Green Room: a zombie movie sans zombies

Movie review: Green Room

Jeremy Saulnier’s follow-up to Blue Ruin reimagines zombie movie cliche as a real-life face-off between a struggling punk band and a group of calculating white supremacists laying siege to their dressing room

Green Room

3.5/5

Starring: Anton Yelchin, Patrick Stewart, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Macon Blair, Callum Turner

Directed by: Jeremy Saulnier

Running time: 1hr 35 mins

MPAA Rating: Restricted

By Katherine Monk

It’s a zombie movie – without zombies. Instead, Jeremy Saulnier’s follow-up to Blue Ruin, his breakout piece of hillbilly genius, features a different brand of walking dead: neo-Nazi skinheads.

Fans of slasher horror may have a hard time deciding which villain is worse: the cerebellum-snacking corpse or the swastika-sporting goon, but for Saulnier’s purposes, the blurrier the line between the two, the better, because it gives him more room to play.

And as grotesque and violent as Green Room is, one can’t deny the playful spirit in every frame because while the Saulnier may stack images of graphic gore on top of one another, he never loses his humanity – or sight of the overall human comedy.

In Blue Ruin, we watched an ordinary man attempt to avenge his parents’ murder at the hands of hardened criminals – with intermittent and accidental success. In Green Room, we watch an ordinary punk band fend off a group of angry white supremacists.

Lead by none other than Patrick Stewart, the face of TV’s most enlightened human –Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise – the skinheads are more than just convenient antagonists. Like zombies, they embody humanity gone awry.

And in the big picture, that could be what Green Room is all about as it shows us a microcosm where blind obedience, popular culture, youthful rebellion and baseline hate slam dance into each other on the sweat and blood-covered floor.

It’s a muddy palette of greenish blue and grey earth tones, the perfect backdrop for the inevitable blood spatter, and Saulnier establishes the context in the first scene: A group of kids are unconscious in a van. They look dead, and as the camera pans up, we see they’ve veered off the highway into a corn field.

As the camera peers into their pale faces, they awake, and soon, we get the basic outline of the plot. They’re all members of a struggling punk band that’s been touring the Pacific Northwest with minimal returns. They siphon gas and sleep on couches to keep going, and after one awful gig at a greasy spoon, they figure it may be time to throw in the towel.

All they need is gas money to get home, and when a sweet-eyed kid with a Mohawk tells them about an all-ages afternoon show that would fill the tank, they head off with high hopes. The big warehouse space in the middle of the woods looks a little foreboding, and the close-shorn kids in combat boots look a little menacing, but this is a punk band after all. They should be in their element. Yet, they are not – and that’s where Saulnier is having all the fun as he lifts the corner of sticky type, and starts to peel.

The band plays its set, goes back the green room, and sees the body of a dead woman on the floor. Another woman (Imogen Poots) is nearby and silent while a very large and muscular man holds a hefty revolver.

They have no idea what happened. They call 911, and immediately, the situation is out of control. Their only option is to barricade themselves inside the green room before the bad guys come back with a small army of boys in red-laced boots.

Like zombies, the neo-Nazi foot soldiers bang on the doors and crawl through windows. They attack any protruding appendage, and they have no conscience. Yet, they do have brains – and a calculating leader — which makes the social metaphor far more disturbing as our de facto protagonists are forced to square off against the skinheads in a battle for survival.

The story is pop trash ephemera that always feels a little too shallow for the brooding mood, but Saulnier pulls it all together using his unique style steeped in authenticity.

By using natural light, real locations and non-glam talent, Saulnier reflects the world we live in. He shows us what we’d really look like if we found ourselves in a dilemma borrowed from Hamlet or a plot ripped from George Romero’s scrapbook – without resorting to cheap gimmicks.

One could look at Green Room and think it’s juvenile horror aimed at the college crowd, but there isn’t a cheap boob shot, a genital joke or an Eli Roth-styled blowtorch to the eyeball gag. Saulnier is using human traits and feelings to create the drama, which is why it’s not only creepy and unpredictable. In this age of post-Bataclan attacks, it’s all too believable.

 

@katherinemonk

 

THE EX-PRESS, April 29, 2016

 

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Review: Green Room

User Rating

4 (1 Votes)

Summary

3.5Score

Jeremy Saulnier's follow-up to the brilliant Blue Ruin borrows the same style and pushes the same buttons of believability as we watch a young punk band attempt to survive a night of siege at the hands of white supremacists. Patrick Stewart plays the central villain, and would-be zombie lord in this movie that looks and feels like a Night of the Dead -- only the half-dead and amoral are replaced by sentient and immoral. -- Katherine Monk

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