In Green Room, a punk band touring the Pacific Northwest in a van finds themselves playing a last minute gig at a club full of neo-Nazi skinheads in the middle of nowhere (Whoa. Stop right there. RED FLAG, YOU GUYS). The band, called The Ain’t Rights, is punk AF, so obviously they ignore said red flag, and start their show with a thrashing, aggressive cover of The Dead Kennedys’ “Nazi Punks Fuck Off.” Ballsy. I dig it.
The show ends and the gang accidentally stumbles upon a stabbing victim dead in the club’s green room. The club’s owner, Darcy (played by the impeccable Patrick Stewart), decides that his gang of racists needs to dispose of the witnesses…the band included, along with Amber (Imogen Poots), a friend of the victim who witnessed the whole bloody affair. The group locks themselves inside the green room and must figure out how to escape the situation alive. From there, the film turns into a punks vs. skins showdown right out of that Vandals tune.
The band is portrayed by Anton Yelchin (RIP), Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole and Callum Turner, and as the Bluray’s special features show, the actors actually learned how to play the music. You can feel this authenticity on screen and that gives the characters another layer of realism and gels them together as an ensemble. (Hell, they should just continue being a band off-screen. I’d go check ’em out.)
The film walks a nice tightrope between horror and thriller. (I’d lean on calling it a thriller, but I’m not sure a horror n00b would feel the same way.) Sure, there’s gore and horrific violence (I definitely don’t want to die via bloodthirsty dog bite, I’ll tell you that much!), but the horror elements never fully outweigh the tension and the action. Who will get out of this alive, or will they all die a gruesome Nazi-induced death? The movie keeps you guessing til its final frames.
It can’t go unspoken that Patrick Stewart is FAN-TASTIC in this. It’s a dark-as-night role for him. Though I wouldn’t say he’s out of his comfort zone, I would say I can’t recollect another role this different for the veteran actor. He makes Darcy a formidable villain, who alternates between level-headed and psychotic. It’s some damn good casting that deserve props all around.
It’s refreshing to find a horror/thriller movie without a supernatural element to it. We’re faced with the scum of humanity here. A reality reminding us exactly what human beings are capable of. Horror too often hides sloppy writing behind supernatural elements (because ghosts and junk). Green Room, however, isn’t afforded those cheap ploys. It’s a tightly written, acted and directed 95 minutes that never looks back once it takes off running.
Grade: B+
