You say you never expected a movie pitting cowboys against aliens. I say I never expected a movie pitting rock musicians against neo-Nazi skinheads. But here it is, and it's awesome.
A wry, witty first act sets up the film to be something between dark satire and absurdist thriller. Our protagonists, "the Ain't Rights" band members, find themselves wandering the Pacific Northwest on their down-and-out tour. A seemingly fortuitous opportunity arises, and the band go to a remote bar deep in the woods. Upon recognizing its clientele as neo-Nazis, the band provoke the crowd before performing their concert, and then prepare to depart. They accidentally find a murdered woman in their green room, and immediately find themselves held at gunpoint by the bouncers, who confiscate their phones. The night quickly explodes into violence and ushers in a surprising bloodbath that lasts a better part of an hour.
If you know me at all, you know I don't handle body horror well, and as soon as we see bones break or skin tear, my mind turns to mush. I wasn't expecting it, so you can be sure my consciousness was in question for most of this film. From what I can recall, the both the story and its characters are thin: It's a strange sort of reverse-home-invasion plot featuring little more than adrenalized bodies ready to be "cut the fuck up" (as Jada Pinkett Smith says in Scream 2).
The interest here is in the excellent presentation of the proceedings. It's not exactly an unknown story, and between the genre and its tropes, the film could be a big yawn. Director Jeremy Saulier pulls the film taut, keeping everything clear and clean in a world of little but gore and grime, and indulging in the smallest of visual pleasures. Machetes and pit bulls and fire extinguishers and shotguns and pocket-knives are all used with indiscriminate violence as the players launch themselves upon the others. There's not a moment when Saulier himself gets caught up in the horrors and the frenzied kinetic action, rather keeping a calculated and distinctly rhythmic eye on everything. His unnerving sense of atmosphere and pace keep things totally accessible and even believable; even the obvious spectacular, shock-value scares are truly shocking because we can believe in the horrors we're witnessing.
Anton Yelchin and Patrick Stewart play the respective leaders of the opposing factions, and together they carry the film. Sean Porter's cinematography and Julia Bloch's editing keep these two men at the center of our attention, and they help focus a film that could have easily sunk into confused waste. Instead, they and director Saulier craft a fierce, fevered foray into hell that raises questions about savagery and brutality, and when fighting back can be the only worthwhile response to the same.
IMDb: Green Room
No comments:
Post a Comment