Green Room is a rare film that offers gory grind house thrills, but with intelligence, clever twists, and great acting.
Directed by Jeremy Saulnier, whose previous film, Blue Ruin, was a critical success, Green Room follows punk band The Ain't Rights as they scrounge for enough money to make it from the Pacific Northwest back home to Arlington, VA. The band is flat broke, reduced to siphoning gas from other cars since they can't afford to buy it themselves. A friend of theirs who is also a local radio show host sets them up with a gig at a backwoods bar outside of Portland.
The only catch is...it's a skinhead bar.
The Ain't Rights foolishly, and befittingly punk-y, open their set with a cover of the Dead Kennedy's "Nazi Punks Fuck Off", which pisses off the crowd. However, the rest of their show goes well and it seems that they're going to make it out unscathed and a few dollars richer. But as they head out, one of the band members, Pat (Anton Yelchin), runs back to the green room to grab fellow band member Sam's (Alia Shawkat) cell phone...only to stumble onto the scene of a murder.
The situation quickly descends into chaos, with the bouncers forcing the band back into the room and calling club owner Darcy (a chilling Patrick Stewart) to figure out what to do. The Ain't Rights aren't naive--they know that the neo-Nazis who run this club aren't just going to let them go after they've witnessed a murder.
And so Green Room becomes a taut, breathless stand-off between the very disadvantaged band, plus Amber, a friend of the girl who was killed, and the skinheads who are armed to the teeth. The band has no weapons and are outnumbered. The skinheads have guns, knives, attack dogs, and "true believers"--young men willing to both kill and die for the Brotherhood. The fact that they're neo-Nazis is almost beside the point--they could just be any old group of violent goons--but it does raise the stakes since the bad guys are blindly invested in a violent, hierarchical lifestyle ("This isn't a party---it's a movement" says Darcy at one point, getting applause from the crowd).
When the violence begins it is incredibly gruesome, though never gratuitous. Unlike the cartoonish grindhouse violence of a Tarantino film, or the stomach-churning endless torture of the Hostel and Saw series, Green Room holds back to a degree, relying more on suspense mixed with brief bursts of realistic violence. That said, I wouldn't recommend this film to those with weak stomachs.
Green Room also has intelligent writing and plot twists. It shows, rather than tells. For example, Darcy tells his goons to only let people "with red laces" into the room where the murder happened. The film doesn't explain what he means by this, but the viewer figures out that red shoe laces indicate someone who is a "true believer" in Nazism and has proven their loyalty to Darcy. There were indeed a few times where I got a bit confused about the plot--particularly around the identity of the murdered girl and why she was murdered--but I was ultimately able to figure everything out and I appreciated that the film didn't rely on heavy exposition.
All this in addition to Patrick Stewart's excellent performance as the calculating, calm Darcy--who, against all reason, seems "safe" because of his British accent and genteel manners, even when he's ordering his goons to kill the band. It's a pleasure to watch Stewart play such an evil, charming character.
As I said at the beginning of the review, Green Room promises--and delivers--violent gore and Naziploitation. But it does so in a masterful, intelligent way that transcends the horror/suspense/grindhouse genres. To use an analogy, it's like going to a burger joint and realizing they serve prime cuts of grass-fed beef along with house-made dipping sauces. You thought you were getting the standard, greasy junk food, but actually you got a carefully cultivated meal. Saulnier's Green Room is a heart-pounding, delicious treat of a film.
Grade: A
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