Decent thriller that doesn't reach its potential

Rating: 6/10 (10 May 2016)

A broke punk band travels in its van across the country to meet with some promoter who will interview them and set them up with a gig. They think he's legit but of course things don't pan out and they end up playing at a Mexican restaurant for a few bucks. But he offers to make it up to them. He calls a cousin of his and he schedules them for a gig at a skinhead event. Why punks would play at skinhead event? Who knows. But the agree and off they go to some place out in the woods.
One of them comes up with a very punk idea--to start the gig with an anti-Nazi song. Of course it's not appreciated by the skinheads. But the rest of their set is appreciated by the audience. As our band is about to leave, one of them realizes she left her phone in the green room. Another guy offers to pick it up. As he opens the door, he finds a bunch of skinheads and dead girl on the floor with a knife somehow stuck in her skull.
He tries to leave but obviously now no one is leaving. He barely manages to call 911. They are rushed into the green room with a big skinhead guarding them and a girl skinhead friend of the dead one. What follows is a long back and forth negotiation. We meet a couple of skinheads--their leader, a guy in charge of the dogs, one in charge of the music. The leader decides to call 911, he gets some young skinheads to stab themselves for the arriving cops. Now the cops are gone. Our punks were just waiting for the cops the resolve the situation. Now they are back to negotiating with the skinheads.
Eventually some violence erupts which forces the punks or what's left of them to return again and again to the green room to strategize how to escape and get revenge.
Green Room threatens to be yet another minimalist low budget thriller of a group of people stuck in a room screaming at each other for hours. Fortunately, it manages to transcend that formula and give us a bit more. Just not enough though. The punks are for the most part not very relevant. And actually most of them aren't even committed punks, only one of them is. The skinheads too aren't particularly well defined. As others have mentioned, audio recording is terrible. While the punks aren't particularly interesting, the skinhead leadership actually is interesting but you can't understand most of what they say.
While there are some thrills in this movie, there aren't enough given the setting. This movie should have been much stronger. But it would have required better characters, more settings, and more action. Green Room is overly restrained. You expect all hell to break loose at any moment, a moment that never comes. That creates some tension no doubt but it doesn't last. But they did get something very right, and that is the music. Most movies that have metal/extreme music has a theme fail miserably in that area. Green Room doesn't. You just wish it would have gotten the rest as right.