Green Room (2016)

I really liked Jeremy Saulnier's, "Blue Ruin", and his follow-up film, "Green Room", definitely kicks things up a notch on all counts. To be perfectly honest, I recently re-watched this flick after having initially attempted to sit through it a few months ago while much too tired so I was kinda in-and-out then and didn't think much of it. It's a shame it took me so long to get my ass in gear and give it a proper shot, cuz it ended up being a very cool flick.

So, a touring punk band is struggling to get a real paying gig and are given the opportunity to perform at some neo-Nazi compound venue. After their 'controversial' set - kicking off with the Dead Kennedys, "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" - they stumble across one of the headliner's band members murdered in the green room. From there, the bands barricade themselves while the 'head honcho' skinhead (Patrick Stewart) is called in to handle the ever-delicate situation of exposing of the witnesses, while they, in turn, fight for their survival...

It doesn't take too long for "Green Room" get rollin' and KEEP rollin' once the initial shit hits the fan. The violent confrontations between punks and Nazis is extremely 'gritty' and intense - far more than your standard Hollywood-horror violence for the most part. The manner in which Stewart and his white supremacist 'flunkies' map out their plans to thwart police involvement and ultimately 'remedy' the stand-off situation gives the film a very grim and 'realistic', visceral vitality. The dual standpoint represented between the bands and the captors made for an interesting sense of trepidation for the viewer, I thought, in knowing things the victims don't yet know, while still offering up some surprises. The performances are all pretty solid and the pacing is fast. You got plenty of gruesome kills, including dog maulings, shotgun-head blasts, box-cutter and machete slashings, etc. I'd put it up there with "Don't Breathe" as the best wide-theatrical horror release of 2016.