– By Cate Marquis –
‘Green Room’ tries to mix horror and millennial humor with sickening results
There is a certain trend in horror films known as “torture porn.” If that’s what you like, “Green Room” may be for you. Mixing humor and horror has a long history, and “Green Room” attempts to update that mix with a millennial twist but its tale of a punk band trapped in a remote compound of violent neo-Nazis is too gruesome for efforts at humor to do anything but fall flat.
The film is directed by Jeremy Saulnier, whose previous film was the well-regarded “Blue Ruins,” which raised expectations for this new film. The results are disappointing, to put it mildly.
Punk band “The Ain’t Rights” is nearing the end of a unsuccessful tour, playing small gigs in small towns as they try to put together enough live material for a new album. They find themselves stuck and broke in a small rural town after a gig falls through. With the promise of a nice paycheck, they reluctantly agree to play at a run-down backwoods Oregon club favored by punk-music-loving neo-Nazis. The local guy who sets it up through his cousin (“we don’t talk politics”) assures them it is safe, if they just ignore the racist stuff. Instead the band members find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time when a brutal crime takes place, and then trapped in the middle of the woods surrounded by violent neo-Nazis, crazy types, and trained attack dogs.
Funny stuff, huh? The real fun begins when we learn just how far these extremists, led by silver-tongued but ruthless club owner Darcy Banker (Patrick Stewart), will go to keep the police out of their compound. Nothing is too gruesome for these guys.
Making the bad guys neo-Nazis is just a way to justify their violence – there is no real reference to Nazi beliefs apart from a bit of dark-humor before the horror gets underway, when one band member jokingly threatens to tell the venue’s manager that the another one is Jewish.
The best thing about “Green Room” is it is not shot in hand-held, found footage “Cloverfield” style, although it has its hand-held and point-of-view moments. The other good thing is that the most grizzly scenes are often in low-light, making the gore and guts, thankfully, hard to see. Of course, if you like that kind of thing, those might not be pluses.
“Green Room” is certainly creepy – disgusting, actually – and there is not much in the story, characters or acting to redeem it. Stewart is really wasted in this, as is Anton Yelchin as one of the musicians. Some of the musicians have more survival skills than their often dim-witted neo-Nazi captors assume, which lets them put up a bit of a fight. As a blonde-haired punk fan who happens to be present when things go wrong, Imogen Poots interjects occasional efforts at ironic snark with a tough girl demeanor. It is all pretty random and pointless, a long slog through mayhem that has been done better in other horror films.
As the bodies pile up, one of the attack dogs, wounded in the melee, escapes and, trailing his leash up wooded, winding back-country roads, tries to trudge back home. If only the audience could as easily escape this gruesome, pointless film.
© Cate Marquis
