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#214 - Green Room
Jeremy Saulnier, 2015
A struggling punk band takes a gig playing at a neo-Nazi clubhouse only for things to escalate when one of their number witnesses a murder.
Green Room is a strong example of how you can wring a great film out of a simple and much-used premise. It is ostensibly a siege film that sees the members of a low-profile punk band face one too many unfortunate circumstances while on tour. After running out of petrol and getting shafted by one unprofitable gig too many, they decide to pack it in and head home. However, in order to pay their petrol costs for their return trip, they desperately agree to play a set at a remote clubhouse in the woods. The catch? It's a skinhead club, and when one band member (Alia Shawkat) enters the club's green room and finds a murder scene in progress, the band are effectively trapped within the room as the skinheads and their calmly callous ringleader (a wonderfully cast-against-type Patrick Stewart) surround them and try to eliminate this unlikely threat. What follows is an extremely tense thriller as the band must do whatever they can to fend off or at least escape from an entire contingent of neo-Nazis who are not only willing to kill to protect themselves but are disturbingly calm and world-weary about it.
I maintain that personality goes a long way when it comes to making films like this work, and Green Room has enough personality to carry it just fine. The characters may not be all that well-developed (especially in the case of Joe Cole and Callum Turner playing two rather interchangeable members of the band) but they get played well enough in the process. Seeing it mere hours after learning of Anton Yelchin's passing did make watching his turn as the ostensible protagonist a little hard to watch at times, but he brings a believably scrappy charm to his role as a young guy who is seriously out of his depth. Stewart may not get all that much to do in the grand scheme of things, but he does make his evil presence felt without relying too heavily on his classically-trained talents. These characters move through an extremely taut thriller that makes up for any narrative familiarity by being able to ratchet up the tension and make subversions in many (albeit not all) of the right places. Its unflinching nature (especially in regards to its infrequent but effectively realistic displays of violence) resulted in a film where I was literally on the edge of my seat for virtually the entire film. I can't even remember the last time I felt this way during a film, and even though that sensation is likely to dissipate with future viewings, I do reckon that Green Room has enough craft in terms of technique and building character (for the film if not necessarily the characters themselves) that it'll definitely stick with me well into list-making season.
Jeremy Saulnier, 2015
A struggling punk band takes a gig playing at a neo-Nazi clubhouse only for things to escalate when one of their number witnesses a murder.
Green Room is a strong example of how you can wring a great film out of a simple and much-used premise. It is ostensibly a siege film that sees the members of a low-profile punk band face one too many unfortunate circumstances while on tour. After running out of petrol and getting shafted by one unprofitable gig too many, they decide to pack it in and head home. However, in order to pay their petrol costs for their return trip, they desperately agree to play a set at a remote clubhouse in the woods. The catch? It's a skinhead club, and when one band member (Alia Shawkat) enters the club's green room and finds a murder scene in progress, the band are effectively trapped within the room as the skinheads and their calmly callous ringleader (a wonderfully cast-against-type Patrick Stewart) surround them and try to eliminate this unlikely threat. What follows is an extremely tense thriller as the band must do whatever they can to fend off or at least escape from an entire contingent of neo-Nazis who are not only willing to kill to protect themselves but are disturbingly calm and world-weary about it.
I maintain that personality goes a long way when it comes to making films like this work, and Green Room has enough personality to carry it just fine. The characters may not be all that well-developed (especially in the case of Joe Cole and Callum Turner playing two rather interchangeable members of the band) but they get played well enough in the process. Seeing it mere hours after learning of Anton Yelchin's passing did make watching his turn as the ostensible protagonist a little hard to watch at times, but he brings a believably scrappy charm to his role as a young guy who is seriously out of his depth. Stewart may not get all that much to do in the grand scheme of things, but he does make his evil presence felt without relying too heavily on his classically-trained talents. These characters move through an extremely taut thriller that makes up for any narrative familiarity by being able to ratchet up the tension and make subversions in many (albeit not all) of the right places. Its unflinching nature (especially in regards to its infrequent but effectively realistic displays of violence) resulted in a film where I was literally on the edge of my seat for virtually the entire film. I can't even remember the last time I felt this way during a film, and even though that sensation is likely to dissipate with future viewings, I do reckon that Green Room has enough craft in terms of technique and building character (for the film if not necessarily the characters themselves) that it'll definitely stick with me well into list-making season.