Liv (Jessica Henwick) and Hanna (Julia Garner), two Canadian women on vacation in Australia, run out of money. Desperate, they take a job bartending in a remote desert Outback hotel, only to realize they’ve stumbled into a sun-struck patch of Hell-on-Earth. Writer-director Kitty Green adapts, with co-screenwriter Oscar Redding, a true story that starts as a feminist parable and develops into a taut horror-thriller. Both Garner (reunited with Green after their stunning THE ASSISTANT) and Henwick are riveting, as is Hugo Weaving in an all-too-brief role. Green and coscreenwriter Oscar Redding don’t idealize their heroines in the politically correct way you might expect: Liv and Hanna are neither Girl Scouts nor victims. As the threat of misogynist violence rises, drink by drink, scene by scene, Green deepens the film’s core theme: ugly behavior and casual disregard for other humans is highly contagious.
