Wednesday Review: Green Room

(First Wednesday Review in over a month.  I'm so happy!  There's been a serious drought of new horror.)

If you cloned Alfred Hitchcock and raised the clone on a mixture of Eli Roth and Rob Zombie, I think that child might grow up to direct something like Green Room. It combines a Hitchcockian formula with a healthy dose of gore. The characters are clearly established, they're put into a scenario in which their options and information are both limited, and then they're chopped into tiny pieces for the amusement of the audience. This is the type of movie where we're constantly kept up to date on the number of bullets in each gun, but when those bullets are fired we get the blood. It's a strange mixture of intellectual and savage.

Our set-up sends a down-on-their-luck band to a bar for neo-Nazis and other racist trash. Unfortunately, they end up witnessing a dead body, and find themselves locked in the bar's Green Room (the room for bands to prepare before they go onstage, something I was previously unaware of) with a loaded gun but not cell phones, and another witness who they may or may not be able to fully trust. Obviously, the Nazis want the matter covered up, and can only be assured of that if they're all dead. So, the situation turns into a stalemate.

I was excited to see Patrick Stewart in this movie as the Nazi leader, and he does not disappoint. Based on the trailer I thought he would be attempting an American accent, but I was wrong. Instead we get a British accent that becomes more or less pronounced depending on whether or not his character wants to project himself as the voice of reason, or the brute, at a given moment. It's an effect I love.

Director Jeremy Saulnier has referred to this as the third in his “Inept Protagonist Trilogy,” however I personally don't see it as such. I've only seen the first of those three films, Murder Party, and that film featured a true idiot as a hero who mostly sat back and watched the villains destroy themselves. Here, the protagonists make mistakes not out of true stupidity, but out of desperation. There are a number of times when the villains drastically underestimate them.

I don't want to spoil too much in this review, although I fully expect to write a full regular review eventually. Suffice it to say that, aside from a minor quibble with the ending, the story does not disappoint. Every plot point is set up in proper Hitchcock style, and every twist works with what the movie has established. The movie gives us all the information, but then still finds ways to surprise us. If you can handle the gore, see it.