Tonight’s October Challenge movie is Jeremy Saulnier’s Horror Thriller “Green Room” from 2015. The second A24 movie of this October’s viewing (The last being the unimpressive “X”). This one was born out of Saulnier’s obsession with creating a horror movie set in a green room. Initially he created a short movie that was totally unrelated to this in plot, but wanted to return to the idea and make a full blown movie. It’s a strange obsession, but this movie is quite well regarded so maybe he was on to something. Let’s find out.
Life On The Road.
The movie stars some horror veterans in Anton Yelchin (Odd Thomas), Imogen Poots (28 Weeks Later), Alia Shawkat (Final Girls) and Patrick Stewart (Lifeforce… I mean it’s not what he’s famous for, but I’m listing Horror Movies here). Saulnier wrote and directed. This is basically a “Wrong place, wrong time”, where a struggling rock band accidentally stumble upon a murder scene and end up trapped in a green room and battling for survival.
The plot here is pretty straight forward and largely covered in the previous paragraph. The band are barely making enough money to pay for their travel between venues and have to siphon fuel from other cars. After being ripped off for payment on the previous gig they are offered a decent paying gig at a remote venue and so they jump at the chance. On arrival they realize this is a Neo-Nazi bar and they are support for a National Socialist Black Metal band “Cowcatcher”. Despite this they play anyway since they need that cash.
Pass The Handgun.
The set goes okay (Despite a few bottles being thrown at them), but after the gig they stumble upon a murder scene (A girl has been stabbed by a member of Cowcatcher) and attempt to call the police but are shepherded at gunpoint back to the green room with the dead girls friend “Amber” (Posts). The bar it turns out is a front for a heroin lab run by the lead Skinhead “Darcy” (Stuart), whose main concern is protecting his operation. This leads to a stand off between the band and Darcy’s crew as they try to eliminate them without risking drawing attention.
So this requires a fair bit of suspension of disbelief. The Skinheads largely cripple themselves with their tactics, doing things like having everyone leave the building and then send in just one or two at a time. The insistence right up until they end on not using firearms (To make it easier to create a fake death scene later) gives the band a fighting chance. But the band isn’t terrible clever either. There’s almost a comical amount of losing firearms going on in this. To be fair, the band’s side of things is pretty understandable, but it can still be frustrating to watch (A bit like people in Horror films going to the basement to investigate a noise).
Assault on Skinhead 13
Once things kick off however, the movie is edge of the seat stuff and pretty satisfying in where it goes. The odd tactics of the villains basically are a mechanism to turn this in a siege and this naturally gives it an Assault on Precinct 13 vibe and since I’m a huge John Carpenter fan I was quite happy with that. The violence is portrayed as savage and realistic but doesn’t try and gross you out with it. This is not a gore flick, but it doesn’t pull punches either.
I also have to praise the acting here, especially Anton Yelchin. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bad performance by Yechin and it was a great loss to cinema when his life was cut short by a car accident in 2016. He gives the full range here and really comes across as desperate and terrified but still determined to survive. Patrick Stuart puts on the kind of performance you’d expect from the veteran Shakespearean Actor and the rest of the cast puts on an above average performances throughout.
The Final Note.
Overall, this is a very good movie that just falls short of a seven out of ten rating from me due to the amount of plot contrivances that are needed to set up the majority of the movie. If those kind of things don’t bother you consider the rating higher. But for me it is a very strong 6.5/10.
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