Green Room is light on story but excruciatingly heavy on blood spattered, genre-leading survival thrills,

Rating: 7/10 (23 May 2016)

Director Jeremy Saulnier knows a thing or two about set pieces. Head shots, too. The harrowing events of Green Room occur in just several rooms, yet Saulnier's stripped- down script and direction creates a veritable white-knuckle ride of desperate reversals of fortune and shocking explosions of violence.
The victims of all this nastiness are The Ain't Rights, a struggling Punk band comprising Pat (Anton Yelchin), Sam (Alia Shawkat), Reece (Joe Cole) and Tiger (Callum Turner). After stealing some petrol for their battered old camper van, they head to Seaside, Oregon, where a local DJ arranges a gig for them at a 'right-wing' venue, an offer which the destitute band cannot afford to decline.
When they arrive at the club – which is in an ominously remote corner of the Pacific Northwest – the shaven heads, tattoos and sketchy, leering glances make it clear that the crowd is not merely right-wing but positively fascist. It is at this moment that a feeling of palpable danger and isolation starts to germinate, a feeling that comes to brutal fruition when Pat is witness to a murder in the club's green room.
In a hail of panic and confusion, the band and Amber (Imogen Poots) are locked in the room under the guard of Big Justin (Eric Edelstein) and his fully loaded Smith & Wesson .500, which he explains has cartridges so large that only five can fit into the cylinder. What ensues is a savagely intense siege that affords both its protagonists and the viewer very few luxuries.
After the first few instances of jarring violence, I feared that the film was going to be ninety minutes of audience punishment in the style of The Loved Ones or Wolf Creek. Thankfully, the fortunes of our besieged protagonists do improve, albeit in a wayward and unpredictable manner. It is all the better for it too – the twists and turns of the band's seemingly insurmountable predicament had me in a choke hold until the very end.
What makes Green Room so engaging is its relatability; it is much like Deliverance in this respect. Both films thrust normal people with little experience of violence into a lethal situation, causing the viewer to wonder 'what would I do?', 'where would I be in this group's dynamic?'.
Similarly, the protagonists of both films have no one to turn to, no outsider that they can fully trust. With his smooth diction and measured disposition, Darcy (a very interestingly cast Patrick Stewart) initially appears to be a mature voice of reason amongst a pack of rabidly aggressive young men. Alas, such hopes do not last as the contrary becomes quickly evident. It is only Gabe, played by Saulnier's childhood friend Macon Blair, who appears to be someone the band can work with. Blair channels much of his performance through an anguished gaze that reveals shades of anxiety, doubt and shame. It seems that Gabe has fallen prey to Darcy's steely manipulation.
This is about as dynamic as the characterisation gets, because although Green Room features fine performances across the board, it is a film that's driven by genre-leading survival thrills rather than plot and characters. If you choose to go and see it – prepare yourself!
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