A worthy follow-up to Jeremy Saulnier's debut feature Blue Ruin, Green Room is a taut, brutal, horror-thriller that doesn't waste a single frame, delivering a highly tense, cinematic experience. A quasi-homage to John Carpenter's brilliant Assault on Precinct 13, Green Room is a simple, yet fierce storytelling, about a young punk band who finds themselves in a fight for their very lives. The story is centered around a young punk band, The Ain't Rights, who have recently finished up a long, unsuccessful tour. About to call it quits, the band gets an unexpected booking at an isolated, run-down music venue located deep in the backwoods of Oregon. What at first seems like easy money, regardless of the fact that the club is infested with nazi punk skinheads, quickly turns into something far more sinister, when the band unexpectedly witnesses an act of violence in the backstage green room, one which they certainly weren't meant to see. Things quickly escalate, as the band finds themselves face to face with the club's depraved owner, Darcy, a man who will do anything to protect his secret enterprise, which includes heroin production and distribution. Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room is simple, yet extremely well told, being a film that places more value in capturing the horrific, nightmarish perspective of its protagonists than it does on clearly defining the motivations of its antagonists for its audience. Things certainly become more clear as the film progresses, but Saulnier's approach pays major dividends early on, only amplifying the tension due to the mystery and uncertainty of exactly what these characters have stumbled into. Green Room is a film that captures the absolute essence of what fighting for ones' life entails, being a brutal survival horror film where life is extinguished quickly, without any type sentimentality. What really stood out about Green Room in this regard is how no character feels safe or off limits throughout this narrative, with death being quick and chaotic, much like the essence of punk ruck music itself. While not nearly as clear thematically as Blue Ruin, which I felt cut to the core principles and pitfalls of Revenge, Green Room does seem to have some interesting ideas lurking underneath the surface of its taut narrative, though i'd argue it's a little more elusive than the filmmaker's previous film. I may be reading into the film too much, but Green Room seems to have something to say about hate groups and this type of thinking. Without going into any spoilers, lets just say there are attack dogs in this film, and towards the end one of these dogs seems to be a symbolic representation of the type of violence which hate can breed. It's only when the dog is unchained, freed from these skinheads, that he begins to be peaceful, showing kindness, instead of the carnage this animal is responsible for earlier in the film. Now you might be thinking, yea that is a stretch, but throughout Green Room there are also a few of these Skinhead characters that essentially come to their senses after being away from Darcy and the other memberrs of their hate group. Daniel and Gabe are such characters, who essentially come to their senses so to speak, though Daniel's is more narratively motivated, almost as if the filmmakers are commenting on the importance of thinking for oneself, with these characters showing an ability to see the faults in being filled with hate and violence after being separated from their brethren. Combine these two characters with that of the unchained dog, and I believe there is more than just the surface to Green Room, with Saulnier commenting on the importance of independent though and the subversive nature of group mentality. In the end, even if you think Green Room doesn't have any deeper meaning or intentions, and that i'm full of shit, it doesn't really matter, as the film is a tour-de-force of tension and brutality that shouldn't be missed.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
|