Back Catalog Review: Green Room (2016) Pits Punks Against Nazis for Tense Exploitation Art

Writer/Director Jeremy Saulnier can apparently find a way to make even the most cliched premise feel fresh.  With Blue Ruin a few years ago, he took a fairly standard revenge plot, and filled it with just enough humanity and beauty among the tension-releasing violence to rise above its simple story-line.  In this film, he tackles the compelling claustrophobic thrills of classic closed-room standoff films like Rio Bravo or Assault on Precinct 13.  Want a streamlined recipe for tension?  Take a few characters, lock them in a seemingly impossible situation, and have them try to think their way out.  Saulnier injects that familiar premise with a shot of punk-rock attitude, giving a satisfying kick to the old tried-and-true formula.

Small character details accumulate as the film builds the tension in a slow but purposeful crescendo.  In the opening moments, our band of heroes, literally a punk band made up of three guys and a girl, slowly wake up in a van only to realize they had careened into a cornfield after their trusty driver had dozed off.  Not only does this create a neat visual representation of the way they eventually wade too far into back-country ideology, but it foreshadows the way they realize this fact much too late.  In addition, it acts as a succinct and effective bit of characterization.  Pat, Sam, Reece, and Tiger are reckless, young, and just desperate enough to make the wrong decisions at the wrong time.  The beauty of what Saulnier builds in the first half of the film is that you become invested in the main characters' success.  Their choices may not be the smartest, but you feel as if you may have made that same decision if you were in their shoes.  When nerdy punk Tad, played with humorous visual irony by David W. Thompson, offers them another paying gig after the initial job he set up doesn't pan out, of course the band wouldn't think too hard about a chance to make up some of their losses.  When they show up to the new venue, and it turns out to be a neo-nazi hangout, the process of them getting trapped in the titular green room after seeing a bit too much happens so deliberately as to feel inevitable.  The longer they wait in the room, the more the gravity of their situation sets in for both the characters and the audience.  Once the film reaches a truly shocking point-of-no-return moment for the band mid-film, you'll look back and realize that point had already come and went well before. 

The stellar acting on both sides of the green room door also elevates this over normal by-the-numbers thrillers.  On the punk band side, we have one of the last performances by the late Anton Yelchin.  His quietly nuanced take on the band's lead singer, Pat, reveals a truly compelling and unique talent, highlighting what a tragic loss his sudden accidental death was for the film community.  He goes tete-a-tete with the commanding presence of Patrick Stewart as the authoritative leader of the cult-ish skinhead gang.  Stewart has the ability to bring gravitas to even the most thinly sketched characters.  The rest of the band, as well as the militant racists, all perform relatively well, but outside of Macon Blair, who has an interesting motivational arc as the manager of the neo-nazi club, are so black and white (or militant green) that they almost feel like props instead of characters.  Which is a shame, because Imogen Poots' young nazi turncoat, and Alia Shawkat (better known as Maeby from Arrested Development) playing the lone female band member could've been really interesting if they had a little more depth.  

The film is at its best when sidesteps its grisly visceral violence and touches on fascinating themes of authority and ideological subservience, but Saulnier consistently pulls his punches in favor of making a simple but rollicking-ly good yarn. I've seen this film make a bunch of year-end best-of lists for some fairly prominent online critics, and arguing with their placement feels somewhat nit-picky.  However, I wish Saulnier would've dug a little deeper, and skewed a little grayer in his morality.  While it isn't the most thematically rich movie of the year, it is a gripping tense roller coaster ride from its slow-burn start to the witty pitch-black finish.