A Well Made Film, Doomed From the Start with an Awful Script

Rating: 3/10 (16 June 2017)

Horror is a genre I often steer away from. Yet I'm always intrigued when a horror movie comes out that receives critical acclaim. See, I love horror. It is the most visceral and natural form of film making. This is why it's such a tragedy that the genre has been neglected by talent, and is often a cheap thrill cooked up as a quick cash grab. Like pornography. In fact horror is often a lot like pornography in the way that characters act in ways, not that advance their own agenda or reveal something meaningful about their character, but to allow further scenes of senseless pain and anguish to befall characters that, often, we are meant to hate.
So naturally, when people I respect highly are attached to a project that sounds very different for a horror film, I can get pretty excited.
Green room is about a band (spoilers ahead) on tour in their van. The movie starts out with some slice of life bits, that set up the characters and world nicely. They are not necessarily care free, but they are free. And the scenes are at least competently shot, directed and scored. They are broke. So broke they can't afford gas. They meet a mohawk touting punk rocker about a gig they drove here to play. It's canceled. They are screwed. So they end up getting scheduled for a gig at some place in the middle of nowhere with some far left and far right people.
Well when they get there, it's a bunch of Nazi's. Scary freaking Nazis. Not a "he was wearing a make America great again hat" kind of Nazi. No, the actual kind of Nazi. So what do they do? They play their extremely original song "Nazi Punch" (I think that's what they said).
I hate these kids. And as we've already discussed, that's a very bad sign.
Anyways, they play their set and go back to the green room. A girl has been stabbed, they're all witnesses now. They're all told to wait. Patrick Stewart finally shows up, and he is a lot like Jean Luc Picard as a Nazi. The kids overpower and kidnap the guy watching them and take his gun, and they lock the door. Things are looking bleak, but Patrick Stewart will let the kids go if they just let him have the gun.
Dumb.
So they give up the gun (of course) and Anton Yelchin gets his hand mangled, and we get to listen to his very authentic and painful sounding cries throughout the entire scene. Now I knew this was not going to be an easy film to watch. And I was prepared for just this sort of thing. But to have it be from something so stupid, it undercut any emotional underpinning or deeper feeling I could have, other than visceral empathy. Horrible, wicked empathy. And I will congratulate everyone involved in this movie for helping highlight Anton's amazing work. But frankly, although it may have been difficult to watch, there was absolutely no payoff for doing so. Immediately, any tension the movie may have had was deflated. I understand that films sometimes require us to endure tragic things vicariously, but understand that tapping only the centers of pain in a film is like creating a dish that is all salt and no other flavor or substance. It's just gross, and unpalatable. Maybe it's unfair to this film, but losing Anton so recently has left a fresh wound, and I suppose hearing him cry like that may have rubbed where it was still raw. Full disclosure. But I will try not to let it affect my scoring of the film.
I did sit through the entire movie, just to confirm it was bad from beginning to end. It was. Now a lot of people worked on the movie, and I don't see any flaws with how the movie is made. Maybe the actors could have been directed more strongly. I don't know, honestly I think it all just comes down to bad writing. Why Patrick Stewart and Anton Yelchin signed on to this script is a mystery to me.