Green Room (2016) - Review

Green Room is the kind of film that traps you in its grip and slowly suffocates you. A claustrophobic, superbly directed vision that prods a gun barrel to your forehead and challenges you to brush it away.

It entirely works because of it's direction and in more shaky hands would fall flat. The plot is fairly simple: a struggling punk band seeking their next paying gig, siphoning gas along the way, finds themselves trapped in a green room of a Neonazi punk bar after they are witness a murder. They must find a way to escape the owner and his violent skinhead cronies before they attempt to bury them along with the victim.

A lesser film would easily find itself buried in the premise, bordering into "slasher movie" territory but it manages to climb its way above that by immersing you in the action with compelling characters, nuanced performances and genuine terror. This world is bleak, unapologetic, often teetering into pure psychological horror; and the audience, along with the characters, is pushed into a hopeless situation where death slashes at you from every corner. My heart jolted throughout and results in a truly nerve-wracking experience. Phrases like "edge of your seat" and "jaw-dropping" are thrown around a lot, but Green Room truly earns these accolades.

Patrick Stewart delivers an understated, menacing performance plucked from the backwoods of American subculture often ignored. He is smart, calculated and unflinching. Where many other films would exemplify eccentricity or melodrama, we are not given reprieve or laughter--only brutality--and are forced to escape the onscreen terror alongside the characters. The film works is because the monsters are real people that are smart and tread in the real world with thought and feeling. Nobody is safe, and the motivations are clear: survive or die trying. Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots give believable, yet starkly different performances as the down and out punkers trying fight their way out, and the stakes are undeniably raised as the brutality swells with shotguns and hungry pitbulls.

The gore, death and general horrific imagery aside, the movie manages to be beautifully shot, edited and emanates a moody color scheme of vivid blacks and greens that showcase squeamish uneasiness and dread. A film of broken rules, predictability, and gives the viewer panic as these people attempt to escape the bar with their lives. Every scene raises a serious question about the characters' mortality. I was totally engrossed with this miserable, heart-pumping ride from beginning to end that unexpectedly scares without feeling cheap or unearned.

(9/10)