Green Room (2016)

Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Writer(s): Saulnier
Starring: Anton Yelchin, Joe Cole, Alia Shawkat, Imogen Poots, and Patrick Stewart

I do not get excited for theatrical releases very often, especially when I am disappointed by a director’s previous release, but the hype level was through the roof for me concerning Jeremy Saulnier’s follow-up to Blue Ruin.  Why, you may ask?  Because, while I was a little letdown by his debut revenge thriller, I still saw loads of potential in Saulnier, calling him a “promising filmmaker” and even declaring that “I’m still eagerly looking forward to his future releases.”  Crazily enough, it was during research for that review (which I just realized is part of my unpublished backlog, so you’ll just have to take my word for it) that I stumbled on the trailer for this, caught some positive pre-release buzz, and saw that it would be premiering in my city about two months from then.  I made sure to put it on the calendar; to put that into perspective, it would be just the second time in the past two years that I went to a theater to see a movie—and the only other time was two nights ago, when my wife and I went to a second-rate theater to see a movie that we received free tickets for.

Just as Saulnier took the revenge thriller and stripped it down to its most basic parts in his previous film, he imbues Green Room with a little twist of its own: all of the people involved, on either side, are not complete idiots.  Thus, the showdown that ensues between a punk band in unfamiliar territory and a group of neo-Nazi skinheads feature both sides calculating their options and slowly raising the stakes.  Of course, the skinheads hold a distinct advantage, knowing the building inside and out, but the longer the band stays alive, the more their momentum grows.  Watching it all unfold is very similar to watching a chess match, as both sides are constantly formulating new plans as the situations change.  Obviously, not all of them succeed, much in the same way that our decisions in real-life can have life-altering (or even “ending”) consequences, but these are mostly intelligent people who, on the punk side, are in a desperate situation to stay alive, and for the skinheads, are in a desperate situation to avoid death and/or jail-time, and for the most part, there’s a convincing level of believability to their pre-scripted decisions.

It all starts with “The Ain’t Rights”, the punk band in question, heading to Seaside, Oregon to record an interview for a radio show.  When the band, who is made up of members Sam, Reece, Pat, and Tiger, asks when they can expect their piece to air, the interviewer, Tad, reveals that he had his radio segment revoked, so he’s not sure when, or even if, it ever will.  Rightfully pissed off that they traveled all that way for nothing (and are so broke they even had to siphon gas to make it that far), Tad sets them up with a show at a punk café as a favor. Unfortunately for him, that digs him in even deeper: turnout is so low, that even after giving the band his own cut of the proceeds, their total haul still only comes out to a little over $6 per bandmember.  Still fuming over the situation, they eventually decide to cut their losses and return home, something they soon wish they would have done.  Because before you know it, Tad is placing a call to his cousin for a guaranteed show the following day just outside Portland.  The catch?  It’s at a bar run by, and populated with, white supremacists.  Relatively unfazed, but more desperate, the band accepts Tad’s offer, and head for the venue in time to make it for their afternoon show.

Once they get there, they have only a few minutes before their matinee set begins.  As a joke, the lead vocalist, Tiger, suggest that they kick things off with a cover of the Dead Kennedy’s “Nazi Punks Fuck Off”, an “inspired” choice given their surroundings.  Not surprisingly, it doesn’t go over too well; Pat, the guitarist, seems visibly shaken by the crowd’s hostile reaction.  I guess contrary to popular belief, skinheads do not have strong senses of humor after all.  Despite the rocky start, the rest of the gig seems to go off without a hitch, and right after their set they are quickly ushered out of the bar to make room for the next act.  Well, that’s what was supposed to happen, anyway; in all of the commotion and hustling, Sam (Alia Shawkat, from “Arrested Development” fame) realizes that she forgot her phone in the “green room” (a term used for the waiting room of a venue where performing acts hang out before taking the stage), which Pat offers to retrieve for her.  What should be a simple task gets blown out of proportion when he stumbles on Emily, a dead girl with a knife in her head.  Hovering over her are Werm (an evil-looking man) and Amber, Emily’s friend. 

News of a murder must travel fast, because two of the bar’s bouncers, Gabe and Justin, quicky catch wind of the situation, and force “The Ain’t Rights” back into the green room.  Justin hangs in there and holds everyone at gunpoint while Gabe runs off to call the police, and also notifies the bar’s owner, Darcy (a fiendish Patrick Stewart), of the unfolding events.  Darcy is a quietly terrifying man, the type that never raises his voice, yet who knows no limits to his depravity or thirst for blood.  As he shows up to try to handle the situation, the band wrestles the gun away from Justin and hold him at gunpoint.  Meanwhile, Amber joins the band’s side, distressed over the murder of her friend, which has still come under mysterious circumstances.  Darcy tries negotiating through the door for the gun; at the last second Amber sees that Darcy is not alone, as he has assured them, so she calls a trap…and so begins an intense, exhausting standoff, filled with some of the most devastating acts of simulated violence ever captured on film.

And it’s the way Green Room handles its bloodshed that might just be its most triumphant aspect: It’s presented in sharp, shocking bursts that are repellently graphic and hard-to-stomach, even for a genre aficionado like me.  This isn’t a film that revels in it for the sake of entertainment, but rather one that rubs our noses in its ugliness, as if attempting to undo years of playful desensitizing at the hands of the Freddy’s and the Jason’s, and trying to re-convince us of the real-life finality and brutality that can accompany us in life’s final moments.  It's largely effective in this mission, though an early scene involving a box-cutter that is so over-the-top it becomes laughable, prevents it from achieving near-perfection.

Unfortunately, there are some cheap narrative cushions that Saulnier just can’t seem to resist—or are they included at the insistence of the studio/distributor?  One thing that I cannot stand are the moments when otherwise-serious movies feel the need to throw in humor during violent situations; there are a couple one-liners after kills that cheapen the effect, and feel a little hypocritical for a movie trying to portray its murders in such an ugly light.  Green Room also has a chance to end on a heart-wrenching moment of perfect and genuinely unexpected poignancy, but goes on for thirty more seconds just so it can deliver a final, predictable punchline to an ongoing series of jokes that were never funny to begin with.  These may be relatively minor annoyances, but again, in a film that prides itself on its intelligence and audacity, the pointlessness of their inclusion is thoroughly magnified.

In spite of these shortcomings, Green Room is still highly recommended to strong-stomached fans of the horror genre.  I was curious to see how Saulnier would follow up Blue Ruin, and he did so by making an even better film; now I’m really looking forward to seeing whether his next film can continue on his rapidly-rising career trajectory, and if he sticks with his two-word “[color] [noun or verb]” formula that he’s been using lately to name his next picture.

RECAP: Intense as all hell, with unsettling and graphic violence to boot, Green Room is a sharp step forward for writer/director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin), which turns the horror genre on its ear by presenting characters that aren’t completely stupid (gasp!)  Patrick Stewart is, as you’ve heard everywhere else, excellent in his villainous role as the eerily calm, yet unspeakably evil bar owner Darcy, while the rest of the cast also deliver high-quality performances.  Once it gets going, and it doesn’t take long, it puts the pedal to the metal and never lets up, making it one of the more effective horror films I’ve seen in a while.

RATING: 8/10