Like 10 Cloverfield Lane, another smart horror delight.
Green Room
Grade: B+
Director: Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin)
Screenplay: Saulnier
Cast: Anton Yelchin (Star Trek), Patrick Stewart (Match)
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hr 34 min
by John DeSando
Punk rock bands like the one in Green Room frequently spout hoary lyrics, but this band witnesses a murder that pits them against skinheads who fulfill the expectations of the most violent lyrics. Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier helms this one so deftly that I would like to call it a smart, comic thriller if it weren’t for the horrible images cropping up at the right times.
Like the other smart horror flick recently, 10 Cloverfield Lane, it’s about young adults (this time they're in a punk rock group) headed by Pat (Anton Yelchin) fighting experienced villains (John Goodman in 10, Patrick Stewart as Darcy in Green). While the formula dictates that the youngsters, in violently reduced numbers, overcome the oldsters, this version takes many turns before it gives in to the dictates of the genre. The vibe is '80's horror- thriller with Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs an appropriate comparison.
The languid set up, where we see the band hopping from one low-paying gig to another with a charming sense of humor, sets a right tone of fecklessness that leads to the danger of an exclusive metal club in Oregon catering to straight white-male supremacists manufacturing maybe heroin in their basement. Enter the head honcho, Darcy, as cool as a starship captain, and as indifferent to violence as only a man who has others do his dirty work can. Although things get more violent in dealing with the resourceful youngsters, he remains cool: “Forensics is no longer a concern,” he says after planning a flawless scene for the cops that has turned bad for his team.
The intelligence of the panicked punkers and the menace of the skinheads help to keep us attentive at all times to see what happens next. Although some expectations are met, there are enough plot twists to keep us thrilled and to make sense, unlike so many other slasher, violence-induced films. Here, the band really has to play in tune, so to speak, facing mounting horrors like a mangled arm and gruesome jugular feast by the teeth of an attack dog.
Just as in an allegorical way, most peaceful nations are dragged into violence because there are no alternatives, the band resorts to gruesomeness as the only answer to the carnage meted out by their captives. I like the realistic, albeit violent, way the plot progresses. Well, it has to be so or we get no horror, and I get no vicarious thrill out of being unharmed. Except maybe psychologically.
“Later is better for time of death,” says Darcy. Now that’s terrifyingly cool.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
