Metacritic reviews

The most brilliant aspect of the script, penned jointly by Green and Oscar Redding, is its flair with sketching out the ups and downs of Hanna and Liv’s friendship.

The director (whose “The Assistant” was solid, but this is far better) has built a gripping thriller around the sort of off-hand remarks, boozy outbursts and inappropriate behavior that most bartenders and reasonable patrons encounter all the time. Everywhere.

Green deals in the unexplicit, and those questions are the engine of the film.

Garner and co-star Jessica Henwick navigate the picture’s mixture of drama, suspense and horror superbly, leaving the audience fearful that this slow-burn powder keg will eventually go off — although we’re not sure who the casualties will be.

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.

As the horrors of The Royal Hotel unfold, the film shifts from a terse thriller into a full-on horror, assisted by appropriately and effectively eerie cinematography from Michael Latham.

Something is missing from making it a knockout.

The Royal Hotel doesn’t provide much background or context to its characters, which gives the film an unpredictability that feeds into its slow-boiling tension.

The hoary sub-genre that is “attractive American tourists find something nefarious on their travels” is given a vigorous polish in thoughtful thriller The Royal Hotel, a film light on exploitation and heavy on interrogation.

Given that the two leads in this project don't seem to have a clear driving force to their actions, this feminist thriller does more to show the challenges that women face than to create fully developed characters. Although the film does end with a bang, these missteps leading up to the resolution make the final scene bittersweet.