Green Room is the tale of an amateur punk band called the
'Ain’t Rights' on tour in Oregon without enough money for fuel to get back
home. A problem they generally solve by syphoning it from the tanks of other
vehicles. After one gig is cancelled, a journalist gets them a show at what
turns out to be a neo-Nazi skinhead club in the middle of nowhere.
They make the best of it and show their bravado by opening
with a cover of the Dead Kennedy's 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off' which does a pretty
good job of winding up the locals. Despite that, the show goes well enough and
they're just about to get the hell out of there when their bassist Pat (Anton
Yelchin) accidentally stumbles upon the body of a girl has just been murdered
in the club's green room.
This results in Pat and his bandmates Sam (Alia Shawkat),
Tiger (Callum Turner) and Reece (Joe Coe) being locked inside them green room by
the management, in the form of Darcy (Patrick Stewart), the rather aloof owner,
and his lead henchman Gabe (Macon Blair). They are affectively held hostage in
the green room along with a girl called Amber (Imogen Poots) who was a friend
of the deceased.
Darcy’s solution to the problem is to leave no witnesses to
the murder and to frame the band for everything. So from being locked in, the
band now barricaded themselves in but it soon becomes clear that that is not a
good long term plan and escaping, preferably alive, is the only way out. What
follows is a deadly cat and mouse game between the band members and the
skinheads who now have the club has now been surrounded, one which rapidly
spirals out of control.
The film does then become an almost relentless bloodbath but
quite a cultured one as it does at least manage to get us quite well acquainted
with the main characters, which means you feel for them more, before they are
slaughtered. It also makes a good job of conveying the claustrophobic sense of hopeless
inescapability that they face.
In a cast that is mainly young and largely absent of big
names, you can’t really second guess who will survive, which adds a rare touch
of suspense. Overall, quite a tense experience.
Posts
