Green Room: Written and Directed by Jeremy Saulnier, Starring: Anton Yelchin and Patrick Stewart5/4/2016 There are a lot of gory, trashy, and vile pieces of work out there... that are absolutely AWESOME! The bad ones just don’t carry purpose. Those that do however can use their gory natures to push the genre to new heights, and when someone smart gets ahold of these the bar goes up even more. Enter Jeremy Saulnier. Saulnier's last film, Blue Ruin, was a full tilt revenge masterpiece of boundless violence, but everything about it’s characters actions made sense. The violence seemed earned because we weren’t just watching completely void tough guys shooting at each other, or chopping each other up. We were watching intelligent, if possibly mentally challenged people shoot, and stab through each other. Green Room, unfortunately by design can’t keep things quite as personally to the characters. Ruin was mostly focussed on one man, a character that could be intensely watched. Green Room has multiple moving parts which keeps it from that level. Saulnier however is a smart enough writer/director to make up for that though. Green Room isn’t the masterpiece it’s predecessor was, but it’s pretty damn close. The main reason?: Green Room gets bigger, but not more ambitious. There’s more characters sure, but the mechanics here are much more sparse and focussed. Green Room is about a punk band fighting neo nazi’s. Saulnier knows for sure that the safest place for his characters is in the presence of loud and even somewhat obnoxious noise, and the playing of these sound cues and designs against the audience makes the pretty bare characters into the full people that Saulnier’s films have previously showed. The main lead played by Anton Yelchin explains how much he and his band enjoy music, and feel the cathartic flow of it when performing. Couldn’t tell you his name though. However, this sound cue is used perfectly as moments of silent and sobering sound become the most dangerous. The film also has a vague punk band soundtrack to be heard outside of the green room of the title which shows the contrast of safety that the characters are in. They are that close to being safe, and in the music but instead they are in this room. The contrasts also seem to make Green Room a richer movie. The punk band in question is intentionally loud and obnoxious on stage, but is very soft spoken off. The Neo Nazi’s are horrible people doing savage stuff, but they seem the most reasonable, and level headed. Patrick Stewart accentuates that contrast as their leader, Darcy. Outside of the door he speaks in the voice of a kind grandfather, but is most certainly not. The dogs (oh the dogs) bite people’s throats off, but are still whining and loyal little dogs. The quietness always leads to violence, the loud noises (which should be the more dangerous ones) lead to safety. Green Room builds it’s wonderful contrast and mechanics on top of the characters. The results make sure Green Room is unforgettable. What is also unforgettable about Green Room is the other reason you should be in the theatre. Jeremy Saulnier is really smart about gory violence, and that intelligence is extremely refreshing when it comes to watching very realistic, trashy gore being shot with a level of respect. The tone of the film during the fights ends up feeling like the tone of Blade 2 in its violent middle act, and if anything reminds you of Guillermo Del Toro that’s a good thing. The situations that appear aren’t as special or new, but they’re all dressed up and great looking so there’s not reason to be worried. The actors seem to slip into the back of the movie though at times considering just how much fun the themes, and violence are. Yelchin is the only character we get to know from the punk band, however the violence and thematic material are so terrifying and effective that every time that someone gets picked off you feel it. Stewart really is as spectacular and gut wrenching as you’ve heard. He’s playing a character against type (i.e. the kind father figure), but playing it just like he’d play those. He’s wonderful. See it for the actors, see it to watch what happens whenever a gorehound movie has a purpose, and see it for the gore. Green Room is the beautiful horror experience we never see anymore, and you should not miss it. I give Green Room a 9.5 out of 10.
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |