Green Room

The Ain't Rights, a punk rock band, are touring on a shoestring budget.  A bad gig leaves them in dire straits but they are offered another spot for $350, enough to get them back to the east coast.  The middle-of-nowhere bar hosts skinheads.  The band plays their set and then head out.  However, one of them sees a dead girl and calls 911.  He managed to say there was a stabbing before the phone was snatched away.  The band is quickly locked in a room as the owners find a way to cover up the murder.

 

The movie is much more thoughtful than most of this type would be.  The criminals know that if the band is found full of bullets, the police will eventually come back.  No, they must be found in some way that doesn't lead back to the club.  Thus, they are hesitant to blast through the locked door with guns.  There is much effort made to convince the band to come out willingly.

 

Patrick Stewart makes a good villain and should be cast as such more often.  I remember his turn as Dr. Jonas in Conspiracy Theory as particularly good.  Here he is calculating, cold-blooded, and unflappable.  His iconic voice just emanates reasonableness.  Who can resist Captain Pickard saying it will all be fine if you just come out?

 

The movie is often gory but not scary.  As the story is told from both sides of the locked door, we mostly know what everyone is doing and thus there are few scares.  The gore is plentiful.  One band member has his arm hacked up so there are half a dozen gaping wounds and his hand is half-way severed.  There are throats torn out or cut, an abdomen sliced open, a shotgun blast to the face, and other grisly scenes.  No shortage of blood.

 

Directed by Jeremy Saulnier, it has a very similar feel to his last movie, Blue Ruin.  The scene of walking to the villain's house through the woods really echoed from that movie.  Green Room is okay, but Blue Ruin was better.  Through that movie, I came to like the hapless Dwight (Macon Blair) whereas I didn't much like any of the punk rockers.  The one I most liked didn't survive.  The lack of character development was a real problem with Imogen Poots' character, who is never explored and has virtually no backstory.  She is an ally of the band but a mostly blank slate.  Initially, that was fine to provide some distrust but by the end, she is still mostly a blank slate.

 

Not a bad film but I would suggest The Jungle Book instead.  Or rent Blue Ruin.