the nights pass, Hanna begins to suspect that the danger surrounding them may be more serious than Liv realises.

The question becomes painfully simple: how do you escape somewhere when the people around you insist there is nothing to fear?

Julia Garner Delivers a Performance Built on Fear and Silence

Julia Garner has established herself as one of the most compelling performers of her generation, particularly through her acclaimed work in Ozark.

In The Royal Hotel, however, she faces a very different acting challenge.

Her character, Hanna, is not a fearless heroine prepared to confront every threat with dramatic speeches.

She is cautious, observant and increasingly uncomfortable.

Much of Garner’s performance takes place through small changes in expression.

A forced smile.

A nervous glance toward the door.

A moment of hesitation before answering a seemingly harmless question.

These details gradually communicate Hanna’s growing awareness that the situation is slipping beyond her control.

What makes her performance particularly effective is the uncertainty surrounding her fear.

Hanna senses that something is wrong, but she cannot always identify a specific threat.

And when danger remains ambiguous, taking action becomes much more difficult.

Would leaving immediately be an overreaction?

Is the man making crude jokes genuinely dangerous, or merely obnoxious?

Should she trust the assurances of people who have lived in this community for years?

The film places viewers directly inside Hanna’s anxious perspective, making every awkward encounter feel like a possible warning.

Garner’s greatest achievement is making that anxiety believable without turning the character into a conventional horror-movie victim.

Hanna is intelligent and resourceful.

But intelligence offers limited protection when someone is trapped in unfamiliar surroundings with few practical ways to leave.

Her vulnerability feels painfully human.

Jessica Henwick Brings a Dangerous Sense of Optimism

If Hanna represents caution, Liv represents the seductive appeal of adventure.

Jessica Henwick plays her with a warmth and spontaneity that initially makes the character seem perfectly suited to backpacking life.

Liv wants experiences.

She wants stories to tell when she returns home.

And she is much more willing than Hanna to embrace the unpredictable personalities they encounter.

At first, that difference makes their friendship entertaining.

Hanna worries, while Liv laughs.

Hanna notices warning signs, while Liv tries to see the best in people.

But as the situation deteriorates, those opposing attitudes become increasingly dangerous.

Liv’s willingness to socialise with the locals creates opportunities for misunderstandings, while Hanna’s growing frustration threatens the friendship itself.

This tension is one of the film’s most intelligent narrative decisions.

Instead of presenting two women who immediately recognise a shared enemy, Green explores how people can interpret the same uncomfortable experience in dramatically different ways.

Liv is not foolish, and Hanna is not automatically correct about every individual she encounters.

Their disagreement is rooted in the difficulty of distinguishing genuine friendliness from threatening behaviour.

Henwick’s performance gives the film emotional depth because Liv’s optimism feels authentic rather than artificially exaggerated.

When that confidence begins to falter, the change is genuinely upsetting.

Hugo Weaving Makes the Royal Hotel Feel Like a Place Without Rules

Hugo Weaving is another major reason the film works.

As Billy, the pub’s hard-drinking owner, he embodies a particular kind of unpredictable authority.

He controls the workplace, determines the atmosphere and occupies a position of power over the two women.

Yet he seems barely capable of controlling himself.

His drinking, temper and disregard for professional boundaries create an environment in which the usual expectations of workplace safety appear almost meaningless.

Weaving avoids turning Billy into a straightforward villain.

Instead, he portrays someone whose behaviour can shift from amusing to intimidating with alarming speed.

That unpredictability makes him especially unsettling.

The audience never knows whether his next appearance will bring a harmless exchange or another escalation.

Ursula Yovich, meanwhile, provides a memorable supporting performance as Carol, a woman familiar with the establishment and the difficult personalities surrounding it.

Her presence suggests that the pub’s problems did not begin when Hanna and Liv arrived.

The Royal Hotel has its own established culture, and newcomers are expected to adapt.

That expectation becomes one of the film’s most disturbing themes.

The True Story That Inspired the Film Makes It Even More Uncomfortable

One of the most fascinating aspects of The Royal Hotel is that its premise was inspired by a real documentary.

Kitty Green drew inspiration from Hotel Coolgardie, a documentary following two Scandinavian backpackers working in an Australian mining-town pub.

Green recognised the dramatic possibilities of examining that experience through the perspective of young foreign women navigating an unfamiliar environment.

However, The Royal Hotel is a fictionalised thriller, not a scene-by-scene recreation of the documentary. Its characters and dramatic developments should not be treated as a factual record of the original women’s experiences.

That distinction matters.

The film’s power comes from its exploration of recognisable social situations rather than from claiming every frightening event happened exactly as depicted.

It takes the everyday discomfort of harassment, social pressure and isolation and intensifies those experiences into a cinematic nightmare.

There is something particularly disturbing about a thriller built on behaviour that can initially be dismissed as ordinary.

A stranger makes an inappropriate comment.

A customer refuses to accept a boundary.

Someone laughs at a joke that makes another person visibly uncomfortable.

Individually, these moments might appear insignificant.

Together, they establish a world in which the women gradually lose confidence in their ability to control what happens next.

And that is where the film becomes truly frightening.

Why the Film’s Quietest Moments Are Often Its Most Terrifying

Many psychological thrillers depend on sudden violence or dramatic revelations.

The Royal Hotel takes a more patient approach.

The film repeatedly allows uncomfortable situations to unfold without immediately resolving them.

A man stands too close.

A conversation continues long after Hanna wants it to end.

A friendly invitation begins to feel like an obligation.

The camera frequently lingers on the women’s reactions, forcing the audience to experience their uncertainty.

What makes these scenes effective is that the threat remains difficult to measure.

The characters cannot simply identify one obvious villain and escape.

Instead, danger seems to exist throughout the environment.

It appears in the behaviour of strangers, the expectations of the workplace and the isolation of the surrounding landscape.

Green understands that uncertainty can be more psychologically exhausting than a clearly defined threat.

When someone knows exactly what they are confronting, they can begin planning a response.

But when the danger is ambiguous, every decision carries the possibility of making matters worse.

That is the nightmare Hanna faces.

And as the film progresses, the audience begins anticipating trouble even during apparently harmless interactions.

A laugh becomes suspicious.

A friendly gesture feels calculated.

A quiet room offers little reassurance.

The film effectively trains viewers to share Hanna’s constant vigilance.

The Australian Outback Becomes a Character of Its Own

The Australian landscape plays an essential role in creating the film’s atmosphere.

In another movie, the Outback might represent adventure, natural beauty and freedom.

Here, its vastness becomes threatening.

The empty roads and isolated surroundings constantly remind viewers how far Hanna and Liv are from familiar support systems.

There is an unsettling contradiction at the centre of the setting.

Outside the pub, the landscape stretches toward an apparently limitless horizon.

Inside, the women feel increasingly trapped.

That contrast gives the film a distinctive visual identity.

The Royal Hotel itself becomes a kind of psychological prison, even though its doors are not permanently locked.

The women are constrained by practical circumstances: limited money, uncertain transport, unfamiliar surroundings and the difficulty of knowing whom to trust.

This makes their situation more believable than a conventional captivity thriller.

Their predicament is not defined by a single physical barrier.

It is created by a collection of smaller obstacles that gradually become overwhelming.

The cinematography captures that vulnerability without turning the landscape into an exaggerated horror setting.

The environment looks real, dusty and unforgiving.

That realism makes the escalating tension feel all the more immediate.

An 89% Rotten Tomatoes Score — But Audiences Are Divided

Despite its deliberately uncomfortable storytelling, The Royal Hotel has attracted substantial critical praise.

The contrast between those scores is particularly revealing.

Critics have generally responded positively to Green’s restraint, her attention to atmosphere and the film’s exploration of gendered intimidation.

Some audience members, however, have been less enthusiastic about the slow pacing and the absence of conventional thriller payoffs.

That disagreement is understandable.

Anyone expecting a relentless sequence of shocking crimes, elaborate conspiracies or dramatic action scenes may find the film frustrating.

Its most important developments are often psychological rather than physical.

The story is less concerned with uncovering a hidden criminal mastermind than with examining how threatening behaviour can become normalised.

For viewers who appreciate character-driven suspense, that approach is precisely what makes the film distinctive.

For those seeking a faster, more traditional thriller, the same qualities may feel unsatisfying.

The film’s critical success therefore says something important about its ambitions.

It is not trying to satisfy every expectation associated with the genre.

It is trying to make viewers uncomfortable, and to explain why that discomfort matters.

A Thriller About the Terrifying Cost of Ignoring Your Instincts

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of The Royal Hotel is its examination of intuition.

Throughout the story, Hanna repeatedly senses that something is wrong.

But her instincts are challenged by people who interpret the same behaviour differently.

Some encounters seem harmless.

Others are unmistakably threatening.

And between those extremes lies an uncomfortable grey area where the film spends much of its running time.

Green uses this ambiguity to explore how difficult it can be to defend personal boundaries when doing so risks embarrassment, confrontation or social rejection.

Hanna is repeatedly placed in situations where expressing discomfort may itself provoke hostility.

Her struggle is not simply about surviving an unfamiliar location.

It is about maintaining confidence in her own judgement when the surrounding environment encourages her to doubt it.

That theme gives the film significance beyond its immediate plot.

The story examines the pressure to remain agreeable, even when politeness becomes a source of vulnerability.

And it asks an unsettling question: at what point does tolerating uncomfortable behaviour become a danger in itself?

The film does not offer easy answers.

Instead, it allows that question to grow increasingly urgent as Hanna and Liv’s circumstances deteriorate.

The Ending Delivers a Powerful Statement Without a Conventional Twist

Minor thematic discussion ahead; the final events are not revealed.

The final stretch of The Royal Hotel is where its carefully constructed tension reaches a decisive point.

By then, the audience has spent so much time anticipating danger that even seemingly ordinary interactions feel explosive.

The emotional pressure becomes increasingly difficult for the characters to contain.

Friendships are tested.

Trust becomes fragile.

And the boundaries between discomfort, intimidation and genuine danger grow harder to ignore.

What makes the conclusion effective is not an elaborate surprise designed to rewrite the entire story.

Instead, Green brings the film’s central themes into sharper focus.

The ending is concerned with agency, resistance and the moment when enduring an intolerable situation is no longer an option.

Some viewers may wish the film offered a more detailed resolution to its conflicts.

Others will appreciate its refusal to explain away every uncomfortable implication.

Either way, the conclusion is consistent with the story Green has been telling from the beginning.

This is not a thriller built around discovering who committed a mysterious crime.

It is a film about recognising danger, understanding the forces that allow it to develop and deciding what to do when ordinary methods of keeping the peace no longer work.

Final Verdict: A Disturbing, Intelligent Thriller That Deserves Attention

The Royal Hotel is not an easy film to watch.

It is frequently uncomfortable, occasionally infuriating and deliberately resistant to the familiar pleasures of conventional suspense.

Yet those qualities are also its greatest strengths.

Julia Garner delivers an impressively controlled central performance, Jessica Henwick brings warmth and complexity to a difficult supporting role, and Hugo Weaving creates a memorably unpredictable figure of authority.

Together, they inhabit a world that feels disturbingly authentic.

Kitty Green’s direction is precise, patient and uncompromising.

Rather than overwhelming viewers with violence, she creates tension through ordinary interactions that become progressively harder to dismiss.

The result is a thriller that lingers not because of an extraordinary villain, but because of how recognisable its situations can feel.

For fans of atmospheric psychological suspense, this is a compelling and thought-provoking experience.

For those expecting the relentless twists of a traditional true-crime series, it is worth understanding that The Royal Hotel offers something different: a fictional story inspired by documentary material, built around escalating social danger rather than a murder investigation.

And perhaps that is what makes it so effective.

Because the most frightening moment in The Royal Hotel is not necessarily when danger finally becomes visible.

It is the moment when you realise how many warning signs were present long before anyone was willing to acknowledge them.

Rating: 4/5 — A tense, atmospheric and deeply unsettling psychological thriller.

Streaming note: Netflix availability varies by country and has not been verified for your region. Current US listings on Rotten Tomatoes identify Hulu and Disney+ rather than Netflix.