Review: Green Room

Green Room (18)

USA 2016 95 mins Dir: Jeremy Saulnier Cast: Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Patrick Stewart, Macon Blair, Joe Cole, Callum Turner, Alia Shawkat

Rarely has a hand inching through a doorway been fraught with as much terror as in Green Room, director Jeremy Saulnier’s follow-up to his terrifically atmospheric 2014 revenge thriller, Blue Ruin. Yet whilst this sophomore offering certainly delivers in terms of gleefully nasty mayhem, it fails to cohere on a dramatic level in the manner of its predecessor.

Even so, it’s a thrill to watch Saulnier spin out in style whilst ambitiously stretching himself in terms of tone and storytelling. On a logistical and technical level at least, there’s no denying this marks a step up from Blue Ruin as a punk group find themselves besieged in a backwater hellhole of a club by the neo-Nazi supremacists who run the joint.

Said band are the Ain’t Rights, whose go-getting resourcefulness is effectively established in the movie’s economical opening sequence as they illegally siphon off petrol to power their own vehicle. Consisting of guitarist Pat (Anton Yelchin), bassist Sam (Alia Shawkat), vocalist Tiger (Callum Turner) and drummer Reece (Joe Cole), the group’s internal chemistry is neatly and efficiently sketched, investing us in their dynamics and making the eventual third act slide into violent mayhem all the more impactful.

When, following an aborted pod cast interview and an amusingly ill-judged gig performed in a coffee shop for peanuts, the Ain’t Rights find themselves signed to perform in a club in a Pacific Northwest backwater, the gang’s plan is initially to get in and get out. However the tone darkens when, on Pat’s suggestion, they perform anarchic Dead Kennedys staple Nazi Punks Fuck Off to the assorted crowd of intimidating supremacists; even more alarming is what happens when the group, upon their exit, stumble upon a grisly woman’s murder in the aforementioned green room, necessitating an intervention by the club’s cold-blooded owner Darcy Banker (Patrick Stewart). Stalling the group with the lie that the police are on their way, it soon becomes clear that Darcy and his henchmen have no intention of letting the band leave alive.

If Blue Ruin was a cool and calculating dissection of the slow-burn nature of vengeance (plus its bloody aftermath), Saulnier here revives the spirit of John Carpenter and the notorious Straw Dogs, breaking out the machetes, attack dogs and box cutters as everyone is reduced to their base instincts in order to survive. The sly script does a good job of toying with our expectations: the seemingly meek Pat soon turns out to be one of the pluckiest in this drastic situation whilst the dead girl’s friend Amber (Imogen Poots), also in the green room at the time, overcomes her initial terror to tap into some sort of crazed blood-lust, aiding and abetting the group in their attempts to escape. The unexpected resistance offered by these seemingly helpless characters gives their opponents pause for thought on more than one occasion, raising the tension further whilst also lacing proceedings with sly humour.

The antagonists are also intriguingly sketched, the typically commanding Stewart’s compellingly monotoned figurehead keen to put his business assets ahead of human life; there are also subtle hints of a paternal relationship with his second in command Gabe (Macon Blair, star of Blue Ruin). In fact, the latter is by far the most compelling and effectively written character in the film, showing a disdain and aversion to the act of killing that contradicts the attitude of his more brutal cohorts. It’s yet more proof that Saulnier and Blair are truly a duo to be reckoned with.

Yet whilst the atmosphere is suitably pungent and the characters nuanced, the movie frustrates by pinballing between various styles, from black comedy (a running theme revolves around the Ain’t Rights desert island song choices) to moral iterations about the consequences of violence and genuinely shocking splatter. Whilst Saulnier admirably attempts to keep the tone unpredictable, the film lacks the streamlined feel of Blue Ruin, a development not helped by the knotty plotting and often mumbled dialogue that throws around more names than a punk group shreds chords. Yet whilst it’s a flawed experience, it remains an energetic one: like the Ain’t Rights themselves, it’s raw and unsophisticated, but the sheer brash bravado demands attention.