I love Jeremy Saulnier’s previous feature, BLUE RUIN. It is a wonderfully realistic, and smartly realized revenge thriller. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it — it was easily one of my favorite films of the last few years. So imagine my delight when I heard that his latest film, GREEN ROOM, would be not only starring STAR TREK alums Patrick Stewart and Anton Yelchin, but also kicking off Midnight Madness for the Toronto International Film Festival.
GREEN ROOM follows a punk band touring in a van, who aren’t even making enough money to make ends meet. When one of their shows gets cancelled, the promoter hooks them up with a gig arranged by his cousin way out in the country. The only catch is that it’s a skinhead bar. The band members are more than a little afraid of the patrons, but figure that if they keep to themselves, they can play and get out unscathed. However, when one of them sees the aftermath of a murder, the shit hits the fan. The band find themselves locked in a room, with no hope of escape, surrounded by racists skinheads.
The band is made up of a few twenty-somethings, the most recognizable among them being Pat (Anton Yelchin), Sam (Alia Shawkat). Crazily enough, Patrick Stewart plays the owner of the skinhead club, and the leader of their movement. And it was also nice to see Macon Blair, the star of BLUE RUIN, returning here as the manager of the club. Imogen Poots is a member of another band who gets caught up in the action.
It is more than a little strange seeing Patrick Stewart playing a neo-Nazi — much more so than seeing his buddy, Ian McKellen, play an actual Nazi in APT PUPIL. It is no surprise that he’s got a great screen presence and charisma, but he’s not entirely right for the role. He’s just too damn charming, and seems too smart to play such an asshole. Still, Saulnier told us at the screening that Patrick Stewart saved the film. Foreign distributors require an actor of a certain caliber to be onboard before they’ll finance the film, and Patrick Stewart agreed to do it after others had turned it down.
I knew Alia Shawkat was a great actress from ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, and she doesn’t disappoint here. The same is true of Anton Yelchin. He’s got the chops to play the lead, just not the box office draw. A slight surprise to me was Imogen Poots. I’ve seen her in other things, and liked her, but her character here requires a little more range. She plays a somewhat conflicted racist punk girl, and manages to pull it off.
GREEN ROOM is a fairly straightforward film — for the most part the bad guys are bad, the good guys are good, and the dilemma is simple — escape the room without dying. However, this simplicity belies a level of sophistication thanks to a well-written screenplay, superb direction, and fine acting. In most films of this sort, the plot is driven by characters doing something stupid, and being killed off one-by-one as a result. Not so with GREEN ROOM — the characters’ actions seem well motivated, even when they end in disaster. Each obstacle, each development, and each tragic miscalculation seems well-earned.
This movie isn’t a revelation like BLUE RUIN, but then again it is hard to say anything negative about a well-made film just because it isn’t as much as a masterpiece as the director’s previous work. GREEN ROOM is a little hard to categorize. It is effectively horror, but certainly nontraditional horror, and at the top of the spectrum with respect to execution and the talent involved. Plenty of people get their start in horror, and then move on. But I’m happy to see that Saulnier hasn’t, even though he can now attract a decent budget and top talent. He’s a goddamn genius, and he’s destined for great things. So in that respect GREEN ROOM is a rare gem — a top-of-the-line genre film by a future superstar.
- Copernicus (aka Andy Howell). Email me or follow me on Twitter.
