The shoestring Pacific Northwest tour of punk rock band Ain’t Rights is about to lurch back East in failure when an Oregon DJ throws the group a bone: a low-profile but lucrative gig opening at a bar in the middle of the woods. Lacking even gas money to get home, members Pat (Anton Yelchin), Reece (Joe Cole), Sam (Alia Shawkat) and Tiger (Callum Turner) reluctantly agree. Unfortunately, the venue turns out to be a neo-Nazi skinhead bar where hatecore is the preferred style. The band members hastily perform their set and head for the door, but they have the misfortune of stumbling upon a gruesome crime on their way out. Bouncer Gabe (Macon Blair) locks perpetrators and witnesses alike in the bar’s green room and brings in owner Darcy (Patrick Stewart), who ruthlessly concludes what must be done.
What follows in writer-director Jeremy Sulnier’s brutal new feature Green Room is a terrifying, blood-drenched siege that pits Ain’t Rights and their ad hoc allies against Darcy’s jack-booted goons and vicious attack dogs. As much a horror film as a thriller, Saulnier’s film broadly recalls the pitiless margins of the New French Extremity (High Tension, Them, Inside, Martyrs). Green Room is, however, a distinctly American art house feature in understated but vital ways. Amid all the agony, Saulnier finds the space for oddly serene interludes, spatters of Coen-esque absurdity, and moments that revel in pure color and motion. Also notable is the hissing subtext to the film’s conceit, concerning punk culture’s failure to expunge its mutant spawn, and also a Leftish penchant for keeping ugly American realities just out of sight. (Significantly, the film’s skinheads squat outside of Portland, Oregon.) Fundamentally, however, Green Room is a bleak, harrowing success because Saulnier delivers a simple, nasty scenario with punk-informed vigor, sharpness, and volatility.
Green Room opens Friday, April 29 at the Tivoli Theatre, 6350 Delmar.
