Mean green Nazi machine

Rating: 6/10 (29 April 2016)

Anton Yelchin plays Pat, the soft-spoken guitarist for a punk band called The Ain't Rights. They're on a half-baked tour when they get a gig in a Portland bar run by fascists. They play a confrontational set, before discovering a dead body in the green room. They're detained, along with local girl Amber (Imogen Poots). When the owner (Patrick Stewart) comes to dispense with them, the band barricade themselves in the green room. Negotiations fail, the Rottweilers come out, and so begins the worst aftershow party ever.
It's a twist on the backwoods redneck schtick we've seen a million times before, though the setting is undoubtedly bold. If Blue Ruin was Jeremy Saulnier's Coen Brothers calling card, here he's gone full Assault on Precinct 13-era John Carpenter. Or you could replace neo-Nazis with zombies and you've got Night of the Living Dead.
It's beautifully directed and edited, and often heart-poundingly tense. The air of sombreness; the doom-laden dark ambient score; the saturated palette – it all combines to supposedly lend the narrative some kind of weight. But this is a B-movie in art-house clothing.
There is humour but it's subtle, buried under the virtually impenetrable dialogue. Saulnier is sadly unwilling to run with the high concept, resulting in some convoluted and not-very-engaging dramatics among the skinheads.
Poots is miscast as Amber (she never convinces), although I quite enjoyed Yelchin's high-anxiety performance in the lead. Predictably, however, it's Stewart who steals the show. His drawling Darcy is a man of quiet menace: a far more frightening and believable fascist than we usually see on screen.
The Ain't Rights are an awkward bunch. I'm guessing Saulnier's intention was to portray protagonists who are gradually drained of their humanity as the film wears on. But they're quite unlikeable in the first place, so by the time the ironic final shot comes along, the punchline doesn't land. At a push there's the hint of some underlying theme about the plight of the modern liberal left, feeling beset on all sides by right-wing reactionary madness. But the troupe isn't developed enough as a set of characters to be certain.
Then there is the violence: the threat of it and the unflinching depiction of it. There's some extreme body horror bloodiness early on – limbs and throats and guts – which appears to foreshadow a truly Grand Guignol finale; but soon the guns are out and the inventiveness flags and it never arrives.
Green Room is a decent enough stab at a remix on the siege sub-genre. At around 90 minutes it's lean, mean, and ruthlessly efficient. Just don't expect LOLs or depth or a whole bunch of surprises.