“Green Room,” Jeremy Saulnier’s follow-up to his Pacific Northwest revenge thriller “Blue Ruin” (2013), turns the historically uncomfortable relationship between punk rock and skinhead culture into a bloody nightmare. The Ain’t Rights land a matinee show that, unbeknownst to the band before they arrive, is being held at a skinhead clubhouse deep in the Oregon woods — but hey, the gig pays a solid $350 and they can still antagonize the white-power goose-steppers by opening their set with “Nazi Punks Fuck Off,” by the Dead Kennedys. A lingering sense of danger tips over into outright threat when one band member witnesses something backstage that he wasn’t supposed to see. The Ain’t Rights are held hostage, at the mercy of Darcy (Patrick Stewart, quietly intense as the group’s ringleader), who marshals his most dedicated “red laces” racists to deal
with the outsiders. The film proceeds with a single-minded determination — tension, release; rinse, repeat — and never attempts to be smarter than it needs to
be (that may sound like a criticism, but it’s not). Things get scary, and bloody, and ridiculous quickly. In this realist thriller, the plot hinges on a simple question: Who’ll be the last one left alive? This article first appeared in the April issue of Modern Painters.
↧