150 Word Review: 'Green Room' (2015)
These boots are made for stompin'
Green rooms are where performers unwind; every theater or studio has one. But there is no time to relax in 2015's Green Room, directed by Jeremy Saulnier, a grisly but grounded indie nightmare about a struggling punk band that accepts an offer to play a well-paying show for a warehouse full of skinheads in the backwoods of Oregon.
Only these skinheads, it turns out, are neo-Nazis. That's America for you. The woods are dark and full of murderous bigots.
The cast combusts. The fascists are terrifying, the kids are sympathetic. The late Anton Yelchin is a vulnerable lightning rod. A bespectacled Patrick Stewart is eerily calm as a white supremacist leader—a fussy sociopath. The titular room becomes an unlikely fortress as the night becomes a desperate battle for survival. The violence is sudden and severe; a disembowelment and a dog attack, to name just two scenes, turned me green.
I accidentally hired a skinhead neo Nazi band to play at a party for 250 teens camping in my forest in Pennsylvania one time. I really didn’t pay them. They were supposed to play at the country fair, but were late, so the fair director told them that they couldn’t play, so they just came and joined the other bands I scheduled. Since I didn’t understand a word they said because the music was so loud, I didn’t know they were a neonazi band.
My daughter informed me the next day.