GREEN ROOM
US, 2015, 95 minutes, Colour.
Anton Yeltchin, Imogen Poots, Patrick Stewart, Alia Shawkat, Macon Blair.
Directed by Jeremy Saulnier.
The green room is generally where performers wait before they go on stage, before they go on the television set, a place for a drink, conversation and relaxation. Definitely not so here.
A great deal of the film takes place in a shabby club in rural Oregon where the green room is anything but. It becomes the setting for violent action, young people being locked in, violently threatened, challenged as to how they will get out – and the green room has very little green, rather dingy colours with dominant dark and light grey.
But, who are these young people? They are members of a punk rock group looking for gigs around the US West Coast, singing their punk rock songs, dressed in grungy style, and their looks, hair, accordingly. In fact, the writer-director, Jeremy Saulnier, grew up with punk rock, was a member of bands, and is paying something of a tribute to his upbringing and his tastes in portraying this group – led by actor Anton Yelchin, with Alia Shawkat as manager.
After a less than successful episode with minimal pay, they are recommended to go to Oregon where they can perform and be better paid. Mistake. Big mistake.
Out in the Oregon woods, this club is a venue for neo-Nazis, the men looking as if they belong to extreme bikie clubs, tough women in attendance, listening to the music, some seemingly in revolt against the music, but the players managing to survive and be on their way except that they have to go into the green room to pick up a mobile phone – where there has been a murder.
Not only are the members of the group trapped in the green room, they try to negotiate their way out, are reassured that the police are coming – but gradually, they experience the menace of the neo-Nazi leader, an ageing skinhead who organises meetings for American rights, and played with ugly menace by Patrick Stewart.
Also in the room is one of the local girls, played by Imogen Poots, who also wants to get out.
Long ago Agatha Christie wrote one of her novels with the characters being picked off one by one, a basic plot device used by many stories, And There Were None… Well, if not quite none, then possibly two if there is a romantic vein in the plot.
And so, the musicians try to find ways of getting out of the room, out of the basement they discover, out of the building, but gradually meet their fate. The main player explains, twice, a paintball contest where the amateurs defeated the professional, so…
The group would never have envisaged this kind of catastrophe after their performance and have to work out their fears, the desire to live, their ability to help one another – until a final confrontation in the woods where justice is seen to be done.
This is a thriller with menace and horror touches – macabre would be the word - the make-up artists with a great penchant for cuts and slashes. Jeremy Saulnier’s previous film, Blue Ruin, also explored themes of violence.
1. A thriller? Horror film? Social comment?
2. The director, his career, his mentality – and horror thrillers?
3. The settings on America’s West Coast, the opening in the cornfield, the gig in San Francisco, moving to Oregon, the woods, the venue for the concert?
4. The interiors of the club, the green room, enclosed, the performance space, the drug lab?
5. The music, rock, punk? Throughout the film? The jokes about what each would take if stranded on a desert island?
6. Group waking, their personalities, in the cornfield, no petrol, siphoning off some, on the troubles, then music, instruments, the singer, the musicians, the manager? Going for the performance, the organiser, the small response, the poor pay? His promise for something to happen in Oregon?
7. The going to Oregon, being warned to keep quiet about the neo-Nazis? The contact with Daniel? Club, the audience, rough, skinheads, neo-Nazis? The personnel at the club? Gabe and his welcome? Reactions to the performance, the pay, about to leave, going to find the phone?
Seeing the dead woman by chance? The new situation?
8. Trapped in the room, the one exit? The dead girl, stabbed, removing the weapon and the blood flowing? Emily and her fear? Justin, tall, dominating? The promises that they should stay and the police called? The stain, locked in, dominated by Justin, the terror?
9. Darcy, Patrick Stewart, his arrival, the leader of the group, his aetiology, neo-Nazi, white rights, the drugs? Gabe and his management? The other members of the team? Reaction to the death, the decision to stage an accident with the deaths taking place there, no key for the vehicle? Is setting a siege to the people in the room, discussions, bargaining, to throw out the gun, the slashing of Pat’s hand? Overcoming Justin, his death? Darcy and his orders?
10. The characters of the group, the singer, nerves, the strong musician and his being able to strangle Justin? Sam and her leadership, fair he is? Management?
11. Trying to get out, the floorboards, down into the drug lab? The been trapped? No exit?
12. Darcy setting the thugs against the group, the guns, the dogs, using the microphones for sonic effect on the dogs? The shootings, the slashing is? The team being killed?
13. San, Emily and Pat? The further attempt, Emily getting outside, her death? The thugs waiting?
14. Pat, his talking about the paintball competition, the professionals, no chance – later taking up the story, explaining it to Emily, the last man and his dash?
15. Daniel, going in, the revelation of his relationship with the dead girl, Darcy looking in the boot of the car and finding they were going to leave? Daniel going in, helping, his being shot?
16. The group with the number of bullets, the knives and weapons? The confrontation, killing those within the club? Getting out, the encounter with Gabe, gunpoint, the walk into the woods?
17. Coming to the scene of the staged accident, the guns, the dog, the shootings and Darcy’s death?
18. The two surviving? The dog coming to be with its dead master? Gabe and finding the workers and calling the police?
19. A macabre film, with credible enough characters, the fight for survival – the deadpan joke at the end?
