Green Room: NZIFF Film Review
Cast: Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Patrick Stewart, Macon
Blair, Alia Shawkat
Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Rendered more poignant due to the untimely passing of star
Anton Yelchin, Green Room is likely to benefit from a wave of interest.
But instead of mawkish curiosity, what you should get from
this tautly claustrophobic thriller is a sense of purposeful execution from Blue
Ruin director Saulnier.
Yelchin is Pat, one of the members of a punk band The Ain’t
Rights; currently on tour through the less salubrious parts of the Pacific
Northwest, the gang lose out on a gig from a friend. However, when they get
booked into a venue in the woods, desperate for cash to fuel their trip home,
they take it.
Upon arrival, the group finds their audience are a bunch of
neo-Nazi thugs. Bizarrely though, their
set goes well and about to head off, the Ain’t Rights stumble into a murder
scene and everything flips.
With the thugs desperate to ensure the group doesn’t escape,
and the group desperate to survive, a terrifying game of cat and mouse survival
begins…
Saulnier’s follow up to Blue Ruin is nothing short of
thrilling and masterfully executed.
Making great fist of the small location and the choking
nature of the black-walled club and its backrooms, as well as an atmosphere of
unease, Green Room knows what it wants to do and does it well.
Choking and suffocating every drop of tension from the dread proceedings, and also never veering into exploitative sleazy territory, the
film’s MO is one of a supreme pressure cooker. There’s little characterisation
on show other than a brief conversation about which artists the band would
choose for their Desert Island Discs, but it matters not one jot.
Within the confines of the club, and the calm measured and
menacing performances of Patrick Stewart as the club owner and Macon Blair as
the man on duty, the film’s more a quiet piece with moments of shocks and jolts
to shake you asunder.
Yelchin’s ease of presence makes him immediately a hero you
back, and Poots’ spiky potential victim has an edge that doesn’t ever thaw (her
final line to her Fright Night co-actor is typical of the film) as the scenario
plays out.
Stewart’s calm is disarming and those writing the piece are
smart enough to know the menace comes from the brooding and clinical delivery
of the club owner’s methods of thinking; equally, the fact none of the bad guys
are caricatures but are readily recognisable is a smart move, indicative of
Saulnier’s desire to set this in a sickening world that we all potentially live
in, with an underbelly simply waiting for provocation.
Saulnier’s direction is smart, giving the whole thing an
oppressive edge that’s gloomily lit and a thriller that’s as chilling as it is
engaging. By never fully giving a complete picture of life outside the green
room where the group’s initially trapped, Saulnier deals out a palpable
atmosphere of sickening dread, which threatens to explode asunder, but
thankfully never does.
All in all, Green Room is a pulse-pounding thrill ride that
eschews what you’d expect of it; cleanly executed and subtly underplayed in
parts, it’s nothing short of a compelling film that deals masterfully in
atmosphere and smartly in measured drama.
