If you’ve ever had an uncomfortable experience while on holiday, Julia Garner’s new feminist thriller The Royal Hotel is likely to ring true for you.

Directed by Kitty Green, whose debut narrative film, workplace horror The Assistant, also starred Garner, the film follows American tourists Hanna (Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick), two best friends backpacking across 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. And while the woman who informs them of the gig tells them they should be “OK with a little male attention”, they never expect to find themselves confronted by unruly locals in an unnerving situation that escalates beyond their control.

A backpacking trip goes wrong for Julia Garner in feminist thriller The Royal Hotel