Carving out his own genre of trapped men fighting for survival, Jeremy Saulnier’s taut, gruesome and suspenseful Green Room pulls no punches.
Fifty Shades of Green
by Alexa DalbyGreen Room
[rating=3]
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
Prepare to have your stomach churned in Jeremy Saulnier’s gruesome follow-up to his acclaimed Blue Ruin. A punk/death metal band play a gig in an isolated roadhouse. Although the crowd are white supremacists/neo-Nazis, it doesn’t go as badly as they fear – until they stumble on a murder in the green room. After that they can’t be allowed to leave alive. It’s a desperate fight to escape as they use whatever weapons they can find or improvise against the owner – an unexpected star turn from Patrick Stewart – and his murderous skinhead armies. There are chunky machete slashings, savaging by pitbulls, countless shootings, twists, turns, and huge shocks guaranteed to make you gasp – leavened with grim humour. Imogen Poots wields both an impressive shotgun and an American accent as the local locked in with them and Blue Ruin star Macon Blair makes another appearance. Despite lacking some of Blue Ruin’s more-complex layers, it’s a successfully horrifying and suspenseful addition to Saulnier’s colourful ‘trapped in peril’ genre.
Green Room is now showing at the London Film Festival
