How Kitty Green’s ‘The Royal Hotel’ refuses to play by the rules of horror

Two young women with backpacks make their way down a deserted road toward a remote pub in the Australian outback, where they have been contracted to work for a few weeks. I’ve heard you mention “Wake in Fright” as an obvious touchstone for “Royal Hotel.” Is there a canon of outback movies you were drawing from? It’s like “Wolf Creek” — there are a lot of these Australian outback horror movies that we’re actually trying to work against, we’re trying to challenge the tropes and conventions of those movies. Julia Garner in the movie “The Royal Hotel.” You’re never quite sure what exactly the danger is that they may be in. So to me, it was interesting to subvert that and go, “Well, what if we took these two women and we made a film about strength and about them trying to figure themselves out versus something where they’re attacked or raped or some horrifically heinous thing happens to them?” I know that we’re going to get a bit of flack for not following those conventions, but that’s intentional, clearly.