Green Room

Green Room (2015)

88% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 138 reviews)

Runtime: 95 minutes

Directed by: Jeremy Saulnier

Starring: Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Patrick Stewart

From: A24

I saw this movie last night on the big screen and while it's the best movie I've seen from the director, I still don't love his output like many do. That's just me and my tastes. I try to explain why below in my Letterboxd review:

You know, I've come to realize that the films of Jeremy Saulnier just aren't for me, and I am OK with that.

I've seen all three movies he's done now, and the only one I've hated was Murder Party. That said, when people gush all over Blue Ruin and this film and I only found the former to be average and the latter by star rating is the “best” I've seen him do and I honestly could only give it 3 stars despite what most others think... he's just not for me no matter the popular opinion. I wish that wasn't the case as I don't plan on ever being an outlier when it comes to opinions but it happens plenty of times.

By now people should be familiar with the plot of a douche-y punk band (really, that's what they were) who are poor and on tour on the other side of the country so they perform at a middle of nowhere club that actually is a skinhead/Neo-Nazi hangout and s*** goes wrong and they get stuck there and have to deal with the likes of Patrick Stewart. Now, the idea sounded like a winner so I was hoping that I would love this. Alas...

The general idea was a winner. There's plenty of intense moments for sure and with what the cast was given all performed nicely. However, there's the old canard with me, that being the plot and characters. I won't delve into any spoilers so don't worry about that; I'll just say that the protagonists-that being the band plus the character played by Imogen Poots-aren't all that likable and that is an issue when the antagonists are horrible white supremacists; hell, I at least admired how Patrick Stewart's character was matter of fact in trying to clean up the mess at the club, even if it meant killing some dopey young adults do some things that did not make a lot of sense to me. Honestly, how or why the band did some of the things they did, it did not make me admire them, I'll put it that way. In addition, stylistically I am not a big fan of those movies where you only have a small amount of violence but what you do get is over the top and gross gore; that isn't an automatic fail for me (I still rate Drive pretty highly. Only God Forgives, not so much, but there were far worse problems with that). Just note that this is one of those films.

I wish that I could love this like most do. The director and me are not compatible; it's me, not you, you know. At least there was still enough to where I can rate this as “fine”. As I said before, it's tense throughout, the cinematography is nice-along with the music-I have no complaints with the performances and there are some real inspired bits as they try to fight back against the bad guys. The rating is as high as I can personally go. At least I can say that this was better than the trailers for The Lobster and Swiss Army Man, which both played before this. Those look like all the negatives that some people attach to arthouse movies, and appear to be pure wankery to my eyes.