EVERY BAND’S NIGHTMARE
Movie Review – Green Room
Review by Ray Schillaci
From the very first frame of Green Room the audience can tell this is not going to be just your ordinary thriller. There is something more here, and you may not be prepared for it. When writer/director Jeremy Saulnier’s film kicks in, it gets your adrenalin pumping and your nerves jangled, barely giving you a chance to breathe. What could have been a simple horror story in other hands is turned into a nail-biting affair that makes you gasp and cringe at nearly every reveal.
It starts off simple enough. A down-on-their-luck punk band on the last leg of a string of bad gigs eventually gets the worst of the worst, playing at a backwoods skinhead bar. The uneasy tension of the surroundings is enough to evoke past feelings from the 1981 Walter Hill favorite, Southern Comfort and John Boorman’s Deliverance. The band members, The Ain’t Rights, may be rough around the edges, but they are not anywhere near the threat of their new audience, the club employees, and the cool and down-right frightening club owner, Darcy Banker, as played to unwavering murderous perfection by Patrick Stewart.
The punk rockers may be edgy, but no match for their surroundings. The performance alone in front of the vile crowd gave me the chills. After their act, they cannot wait to get out of the place (us as well as them), but a shocking circumstance has the rag-tag group locked away in the green room, fending for their lives. I prefer to remain spoiler-free, and this film is so much better without the audience knowing ahead of time what causes the domino effect. I would strongly suggest staying away from any spoiler sites such as IMDB or any critics that revel in reveals.
What comes next is a series of gasp-induced moments that makes you wonder if anybody will come out of this alive. Writer/director Saulnier is well adept in amping up the tension to a fever pitch. Just about everything that could go wrong for both protagonist and antagonist does, and that’s the brilliance of this high wire act. We as the audience never know how bad it’s going to get while the story takes us nearly off the deep end.
No one in this film comes across expendable, and that’s why it shocked me when somebody was grievously injured or comes to a devastating end. There are grounded performances by the entire cast, making it all feel so real. That particular reality is not demonized in papier-mâché characterizations, but what is offered are surroundings and people we cannot take our eyes off of, no matter how hard we try.
The conductor of all the eventual mayhem is Patrick Stewart’s Darcy Banker. The actor plays him with all the reserved gusto that Laurence Olivier gave in Marathon Man. Cool, reserved, and so despicable, Stewart handles all the horrendous proceedings like a poker champion, never giving a tell. While everyone could be falling apart around him, Darcy Banker casually conducts business. This is the behavior that really gets under our skin. The kind of brilliant performance one would normally not see in this kind of film.
But once again, I have to reiterate, this is not your normal run-of-the-mill thriller. The craftsmanship that has been put into delivering this 1 hour and 34 minutes of grueling suspense is rarely experienced. To some it may be too uncomfortable. For others who enjoy squirming in their seats, the Green Room is very inviting.
Directed by: Jeremy Saulnier
Release Date: April 15, 2016
Run Time: 94 Minutes
Country: USA
Rated: R
Distributor: A24 Pictures
